"The Catcher in the Rye" opens with Holden Caulfield at Pency Prep, his high school, where he has just been kicked out for failing almost all of his classes. Holden, as a lost and frustrated teen, goes to his room for his last night before planning to run away from Pency Prep for some "alone time" before telling his parent he was kicked out of another school.…
He sees adults and friends who succumb to these norms, and he outwardly looks down upon them and call them phonies of society. As an author, J.D. Salinger created Holden Caulfield as a character to challenge the expected norms of this time period, and as a whole, the novel addresses the challenge of accepting societal norms and diverging from norms to create a different lifestyle. For Holden, although many other reasons attribute to his refusal to accept society, he mainly believes that the 1950’s American Dream culture valuing marriage, family and education is not one that he wishes to be associated with. It is also crucial to note that by the end of the novel, Holden ends up in a mental institution, the location from which he narrates Catcher in the Rye. This element of the novel is crucial to our understanding of Holden as a character; he seems to have rejected the values and views of the post-war era so intensely, he is literally unable to function and has been…
"Bishop Long takes his spot back at the podium. He speaks haltingly, starting out slow. "I know all about it... I know all about what you're up against..."…
We as Americans reminisce on history to see and understand the advancements we have accomplished and the same can be said of not only the advancement of women but also the image of how women are portrayed. Although in today’s day and age, their figures and beauty are scrutinized but also exploited. For instance in both Tennessee Williams motion picture, “A Street Car Named Desire” and Lorraine Hansberry A Raisin in the Sun you are able to see the evolution of the not only the portal of women but also the advancements they accomplish.…
One of the most important themes in "The Catcher in the Rye", is the tendency people have to judge one another. The narrator, Holden Caulfield, is not only judgmental of the people he meets, but of society as a whole. Throughout his experiences, he criticizes the phoniness and shallowness that he encounters in the world around him. One sees, that while Holden spends much of his time judging the actions and intentions of others, he never recognizes his own faults.…
“Good people... are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure”. This quote from William Saroyan means that wise people acquire their insight from experiences, especially unsuccessful ones. I agree with the quote and the idea of people being knowledgeable because of the hardships and journeys they had endured. The two novels Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger both support the idea of gaining wisdom through experience.…
The main purpose of J.D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye, is to epitomize the importance of adolescence and illustrate the benefits of a social lifestyle. Salinger achieves this meaning in multiple ways. Primarily, he uses Holden, Catcher’s protagonist, as an example of a teenager who has failed to develop during the quintessential period of youth. Additionally, by characterizing him in this manner, Salinger utilizes Holden’s desire to act both older and younger than his age to convey the dangers that come with poor decision making, as well as their consequences. Lastly, he uses the characters of Mr. Spencer and Mr. Antolini to act as voices of reason to Holden, while also showing Holden’s missed opportunities in life when he does…
The years following the second Great War are know as a period of culture consensus. The 1950s were characterized as a time of prosperity, due to the number of Americans who moved to the newly developed suburbs while under the comfort of a growing economy. As well, America's national identity began to change from an isolationist outlook on the world to a hard-line Cold War advict. This change made many writers and intellects switch to a writing style that focused on defending the United States and the freedoms it stood for. At the same time, a growing number of critics found the widespread conformity to be an evil to America’s health as a nation. From the expansion of the consumer economy, uniform communities, and corporate bureaucrats,…
Everyone has had a dream job since they were small, it might have changed over time but it was always something they loved. In “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger we meet Holden whose dream job is to be a catcher in the rye. Holden states that in his dream job he would “catch everyone if they start to go over the cliff- I mean if they’re running and they don’t see where they’re going I have to come out of somewhere and catch them.” (Salinger, 173)…
Three seconds remain in the tied basketball game. The point guard shoots and scores right before the buzzer sounds off. I bet for a long time, that player worked hard in the gym to practice and perfect his shooting for game time situations like that. It just goes to show that nothing great can ever be achieved without hard work. Holden Caulfield from The Catcher In The Rye, however, does not quite understand this saying. In the story, Holden does not apply himself to his education at Pencey Prep, which results in his expulsion from school. Throughout the story, Holden, as well as a few other characters, represent the terms expressed in Freud’s Theory of Personality known as the id, superego, and ego.…
Imagine what it feels like to be a teenager. Is a teenager considerate and open minded? The novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger talks about a teenager named Holden Caulfield who tells his story about a school named Pency Prep in Pennsylvania, away from his sister and parents. Throughout most of this book, Holden explains his inner thoughts regarding everyone he knows, and most of them are judgmental. Holden is considered to be a typical American teenager in this novel. First of all, teenagers like to express their thoughts. In Sylvia Plath’s article “Sylvia Plath at Seventeen”, she begins saying,“As of today I have decided to keep a diary again―just a place where I can write my thoughts and opinions when I have a moment. Somehow I…
There are a number of women in Holden’s life in “The Catcher in the Rye”. Women often appear in…
The Catcher in the Rye is a book set in the 1950’s. The time period was a highly racist time which effected the book greatly. The main protagonist is Holden Caulfield who is also the narrator of the novel. Ackley, Stradlater, and Jane Gallagher are a few of Holden’s peers. The trio and the rest of his family & peers affect him deeply. Some people believed that Holden was “his own worst enemy’.…
The Reconstruction era, when former Confederate states were integrated back into the Union, followed the end of the brutal and transformative Civil War. Between 1865 and 1877, President Lincoln was assassinated and President Johnson came to power with conflicting opinions resulting in his impeachment, the Constitution underwent major revision with three amendments added to it, there were many efforts to solidify Union control and create equality in the defeated South, however, this ignited a fierce backlash as various terrorist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, engaged in a violent battle to maintain a pre-Civil War society of white power and African American enslavement. Many claimed that “although the North won the Civil War, the South…
J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is about a young Holden Caulfield’s growth into maturity. Caulfield begins the novel as an inexperienced boarding school student attending Pencey Prep, a private boarding school located in Pennsylvania, who is struggling academically and socially. After getting kicked out of yet another boarding school, Caulfield travels to New York City before going home. After staying in New York for the time period between when he got kicked out and when he can return home Caulfield learns the struggles of living in the adult world. As he experiences New York, it opens his eyes to the painfulness of growing up and he wants to escape it. A major theme in this story is keeping innocence, which is portrayed through Caulfield’s theory about the catcher in the rye, his need to protect his sister, and the red hunting hat.…