Censorship vs. Conforming

I've never read Catcher in the Rye before, though almost completely by chance. Having gone to a preppy boarding school, I find Holden's analysis of the culture of boarding school pretty accurate. At my boarding school, Catcher in the Rye was a required reading for juniors, though when I was a rising junior, the moved it to the sophomore list, skipping over my class. I recall though, the infamous "Letter to Holden" assignment that inevitably went with the book every year. The assignment, in brief, was to write a letter to Holden, sympathizing or disagreeing with his gripes via our experience at boarding school. While I can't decide if I take either of these sides at this point, I find most of his complaints to be difficult to argue against. Boarding school is a closed community, with a culture all its own. New students immediately figure out if they fit within the mold of current students, or if they need to change. The attitude is a fairly strict "conform or be condemned".

This made me wonder exactly how different cultural conforming is from censorship. I would hazard cultural conforming is one of the most effect means of censorship. As anyone who has been a teenager can tell you, peer pressure to fit in is stressful and humiliating. While there are always exceptions, the majority of us have, at some point, changed how we behave, what we believe in, or who we associate with for cultural acceptance. This self censorship, and recognition of differences, is a common theme in Catcher in the Rye. As Holden works to find acceptance and purpose, he begins to understand himself better, as well as all the ways his experiences at school shaped him. He realizes all the ways he has been censored, or censored himself, and works to undo a lot of that damage.