The character which comes closest to being 'superhuman' is Teddy, the ten year old prodigy. However, in this ultra-intelligent character, Salinger places a quaint child, waiting to emerge from the mask of intelligence. As Teddy peers out the window, he exhibits childlike fascination with the orange peels and indignity towards parents, and an adultlike acknowledgement of the passing of the Queen Mary. His supercharged intellect appears to be accompanied by a lack of common sense, exemplified by his poor clothing and poor communication skills. However, this is not the case; instead, Teddy is fighting an internal revolution with himself, and thus the world's activities are trivial.
Similarly, Holden Caufield was fighting his own internal revolution. Throughout Catcher in the Rye, Caufield figuratively spat upon the sycophantal conformists. However, unlike the vast majority of other literary characters, he shows a great deal of respect for organized religion. The catholic nuns he meets in the coffee shop are some of the few outsiders he respects. He feels obligated to provide them with a monetary assistance, because he realizes that they are doing what they feel they believe in, and aren't 'fake' like the man who played Christ in the Christmas pageant. In addition to disliking the actor who "couldn't wait to smoke a cigarette" after he got down from the cross, Caufield despised the majority of the prep school personnel. They were fake, thrilled by there own bombastic tautology, and reluctant to impart any useful knowledge to the students. Indeed, Caufield was much like the Dead Poet's Society students: he was inspired by a few thought-provoking teachers, and thus decided to drop his sycophancy in favor of an expression of true thoughts.
Allie, Holden's younger brother, also served as his role model in the exercising of personal freedom. Unlike other baseball players, who felt it was necessary to sit bore themselves to death waiting in the outfield, Allie occupied himself with poetry inscribed on his glove. In addition to meditating upon his 'baseball glove' poetry, he also pursued many other avenues of learning, and was (in Holden's eyes) a perfect child before he was abruptly taken from the earth. Like Teddy, who was probably his best friend, (or maybe even himself,) Allie was above the redundancies of civilization. Thus, he felt great relief upon being relieved from his presence on earth so that he might join Teddy in the superior afterlife.
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