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An essay about the catcher in the rye
An essay about the catcher in the rye
Analysis of the catcher in the rye
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Our story is a retelling of The Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D. Salinger, that borrows symbolic elements from the story to create a more child friendly tale that parallels the original work. An idea central to our story is change in the form of flying away from his pond for the winter, which “Holden” initially resists. Similarly, Holden rejects the change into adulthood, shown most prominently in his mental image of preventing children from falling off the cliff that Holden perceives as the danger of growing up (Salinger, 1991, p. 173). Holden later rejects this fantasy of avoiding adulthood, attempting to convince his sister not to run away with him (p. 206). In our short story, “Holden” attempts to interact with the rubber ducks, which
J.D Salinger gives his personal vision of the world successfully through his persona Holden Caulfield in the ‘Catcher in the Rye’. Caulfield struggles with the background of New York to portray Salinger’s theme – you must live the world as it is, not as you would like it to be. There by exposing Salinger’s vision on the world.
1) This quote is an example of an allusion because Holden is referring to the book, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Moreover, it doesn't describe it in detail, its just a brief comment.
Published in 1951, J. D. Salinger's debut novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was one of the most controversial novels of its time. The book received many criticisms, good and bad. While Smith felt the book should be "read more than once" (13), Goodman said the "book is disappointing" (21). All eight of the critics had both good and bad impressions of the work. Overall, the book did not reflect Salinger's ability due to the excessive vulgarity used and the monotony that Holden imposed upon the reader.
Aristotle once said, “Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing.” This “condition,” as Aristotle says, is adolescence. Adolescence is much like jumping in a lake. One must walk out to the dock and once he or she is at the end, one cannot turn back. If one is to turn back they will be ridiculed as a coward, like a child. The water is ice cold, a freezing ice bath, so one does not want to jump in, but he or she can’t turn back for fear of jeer from friends. Therefore one is in a dilemma of confusion and tension between “chickening out” and braving the polar water of the lake. The land is childhood, safe and comfortable, but gone forever; and the artic water is unknown, unpleasant, and threatening like adulthood. Just like the awkward stage of being in between jumping in and abandonment, adolescence contains the strains and tension between childhood and adulthood. In the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the main character Holden Caulfield, experiences these tensions of adolescence. Holden’s quandary is he is deadlocked in adolescence, unable to go return to childhood but unwilling to progress forward to adulthood. Because Holden is consumed with the impossible task of preserving the innocence of childhood, so he delays the inevitability of becoming an adult. This leaves Holden stranded on the dock, stuck in adolescence; the center of Holden’s problems.
In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye, Holden Caulfield, a seventeen-year-old boy, transitions from childhood to adulthood. The death of Holden’s little brother signifies the beginning his loss of innocence and growth of maturity. As he enters adulthood, Holden views society differently from his peers by characterizing most of his peers and adults he meets as “phonies.” Thus, Holden takes the impossible challenge of preserving the innocence in children because he wants to prevent children from experiencing the corruption in society. The Catcher In The Rye embodies Holden’s struggle to preserve the innocence of children and reveals the inevitability of and the necessity of encountering the harsh realities of life.
In his novel Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger portrays childhood and adolescence as times graced by innocence when his protagonist, Holden Caulfield, is faced with the reality of becoming an adult. Holden’s desperation to maintain his innocence and the manner in which he critiques those he deems to have lost theirs, emphasizes his immaturity and ignorance while highlighting the importance the author places on childhood.
Holden’s central goal is to resist the process of maturity itself. He is quite immature through constantly wanting everything to be easily understandable and eternally fixed. An example of Holden’s maturity would be when he was at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. While looking at the statues of the Eskimos and Indians, he thought of their simplicity. Following this, Holden contemplated a world where everything is simple and understandable. The purpose of adulthood is to understand differences and to contemplate the complexity of the world around us. As Holden grows up, he sees the superficiality, hypocrisy, pretension, and shallowness of the world around him. After this realization, Holden invents a fantasy that adulthood is a world of superficiality and hypocrisy where adults are inevitable phonies, and they cannot see their own phoniness. In comparison to this, Holden sees childhood as a world of innocence, curiosity, and honesty. In his personal fantasy, he sees children running around a field of rye, which represents childhood. A cliff by the field of rye represents adulthood, as the children will have a fatal cliff fall. Holden’s fantasy is becoming the catcher in the rye, or “saving” these children from the inevitable adulthood. In continuation to this, Holden’s youthful search of ducks represents a lack of understanding as the ducks appear and disappear over the season. The ducks represent how some things only vanish temporarily. This connects to Holden’s brother Allie’s death as he lost his brother permanently. The pond represents a transition between childhood and adulthood as the pond is “partly frozen and partly not frozen”. In conclusion to this, Holden’s bravery can be seen through the difficulty of facing adulthood and comprehending the death of his brother,
In J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, the main character Holden Caufield believes that innocence is corrupted by society. He exposes his self-inflicted emotional struggles as he is reminiscing the past. For Holden, teenage adolescence is a complicated time for him, his teenage mentality in allows him to transition from the teenage era to the reality of an adult in the real world. As he is struggling to find his own meaning of life, he cares less about others and worries about how he can be a hero not only to himself but also to the innocent youth. As Holden is grasping the idea of growing up, he sets his priorities of where he belongs and how to establish it. As he talks about how ‘phony’ the outside world is, he has specific recollections that signify importance to his life and he uses these time and time again because these memories are ones that he wont ever let go of. The death of his younger brother Allie has had a major impact on him emotionally and mentally. The freedom of the ducks in Central Park symbolize his ‘get away’ from reality into his own world. His ideology of letting kids grow up and breaking the chain loose to discover for themselves portrays the carrousel and the gold ring. These are three major moments that will be explored to understand the life of Holden Caufield and his significant personal encounters as he transitions from adolescence into manhood.
Growing up and becoming mature can be an intimidating experience; it is difficult to let go of one’s childhood and embrace the adult world. For some people, this transition from youthfulness to maturity can be much more difficult than for others. These people often try to hold on to their childhood as long as they can. Unfortunately, life is not so simple. One cannot spend their entire life running from the responsibilities and hardships of adulthood because they will eventually have to accept the fact that they have a role in society that they must fulfill as a responsible, mature individual. The novel “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger follows the endeavours of Holden Caulfield, a sixteen-year-old teenage boy who faces a point in his life where he must make the transition from childhood to adulthood. In an attempt to retain his own childhood, he begins hoping to stop other young children from growing up and losing their innocence as well. As indicated by the title, “The Catcher in the Rye” is a book that explores a theme involving the preservation of innocence, especially of children. It is a story about a boy who is far too hesitant to grow up, and feels the need to ensure that no one else around him has to grow up either. His own fear of maturity and growing up is what leads to Holden’s desire to become a “catcher in the rye” so he can save innocent children from becoming part of the “phoniness” of the adult world.
From the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, the youthful protagonist Holden Caufield, employs the word “phony” to describe the behavior of a number of characters including Mr. Spencer and Ossenburger, however it is not them who are“phony”, it is the young main character. First, Mr. Spencer, Holden’s ex- history teacher, is not described as phony, but according to the adolescent, his choice of words are. Secondly, according to our main character, Ossenburger is not the generous philanthropist he portrays himself to be, but rather a greedy undertaker. Lastly, the protagonist could quite possibly be the authentic phony. All in all, the main character’s use to describe many other characters in the book is with the single word phony, when in fact the word phony would be the most probable word to describe the lead character.
In the novels Crime and Punishment and The Catcher in The Rye the authors Feodor Dostoevsky and J.D Salinger create internal conflict in the main protagonists to thoroughly convey their messages.Feodor Dostoevsky attempts to promote Christianity through Raskolnikov’s struggle with morality as he characterizes him as having a split personality. J.D Salinger illustrates the struggles of transitioning from adolescence to adulthood, conveying to reader that it is inevitable. In order to thoroughly convey their messages the authors incorporate symbols, allude to religion, and have the main protagonist have an epiphany to resolve their internal conflict.
1) Stradlater is Holden’s roommate , Stradlater appears to be a clean person but he is not and you can tell by his razor, and he looks fine he has a good amount of facial hair.
Some people feel all alone in this world, with no direction to follow but their empty loneliness. The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D Salinger, follows a sixteen-year-old boy, Holden Caulfield, who despises society and calls everyone a “phony.” Holden can be seen as a delinquent who smokes tobacco, drinks alcohol, and gets expelled from a prestigious boarding school. This coming-of-age book follows the themes of isolation, innocence, and corrupted maturity which is influenced from the author's life and modernism, and is shown through the setting, symbolism, and diction.
A major theme of J.D. Salinger’s novel, “ The Catcher in the Rye,” is turning your back on the world is not good. The teenage boy Holden Caulfield demonstrates this theme in the story with the constant negativity he receives as result of his negative attitude.
The author, J.D. Salinger, creates an interesting story plot. The plot intrigues the readers, and it keeps them focused on the story. We, as the readers, develop interest to the novel, due to the major conflict presented by the author. The author created the plot as a look at the life of a young male. We see Holden fighting with himself due to the opposing desires that he has.