The critic says, “Only a few can hope for suitcases, at the expense of the many, and enjoyment of them depends on shutting out awareness of the many. A critical inquiry at the University of Chicago connects the capitalist society that Holden lives in to the economic struggle represented by these suitcases. Holden is assigning a sign exchange value to these suitcases and oppressing his roommate through this. Sign exchange value is the idea that “a commodity's value lies in the social status it confers on its owner” (Tyson 59). This connects to Marxism because an important belief in this theory is, first, that people are in the class socially that they are in economically, and also because of the idea of sign exchange value. Despite that Holden didn’t succeed at this school at all, he thinks of himself as superior to his roommate for something so small as his suitcases. Holden associates himself with his suitcases that “came from Mark Cross, and they were genuine cowhide and all that crap, and I guess they cost quite a pretty penny” (page 13). Holden even says, “ It isn't important, I know” but still goes on about how he “hate it when somebody has cheap suitcases,” (page 13). Holden reduces his roommate, Dick Slagle, to the suitcases he took to school. It’s telling that he remembers such a small commodity and associates an entire person with this. Holden brings up the quality of the suitcases of a roommate he hasn’t seen in years. Holden, a naive teenager, knows that he is separate from others, because he’s less cool or younger than they are, but he doesn’t see the ways he looks down on others for their economic class.
Holden and his family are in the upper class socioeconomically, meaning they are socially elite and economically wealthy. There is no social class separate from economic class. Marxism is the idea that “all war is class war” the conflicts in society all stem from the separation between people based on their wealth.
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