"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.…
Similar observations are made by academic writer and author Sarah Graham in her book entitled Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. In this book, Graham addresses a variety of reading techniques, themes, and comparisons/contrasts in regards to Salinger’s most popular novel, but she specifically addresses the main theme of Holden’s attempt to escape the phony 1950’s materialistic focused society surrounding him. Graham begins her take on this theme of escaping society with a chapter on Holden’s rebellion: “Developing the theme of rebellion, Holden’s visit to Mr. Spencer confirms that he is opposed to the conventional ideas that school and society encourage in order to promote stability” (34). During this visit to Mr. Spencer’s house that Graham…
The title, The Catcher in the Rye, directly indicates the reoccurring theme of the novel, to protect the innocence of the younger generations. The novel is structured on Holden’s desire to protect all the innocent children in the world from growing up because with age comes experiences that lead to corruption and the loss of innocence.…
“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.…
Holden is quite a peculiar kid. He tends to change his mind on a lot of things. However, the one thing he changes his mind about the most is whether he is ready to grow-up or not. Throughout the book he tries to do such adult like things, because he is sick of his usual life style. Then he gets sick of the unusual adult life. He talks to his sister, Phoebe, one night about the poem by Robert Burns, and Holden gets to thinking about innocence. How he wishes he could be the catcher in the rye. Stopping all the kids from losing that sight of innocence. He begins to regret all the adult things he did and wishes he could go back to the way his innocent childhood was.…
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.…
Throughout the book The Catcher in the Rye, and the movie Dead Poets Society, there are many themes portrayed that the characters deal with and learn from. Of the many themes displayed in the movie and novel, three that stood out were loneliness, dealing with change, and the pain of growing up. These three themes are vital and important, and play a significant role in the characters throughout the novel and movie. The struggles of loneliness, dealing with change, and growing up are difficulties faced by the characters that are both similar and different in the movie and novel.…
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…
The genuine joy Holden gets from watching Phoebe is a striking image of his fantasies of innocence and his collapsing psyche. For a moment Holden sees the joy that he envisions all the children of his rye field are like. Within Phoebe’s happiness Holden is transfixed and distraught, because the sudden realization that he is transitioning to a world he does not feel equipped for triggers the end of his ambivalence. As the carousel spins so does Holden’s reality, he loses sense of even further sense of himself. The Catcher in the Rye is a bildungsroman, but it is unique in how Holden not only resists growing up, but also he ends the novel more unstable and lost than he started off as. A quest or journey is supposed to lead to a literal or metaphorical…
In the novel The Catcher and the Rye by J.D Salinger, Holden expresses his hate for the idea of growing up and becoming an adult, as he sees the majority of adults as phonies. Along with that, he regards the process as taking away your innocence and freedom. With his view of adulthood, he hates the idea of children having to go through what he did and losing their innocence. He often praises children, placing them as superior to adults.…
The novel starts out with Holden telling the reader the flashback of three days he spent alone in New York City last winter. He was kicked out of Pencey Prep, the latest in a long string of exclusive boarding schools, and wanted to leave the school before his parents found out. Before Holden leaves, he is warned by his teacher that he is heading down a bad path, foreshadowing his later troubles. As Holden leaves his dorm, he shouts “Sleep tight, ya morons!”, and cries, although he doesn’t know why (Page 52) . Throughout the book Holden often has reactions like this, hating people but still wanting to be close to them. He takes the train into New York City, and heads for a hotel after being too scared of talking to his parents to call his little…
All I could hear was the screaming of my mother's voice, yelling at me to do the housework. All I could think about is why my father needed to go on this oh so important ‘business trip’ of his. She, just like all of the other times this has happened, begins comparing me to my older brothers. “He is so…
In “The Catcher in the Rye”, Salinger uses Holden Caulfield as a vessel to portray the loneliness created by the flaws and realities of the human psyche. Human beings are not born “socialized”. The process of socialization and the ability to interact positively with others can be a long and perilous journey. Loneliness is a common theme of human existence. The alienation can be created via multiple pathways such as by lacking a sense of self, lacking support from family, and through not “playing” by society’s rules. Understanding what Holden is going through and why he acts the way he does gives a greater understanding of life. While Holden himself may be a fictional character, he represents a common figure in society who is often misunderstood.…
Surprisingly, I didn’t feel the urge to cry. There I was, standing amongst the rolling hills of Eagle Rock in Los Angeles, and my cheeks were as dry as the city’s desert climate. The day had come; it was time to say goodbye to my older brother, Otto, who was about to start college. Equipped with tissues in my pocket and mascara-free eyes, I had anticipated a day filled with tears. I cried when he broke his elbow in a nasty snowboarding accident and I cried at his graduation when the realization hit me that he would soon be leaving home. Yet when finally confronted with the momentous occasion of his departure, not a single tear welled in my eye.…
As i continued to tell my story to my psychoanalyst I just watched as he took notes of every word I said. I did not give him permission but I’m assuming that's his job who knows I've never been in this goddamn place before. Suddenly a women came in saying I had a call for me in the office. Finally.An excuse to leave this stuffy room and outta this uncomtorable chair.…