Teenage Depression: An Analysis of Holden Caulfield from the Catcher in the Rye
Author: Joyce Weihan Chen (陳薇涵)
**This essay provides a general comment for the thesis. Please refer to the text for more specific comments.
The main argument of the thesis is that the depression of Holden Caulfield is a reflection of Salinger's own experience with PTSD. The author has a great breadth of knowledge (presuming that the un-cited facts are correct: using quotations and citations more often would make the statements much more authoritative!) and is able to apply the knowledge creatively to the text. At several points in the thesis, the author makes very interesting and creative analytical leaps: the author juxtaposes Caulfield's behavior with medical diagnostic descriptions to show a new way of interpreting some of his behavior.More impressively, perhaps, the author clearly has a confidence to write about a broad range of causes and symptoms of depression. This clearly represents a wealth of research.
To further improve the thesis, the author's should better present the knowledge and creative insight in a well-structured way. This is not to say that the thesis lacks structure; rather, the thesis does not make its structure clear within the text: Specifically, the thesis needs to draw connections between many of its different parts. When it describes a section of the book, then describes depression, it needs to make the connection between them explicit. Often, the thesis needs to use transition phrases to make it clear what the connection is between the different paragraphs. All of this will make it much easier for the audience to understand the Authors insight. More generally, it would help to make it clearer what the purpose of the thesis is: it seems at times unclear whether the author is using Caulfield to analyze depression, or using depression to analyze Caulfield.
The author could also cut out many parts of the texts that, while good and accurate, distract from the central purpose. In some ways, this text could constitute two separate projects: one, an impressive overview of the causes and symptoms of teenage depression. The other, an analysis of J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield in light of J.D. Salinger's experience with mental illness and the factors in Caulfield's life that could contribute to teenage depression. Linking these two projects is the structure that will turn this great analysis into a great thesis.
A final note: The English in this paper is great in many ways. Specifically because it's so good in general, it's important to note that transitional phrases like "yet", "however", and "on the other hand" can onlybe used between two sentences that are meant to have opposite, opposing, or contradictory meaning. These phrases help the reader understand how you interpret the relevance of the text, so making mistakes with them can mislead the reader.
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