Preview

Catcher in the Rye: Holden's Insight About Life and the World Around H Essay Example

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
955 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Catcher in the Rye: Holden's Insight About Life and the World Around H Essay Example
Catcher in the Rye: Holden's Insight About Life and The World Around Him

The book Catcher in the Rye tells of Holden Caulfield's insight about life and the world around him. Holden shares many of his opinions about people and leads the reader on a 5 day visit into his mind. Holden, throughout the book, made other people feel inferior to his own. I can relate to this because although I do not view people inferior to myself, I do judge others unequally.
Holden and I both have similar judgements of people from the way they act and behave. We also share feelings about motivation as well as lack of it. After reading this book, I came to the conclusion that Holden and I are much more similar than I initially believed.

Holden portrayed others to be inferior to his own kind all throughout the book. He made several references as to how people aren't as perfect as he was. "The reason he [Stradlater] fixed himself up to look good was because he was madly in love with himself." (pg. 27) Holden had an inferiority complex.
He was afraid of not having any special talents or abilities and used other methods to make him out to be a rough tough boy. "Boy, I sat at that goddam bar till around one o'clock or so, getting drunk as a bastard. I could hardly see straight." (pg. 150) Holden tried all he could to fit in. He drank, cursed and criticized life in general to make it seem he was very knowing of these habits.
I myself have found me doing this at times, also. I, at times, feel the need to fit in to a group and do things similar to what others do in order to gain acceptance by them. I smoked a cigar once with two friends of mine because they kept going on and on about how great cigars were, but that was only once.
Holden and I both place people on levels other than our own for amount of knowledge and likeness to ourselves.

Holden used the term 'phonies' to describe more than a few people in this book. He used the term to be what a person is if they don't act

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Holden Caulfield is J.D. Salinger’s main character in The Catcher in the Rye. We learn several interesting things about Holden, however, while learning the these we are not experiencing or seeing what Holden is. We learn about it through Holden’s perspective throughout the entire story like, for example, the death of his younger brother, Allie or the time James Castle committed suicide by jumping out of the school window. Most of these experiences have a significant meaning behind them and we find these out by reading the book. We get to know Holden in a personal way. While reading, comprehending, and understanding Holden’s emotions towards the encounters he has with the characters in this book, which makes it very interesting.…

    • 122 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Holden is a very mysterious person, very moody. He could be smiling then he’ll start crying. If he likes something, he’ll start hating it once something happens. He calls other “phony”, but he doesn’t realize what he’s doing. Sometimes he’s real and expresses himself like a normal human being, but most of the time he a fake person surrounded by fake people. One example of Holden being weird and fake is he says he hates movies, but then he goes on a date, he takes his girl to watch a movie! Some people think that he’s normal and that’s what every teenager goes through but in reality Holden is just…

    • 530 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In school he did not have many friends, and he hated his teachers, so he would just "pretend" to pay attention. He had a master plan to "show them all" (His favorite book had the same situation and…

    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Holden Caulfield has difficulty coping in life with his judging, loneliness, depression, and anti-social behaviour. Holden is cynical in life and rarely ever is happy. An anti-social person is described as Persistent lying, using charm or wit to manipulate others for personal gain or for sheer personal pleasure, intense egocentrism, sense of superiority, repeatedly violating the rights of others by the use of dishonesty and misrepresentation, hostility, significant irritability, agitation, impulsiveness, aggression or violence, poor relationships, irresponsible work behavior and failure to learn from the negative consequences of behavior; according to Mayo Clinic.com. Holden displays all of these symptoms. Things symptoms are also habits of other people, just not serve enough for them considered to be anti-social or carrying one specific trait, like the habit of lying for example. Holden claims these people to be phonies but in fact, he does the same thing. "One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all. They were coming…

    • 360 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    These chapters establish the way Holden interacts with his peers. Holden despises “phonies”—people whose surface behavior distorts or disguises their inner feelings. Even his brother D. B. incurs his displeasure by accepting a big paycheck to write for the movies; Holden considers the movies to be the phoniest of the phony and emphasizes throughout the book the loathing he has for Hollywood.…

    • 1902 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Everybody has a moment some point in their life where they feel as if they can not struggle any more. We see this in detail in The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger. Holden Caulfield, the main character, is a sixteen year old teenager who has not had the easiest life. The novel focuses on Holden’s journey from getting kicked out of private school in pennsylvania to having a wild weekend in New York City hiding from his parents, told from his room in a mental hospital near hollywood. Although it is told over the course of a couple of days, Holden is sub consciously fighting to keep his life from spiraling out of control. Towards the end of the novel, Holden is in his little sister Phoebe’s room after sneaking into his own apartment, and…

    • 1092 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Catcher In The Rye Themes

    • 686 Words
    • 3 Pages

    He has habits to play around when he is bored. He’ll mess around with whoever is near such as his friends. Every once in awhile, he will reminisce about his past like his family. Holden misses his younger brother after he passed away. After Holden is kicked out of Pencey, he doesn’t want to go home early for Christmas break. He most likely didn’t because he didn’t want to get in trouble and have to be disciplined during the break. He acts as if he is a child being afraid before punishment. When he became intoxicated, he acted as if he had been shot in his side (195). He did so while he walked down the street. Another thing was that he is curious about where the ducks go in the wintertime. He doesn’t know so he asks a couple of cab drivers. Overall, he acts childish whenever he can. Salinger made a great effort on making Holden the way he is.…

    • 686 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Selma Thurmer was Pencey’s headmaster’s daughter and seemed to possess interesting personality attributes, so I’ve decided to write about the scene where Holden talks to her on a bus in the beginning chapter of the Catcher in the Rye.…

    • 634 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Fredrick Douglas

    • 1885 Words
    • 8 Pages

    me”. He tried to use knowledge to keep himself from seeing as an “idiot” in others’ mind. He…

    • 1885 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Psychoanalytic Model Paper

    • 1829 Words
    • 6 Pages

    for his theory of women having penis envy, and that he focused on the past behaviors instead of…

    • 1829 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    library and tended to read in total isolation of his own room. It shows how fascinated…

    • 715 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    that was ahead of his time. He wanted to inform his readers of the psychological, spiritual and…

    • 472 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    This I Believe Essay

    • 381 Words
    • 2 Pages

    However, I was more than one hundred miles away in a strange environment. Within a few days, I started meeting people from different cities. I became close to this one particular girl and I began to hang with her and her friends. Soon afterwards things immediately changed from my beliefs of smoking and drinking. Just to fit in, I decided to take a puff and a sip.…

    • 381 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Patience and Longsuffering

    • 1188 Words
    • 5 Pages

    After observing things over time and thinking about how we react to situations, I thought it might be fitting to…

    • 1188 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Narrative Smoking

    • 942 Words
    • 4 Pages

    home and went to bed. About 3 hour later I was having a hard time breathing. I had to sit up…

    • 942 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays