Compare And Contrast Catcher In The Rye And Holden Caulfield

In many books, the main characters are usually a mirroring reflection of the author themself. The characters and the author tend to have similar ideas and views on life. Through the characters, authors can express their emotions, and internal and external problems that they are going through. In The Catcher in the Rye, the speaker, Holden Caulfield, and the author, J. D. Salinger has many similarities. Many interests and events that happen in Holden’s life are similar to the author’s. They both go to many schools, are the managers of the fencing team, love New York, and go through a mental breakdown. Salinger may have used the character of Holden as his own way of expressing his concealed, repressed ideas and feelings, and how he viewed the

After his brother died, he broke the windows in the garage (Salinger 39). This moment where he lost his brother, affected him forever; he is never the same. Later on, there is an occurrence where he cries after getting robbed and punched by a pimp. This shows that he still at a child-like state because he is not mature enough to handle the situation. When Holden and Sally go skating, he has a mental breakdown when they take a break at a bar. He starts asking Sally a bunch of questions. Then he asks her if she would “like to get the hell out of here” (Salinger 132). Holden quickly changes the subject and goes from one thing to another. He even abruptly asks Sally to run away with him and marry him. Earlier he says that he “sort of hated Sally by the time [they] got in the cab” (Salinger 128). It is odd of Holden to ask Sally to marry him when he does not even like her. This shows that he is not emotionally stable and cannot organize his feelings. Based off of Freud’s Topographic theory, this is Holden’s unconscious (Polukis). These random outbursts that Holden has, shows that he is repressing his fears and traumas. In the same way, Salinger “had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for combat-related stress in an Army hospital” (Teicholz). Salinger became emotionally unstable after he was in World War Two and Holden becomes unstable after his brother dies. After Salinger’s break down, he

In the very beginning of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is standing alone on a hill watching the Pency football game. “Practically the whole school except [him] was there” (Salinger 2). He chooses to stand by himself instead of joining the rest of the school. After leaving Pencey Prep, the first thing he does when he gets off the train, he goes to the phone booth. However, once he reaches the phone booth, he could not think of anyone to call. His “brother D. B. was in Hollywood. [His] kid sister Phoebe goes to bed around nine o’clock”, he “thought of giving Jane Gallagher’s mother a buzz”, he “thought of calling this girl. . . Sally Hayes” and he “thought of calling up this guy that went to the Wooton School. . . Carl Luce” (Salinger 59). He ends up not calling anyone from his list. Even though he could of called any of these people, he chooses to stay alienated from everyone. Salinger was also a person who deviated himself from the world. After readers became really interested in The Catcher in the Rye, when a copy was found with a murder, Salinger removed himself from society and lived as a recluse in New Hampshire (Teicholz). He continued to write, but said he would only publish them after his death. He did not want to be bothered with questions and did not want people to get into his life. Therefore, Holden and Salinger both alienate themselves to get away from