Holden Caulfield Psychoanalytic Theory

There are countless subconscious actions that affect how a story is told or portrayed, and it is apparent that when J.D. Salinger wrote his best selling novel The Catcher In The Rye, he was influenced by the real world experiences when he created the main character. The Catcher In The Rye revolves around Holden Caulfield, a cynical 16 year old boy in the 1950’s, he is far from flawless and does not like the idea of losing the innocence. Salinger throws in a plethora of symbols waiting to be deciphered by the reader, such as Caulfield's red cap. To grasp a deeper understanding of the book, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory must be understood as well. By applying Freud's psychoanalytic theory, Holden Caulfield can be viewed in a whole different

According to PBSLearningMedia Salinger experienced landing on “Utah Beach on D-Day...battling his way across France, [and] the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi death camp his regiment liberated.” The horrors Salinger had seen did not leave him unscathed, he experienced a nervous breakdown and it affected his lifestyle. Salinger did not cease his writing during the war, and it is apparent through his writing that the war affected his writing tremendously. Caulfield also experienced a tragic event, through the death of his younger brother Allie, who died of sickness. Caulfield did not take his brother's death lightly, he broke all the windows in the garage with his hands and didn’t even have an outlet to talk about it to. Both Caulfield and Salinger has these life changing experiences, and as PBSLearningMedia said it “World War II was the ghost in the machine for Salinger.” Holden wants to keep the innocence of everyone, stated many times in the story “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move … Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you”(Salinger 121), “I’d be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be”(Salinger 173). In that first quote when Holden uses “you” he is trying to distance himself from the situation subconsciously since he knows he has lost his innocence and wants to preserve the innocence of others, just as Salinger had the ultimate loss of innocence in World War II, it reflects in Caulfield’s character. This connection between the character and the author can be seen through Freud’s psychoanalytical theory, in Donald Hall’s Literary and Cultural Theory he discusses psychoanalytical theory and its key principles and he states “Individuals move through developmental stages early in life, and traumas or