When someone is young, they tend to have innocence about them. As children grow up, they no longer possess this natural innocence. Exposure to all of the hatred in the world causes this loss. Holden Caulfield realizes this simple fact, as he himself grows up, and has a difficult time with the change. He experiences problems with communication as well as his school work. A common theme used throughout The Catcher in the Rye has to do with contradictions Holden makes. In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, first person point of view is used to highlight contradictions Holden makes throughout the novel.…
Holden's journey through the novel was a journey in which he searched for a purpose and a sense of finally finding that “ride or die” person he desperately needed in his life. Like many teens, he had to deal with “phony” people and felt strong emotions for someone he did not really talk to and even though students currently don’t have sleepovers at their english teachers house, “The Catcher in the Rye” is still a book that should be discussed and read in schools. This novel is still…
Leaving home and living on his own is an aspiration of Holden’s, but this is made into a child-like fantasy world in his mind. Holden dreams of being a protector over children, a “catcher in the rye”, from the danger of becoming an adult.…
Holden Caulfield, the novel’s protagonist, is a pivotal character in The Catcher in the Rye. Holden is characterized as an innocent, apathetic, naive teen who is seeking knowledge of life and the meaning of becoming an adult. Holden’s struggle with seeing the genuine nature of people is something that acts as a barrier for him throughout the novel. Holden is troubled and burdened throughout the story, which causes him to have a warped view on an array of subjects. Holden passes strict judgement on everyone, as he struggles to transition from adolescence to adulthood. Holden appears to be stunned when he sees how different the life of an adult is comparison to that of children. His views on topics such as, life, his future, and sex. Holden approaches each of these subjects with strict views, and feels dejected when he realizes there are more multiple perspectives to these topics.…
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…
Holden wants to “the Catcher in the rye”, preventing others from being mature. But his concepts come from the misheard lyrics from “Comin’ Thro the Rye”, where a girl loses her innocence, where “a body meets a body” and having sex in the fields. In his daily life, this demonstrates his lack of ability to understand what others are trying to say and misunderstands them. As a result, it makes him harder to communicate with others and therefore pushing him further from the community.…
Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye reveals a teenager’s dramatic struggle against death and growing up. The book is composed of stories after the protagonist Holden Caulfield’s expulsion from a private school. He leaves school early to explore New York before returning home, interacting with teachers, prostitutes, nuns, an ex-girlfriend and his sister along the way. We characterize Holden as an innocent child that possesses an ideal fantasy of becoming a catcher in the rye, protecting an unsophisticated world of love, passion and justice. It seems Holden, a “guardian” towards childhood and innocence is the hero or “catcher” without any questions. Throughout the entire book, however,…
In this novel, Holden Caulfield gets kicked out of his school and stays in New York for a couple of days before returning home. During his travels Holden does not maintain any relationships and he associates most adults with being phony. He is constantly trying to protect himself and his sister Phoebe from being exposed to the harsh adult world. In The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger uses rhetorical devices to explain Holden’s struggles and establish the theme of preserving his own innocence and the innocence of those around him.…
Many adolescents often suffer from a lack of direction. Not knowing what they are doing or where they are headed, faced with the many obstacles of both life and adult society as they struggle to find direction in the world. Many long for acceptance and love that they do not receive. This description perfectly suits the situation befalling Holden Caulfield, the controversial protagonist and main character of J. D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. In the novel, after being expelled from his fourth school, Pencey Prep, Holden goes on a journey of self discovery through New York. He becomes increasingly unstable in a world in which he feels he does not belong, with the company of people he deems "phonies". Holden, not unlike a typical teenager, is also on his own quest in order to find himself, yet he resorts to ignoring his problems as a way of dealing with them. Holden tells his story from the confines of a psychiatric hospital, having been there to recover from a neurotic breakdown caused by his outlandish and often over the top actions. Holden Caulfield’s unachievable dreams, delusional fantasies, and erratic behaviour all lead to the breakdown of his character throughout the course of the novel Catcher in the Rye.…
In J D Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, the story is told from a cantankerous adolescent boy named Holden Caulfield. At this point, he is looking for something, but is still unaware of what it is. He feels somewhat alienated, looking in. He immensely feels his constant state isolation and, although he does reveal a sort of self-awareness, his uncertainty about his place--or anyone else’s--in the world, is intensified by his critically pretentious assessments of not only the people in his life but also himself. The dilemma of being expelled from prep school is what sets the foundation for the story where he faces two options of either returning home to his parents or starting afresh on his own.…
In The Catcher and the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the protagonist Holden Caulfield experiences myriad personal difficulties originating from the tragic event of his brother's death from cancer. Subsequently, his perspective towards the whole world has deteriorated into a pessimistic attitude, derived from his own personal sense of inferiority. As a result, Holden feels isolated and alone. In his desire to feel connected to someone, he travels home to visit his sister, Phoebe, hoping to receive emotional support. Instead, Phoebe criticizes his pessimistic attitude towards life, much to his own surprise. However, the criticism that Holden receives from his sister motivates him to improve his perspective towards life, by having become more optimistic, and leading to rapid and significant maturity within his personal development.…
Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in Rye speaks to core of being an outsider, but beyond the anti-hero, anti-establishment persona that Holden reflects, Salinger wrote a portrait of a boy deeply troubled by the end of simplicity. Past the cynical nature and the reclusion from people, Holden is a little boy saddened by the death of his brother. Holden was never able to get closure over Allie’s death and because of this he has never been able to move on. To remember his brother and a simpler time Holden treasures innocence and has remained a child himself in many ways. Through the uses of metaphorical landscapes, a relatable anti-hero, and the setting of a repressed post-war American society Salinger depicts the journey of a young boy fighting, resisting the transition from childhood to adulthood. Holden Caulfield’s cynicism and reclusion are his defense mechanism, they warn of phony and slobs alike, but leave him lonely. He is both a figure for the youth and old alike, because Holden’s disdain of hypocrisy, longing for innocence, and his need for acceptance transcend age groups, these are human emotions that bother any age group. At the end of the novel, Holden says “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do you start missing everybody” (Salinger 214). There are times when Holden comes off as neurotic, but in this case he meant that you will the way life used to be if you remember it. At the end Holden realizes that Allie’s death and his longing to go back to his childhood were holding him back, keeping him from applying himself. Many readers come away from that last line and feel that there is no happy ending for Holden, but the negative tone of the comment is less of a warning and more of a new being for Holden, meaning that Holden’s dream of being the catcher in the rye can can…
Despite being surrounded by others, many people tend to feel alone in society. This feeling of mental isolation is shown throughout J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. A sixteen-year-old boy, Holden Caulfield, wanders around New York City after being expelled from his most recent school and encounters numerous people, particularly women, before going back to his family. Though Holden tries to surround himself with others, he never seems to be able to connect to them.…
Transcendentalism is known as the philosophical movement as a protest to the general state of culture and society. Many Transcendentalists include Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The way Chris McCandless acted during the end of his life were a lot like these Transcendentalists. Many people, including myself, would consider Chris McCandless to be a Transcendentalist. The ways that he hated on society, burned his money after he ruined his car, and went out into the Alaskan nature all by himself show that he is a true Transcendentalist.…
“You could tell they didn't want me around”, Holden constantly displays his lack of self-confidence through bringing himself down in J.D Salinger’s the Catcher in the Rye, which follows seventeen year old, angsty teen, Holden Caulfield as he tells the in depth story of a trip to New York after flunking out of Pencey School. Holden’s loneliness and isolation highlights his inability to recognize his traumatizing past and lack of closure due to his brother’s recent death, establishing his depression and furthering his apathetic attitude towards school, aspirations, and his future entirely.…