Benjamin Disraeli once said, "Circumstances are beyond the control of man; but his conduct is in his own power." Basically this means that people cannot control what happens to them, but they can control how they react to those things. Disraeli's quote can be proven true through J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is about a young boy named Holden who struggles with growing up. One of the most important events that took place in Holden's life was the death of his younger brother Allie. This event had long­term negative effects on Holden's life. He developed a very distant relationship with his parents, started smoking and drinking, had trouble making friends, and performed badly in school. Holden could have tried to seek the support he needed from his family and friends after Allie's death, but instead he begins to distance himself. Moreover, even though Holden wants to make friends he struggles with this too. Holden's red hunting hat symbolizes Holden's search for close relationships. Holden wears his hat backwards. This symbolizes that he is going about his search for these relationships all wrong. He rejects
Ackley, lies to people he could be friends with, doesn't speak to Jane when he has the chance, and even avoids visiting his parents when he's in New York. Holden could have asked for the support he needed after Allie's death, but he didn't and all this bad stuff happened to Holden over the next three years. Holden couldn't control what happened to Allie, but he could have controlled his own reaction to it. He should have gone to his parents for help, but he didn't and that resulted in all the bad things that happened to him after.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road is about a father and a son who are travelling south through a post­apocalyptic landscape. The reader is never sure how the world as we know it has come to an end, but this was something that the father and son could not control. The lack of food caused a lot of people to become thieves and cannibals. However, the father and the son never resort to these things. They choose to live