Well, I’m a little surprised that no one has mentioned it yet, but Donnie Darko’s character distinctly reminds me of Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye<\/u> (which perhaps is ironic in and of itself since in the movie The Good Girl<\/u>, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a guy who has renamed himself Holden after Holden in The Catcher in the Rye<\/u>). Both Donnie and Holden are on a mission to save the children of the world from pain. In Catcher<\/u>, Holden is a jaded teenager who has lived a life of self-inflicted and world-around-him-inflicted failure. He continually finds ways to fail at school and at relationships (perhaps out of fear of failing at them), and he resolves that the whole (adult) world is “phony.” He has one absolute love, though, for which he seems to live, no matter what else the world dishes up for him (including expulsion from yet another school) – his younger sister Phoebe. The entire premise of the book is that Holden has this vision of being a “catcher in the rye” – someone who stands at the cliff at the edge of a rye field and catches all of the children from falling off (that is, losing their innocence and having to experience the pain and problems of adult life). He talks about how he wants to watch out for his sister and protect her from falling off the carousel horse in attempt to reach for the golden ring above her horse. Ultimately, he accepts the fact that he has to let her fall when the time comes. <\/p>\n
Donnie reminds me of Holden throughout several parts of the film; however, the especially strong parallel occurs when Donnie reads his poem to his English class on Poetry Day. His poem reads, “A storm is coming, Frank says \/ A storm that will swallow the children \/ And I will deliver them from the kingdom of pain \/ I will deliver the children back to their doorsteps \/ And send the monsters back to the underground \/ I’ll send them back to a place where no-one else can see them \/ Except for me \/ Because I am Donnie Darko.” This poem reveals that Donnie’s biggest concern is in saving the children from pain, pain which is caused by their fear (another HUGE topic from this film that no one has really addressed). Donnie sees himself as the superhero (as noticed when Gretchen says his name sounds like a superhero and he replies, “Who says I’m not?”) in charge of saving the children. Gretchen and Donnie invent the IMGs to give infants peaceful images instead of what the (scary) darkness gives them. Contrary to (or perhaps similar to) Holden’s ultimate fate (allowing his sister and other children to grow up and experience life\/pain), Donnie is able to sacrifice himself to spare Gretchen, Frank, and his sister from their painful deaths…though really, he is ensuring that they experience more pain (and fear) merely through living their daily lives.<\/p>\n
Other big ideas to discuss in class? How about the fear rampant in the world of Donnie Darko<\/u> and in Donnie Darko’s world? Also, there are the eye images everywhere, Donnie’s struggle with a belief in God or following God’s chosen path, and all of the dialectical images\/montages that are so clear through the use of a visual medium like film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, I’m a little surprised that no one has mentioned it yet, but Donnie Darko’s character distinctly reminds me of Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (which perhaps is ironic in and of itself since in the movie The Good Girl, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a guy who has renamed himself Holden after … Continue reading Donnie Darko meets Holden Caulfield?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}