Holden Caulfield Child

The Problem Inner Child in Holden Caulfield
1. Introduction
1.1 J.D. Salinger and His Works J.D. Salinger is a contemporary American novelist who rose to prominence with the publication of his sole full-length novel The Catcher in the Rye in 1951. Born in New York City in 1919, Salinger spent his youth as an introverted boy. At the age of 13 he enrolled in a decent prep school in Manhattan but was expelled from it one year later due to his poor academic performance. At age 15 he continued his study in Valley Forge Military Academy where he found it hard to adapt to the environment, and which later became the prototype of Pencey Prep in The Catcher in the Rye. Like the narrator of the novel Holden Caulfield, Salinger was the manager
Later he attended Columbia University, where he excelled in a creative writing class. In 1940 Salinger published his maiden writing “The Young Folks” in the magazine Story, and thus came into contact for the first time with the theme that he contrived to express throughout his literary creation—the situation and sentiments of youth who feel stranded in the adult world. One of his short stories “Slight Rebellion off Manhattan” published in The New Yorker first brought on scene the name of Holden Caulfield. After the enormous success of The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger continued to publish a series of literary works, such as “Nine Stories”, “Fanney and Zooey”, and “Raise High the RoffBeam, Carpenters; and Seymour, An Introduction”. However, they did not reach the culmination in the literary world as The Catcher in the Rye did. In his later years Salinger gradually drifted away from the literary circle with scanty publications. To this day perhaps
Apart from these four aspects, another noticeable aspect of Holden’s problem inner child is how extremely judgmental he is toward almost everything and everyone. Holden carries his inclination of making rash judgments to such an extreme that nearly every comment he places on things and people is tainted with a disparaging, accusatory tone. For example, he despises the ads of Pencey Prep featuring horse-riding young men as a sales gimmick; he criticizes people who are crazy about cars and those taxi and bus drivers who yell at passengers to get out at the rear door; he hates people sticking together; he cannot stand the sight in which people hurry into their cars when it rains in the cemetery; he claims he’d rather be killed by the atomic bomb than join in the army… What causes Holden’s rage and criticism of the “phony” world that he exerts all his energies to lash at? It is his narcissism, his self-absorption in his problem inner child that is responsible for it. On the surface, Holden never refrains from passing prejudiced and jaded comments to people around him without reflecting on his