Growing up is Tough Some people are in a rush to grow up, but others never want to grow up. In the novel, Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger addresses the theme of growing up and childhood for the main character Holden Caulfield, a 16 year old boy that goes to Pencey preparatory school in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. Salinger asserts that Holden refuses to grow up because he cannot deal with the complex issues of the adult world such as intimacy and facing death, so he just labels it as ‘phony’ and riddled with flaws as a way to hide from it. However, throughout the novel Holden is caught being ‘phony’ himself by telling lies to people and not saying what he truly thinks. His goal in life is to be the“Catcher in the Rye”, saving children from …show more content…
Some reasons why we can infer this is because throughout the novel he leaves clues that signify he is uncomfortable with changes and that he can not handle adult situations such as facing death, like that of his brother Allie. When his brother passed away of leukemia he quoted, “I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist...”. (Salinger 22/23) As a result of Holden’s actions, his parents thought that he needed to be psychoanalyzed. This supports the idea that Holden’s has not accepted his brother’s death and refuses to, just like adulthood. …show more content…
Since he does not want any intimate relationships with anybody, he isolates himself which causes him to become lonely. His loneliness contributes to bad decisions. One example is when he flunks all of his classes except English and gets expelled. His actions indicate to us that he is intentionally trying to get kicked out because he fails everything but English. His reason in failing his classes is because he does not want to grow up successfully into the adult world.(Kestler) This long term decision to fail his classes ultimately leads him to flee Pencey and go to New York for a few days while his parents cool down after they find out he has been expelled from
In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the main character, Holden, cannot accept that he must move out of childhood and into adulthood. One of Holden’s most important major problems is his lack of maturity. Holden also has a negative perspective of life that makes things seem worse than they really are. In addition to Holden’s problems he is unable to accept the death of his brother at a young age. Holden’s immaturity, negative mentality, and inability to face reality hold him back from moving into adulthood.
Holden’s apparent desire to be separated from the majority of his family and friends appears to have been triggered by the death of his younger brother Allie. From Allie’s there has been a downward spiral in Holden’s relationships, as he begins to avoid contact with others and isolate himself more. The reason I believe this is because we can see how immense his anger is after Allie’s death, ‘I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist’. The death of Allie has become like an awakening to Holden, and has alerted him how precious childhood innocence is, when Holden comes to this realisation he convinces himself to do everything within his power to protect the innocence of himself and those around him, to protect them from what he sees as a false adult world. Although Holden clearly fails to protect himself, as he falls into all sorts of situations which hardly boasts of innocence and virt... ...
Growing up is not easy. The desire to slow down or stop the process is not unusual for adolescents. Resisting adulthood causes those who try to run away from it to eventually come to terms with the reality of life: everyone has to grow up, and fighting against it makes it much harder to accept in the end. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield often tries to resist the process of maturity in an effort to avoid the complicated life he might face as an adult, making him an unusual protagonist for a bildungsroman; this struggle, however, opens Holden’s eyes to the reality and inevitability of growing up, helping him realize that innocence does not last forever.
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 feels as if he is stuck in his 13 year old self. Although he is aging he isn’t necessarily maturing the way his classmates and other people are around him. This is due to the fact that he never received closure when Allie died. When he starts picturing his own funeral because he might get pneumonia and die, he remembers D.B. telling him about his brother's funeral. He stated, “I wasn’t there. I was still in the hospital. I had to go to the hospital and all after I hurt my hand” (Salinger 171). Since he never attended the funeral he never got to say his final goodbyes to the one person he truly loved. Holden feels as if he can’t connect with anyone else in the world like he did with Allie. If he did then he would most likely push them away, so he wouldn’t have to experience the trauma of loss again, because it greatly impacted his life the first time. The trauma Holden experienced when he was younger resulted in him not being able to form stronger relationships with people which made him more depressed and
The world today is very deceptive and phony. J.D. Salinger’s well known novels, The Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey attack this fake and superficial society which is evident through the lives, ideas, actions, and words expressed by the characters in these literary pieces. The transition from childhood, through adolescence and into adulthood is inevitable. The protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield goes through this stage and finds himself in a crisis. He alienates himself from everyone who is around him and tries his best not to grow up. Holden often dwells upon his childhood and the life he had with his family. Franny in Franny and Zooey has already passed this stage but finds it difficult to live in a world where everyone she is surrounded by is only concerned with outward appearances. In these worlds, both characters, Holden and Franny, reveal their struggle of growing up and trying to live as an adult in a world full of deception and shallow-minded people who only care about appearances.
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.
Holden Caulfield is a developing protagonist that changes his beliefs and outlook on life when he observes and converses with his sister, Phoebe. During this moment, he accepts himself as an adult as he understands he has to grow up. He also matures and realizes the flaw in his childish dream of being a catcher in the rye. This dream is, he imagines a field of rye located high on a cliff, full of children playing.
Have you ever been afraid to grow up as a child, wondering what would happen in the future? These are the thoughts that Holden Caulfield, a young protagonist in J.D. Salinger’s, “Catcher in the Rye,” focuses on. Unable to stay at Pencey Prep any longer after flunking most of his classes, he takes his special red hunting hat and suitcase, and leaves. He then wanders around New York City, trying to live his life in his childish ways, but everyone he encounters tells him he must grow up. After his little fiasco, he decides to return home and meets up with his sister, Phoebe, at the Museum of Natural History. They later end up at the carousel in Central Park, and there, he realizes that within the past three days, his experiences are signs of his dread for adulthood. J.D. Salinger presents Holden Caulfield’s fear of growing up through the events that he encountered with the red hunting hat, the museum, and the carousel.
Allie was someone he loved and cared for more than anyone, he glorified Allie to the point of worship as he recounts that “it wasn’t just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest …. God, he was a nice kid”(43-44). When he dies Holden passes his breaking point and never has recovered. Holden keeps everything inside, yet when his brother dies, a different side of Holden that is deeply real is revealed. This is exemplified when he describes when he hears of Allies death in the garage “I slept in the garage the night he dies, and I broke all the goddamn windows in the garage...I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon...but my hand was already broken...I hardly didn’t know I was doing it, and you didn’t know Allie”(44). This shows a key factor in how Holden deals with pain, he would rather deal with physical pain than emotional pain as it is
The origins of Holden’s disillusionment and the reason that it all started is the death of his younger brother which he was very fond of and admired, Allie, three years ago. The death of Allie is very significant in Holden’s mind since it is an event which he remembers quite clearly at multiple occasions during the book. For example, when Holden is writing a descriptive composition for his roommate Stradlater, he decides to write about Allie’s baseball mitt since it is the only thing on his mind. “My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder’s mitt. He was
The works of J.D. Salinger's Catcher and the Rye has resonated inside society for generations. Throughout the novel, Holden–a teenager who is spiraling towards a mental breakdown–experiences difficulties growing up. After the loss of his brother and the expulsion from his school, he starts to form his own opinions on the adult world. Throughout Holden’s experiences, his mind becomes more and more tainted as he his innocence slowly leaves him. He idolizes other people who have not yet been through what he has. Salinger uses symbolism to demonstrate how Holden despises the loss of innocence in growing up.
At first glance, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye simply tells the story of Holden Caulfield, who is often characterized as annoying and whiny by the people around him. The anti-hero frequently speaks on impulse, making quick and often inaccurate observations of others. Holden’s immature and overly critical attitude turns off those he encounters, who are displeased with how callow he is. However, what these characters fail to understand is that there is actually a sort of sophistication behind Holden’s reasoning. In fact, throughout the novel, Holden disguises his maturity through outward displays of childishness.
Firstly, Holden fears the loss of those around him, whether by death or emotional abandonment. From a young age, Holden experiences what the feeling of loss is through the death of his younger brother, Allie. Allie died from Leukemia at only eleven years old and his death continues to affect Holden and he never gets over it. Through this tragedy, Holden not only loses Allie, but he also emotionally loses the rest of his family. His older brother, D.B., moves away to become an author and doesn’t keep in contact with Holden much, his father is always at work
Holden and the Complexity of Adult Life What was wrong with Holden, the main character in The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D.Salinger, was his moral revulsion against anything that was ugly, evil, cruel, or what he called "phoney" and his acute responsiveness to beauty and innocence, especially the innocence of the very young, in whom he saw reflected his own lost childhood. There is something wrong or lacking in the novels of despair and frustration of many writers. The sour note of bitterness and the recurring theme of sadism have become almost a convention, never thoroughly explained by the author's dependence on a psychoanalytical interpretation of a major character. The boys who are spoiled or turned into budding homosexuals by their mothers and a loveless home life are as familiar to us today as stalwart and dependable young heroes such as John Wayne were to an earlier generation. We have accepted this interpretation of the restlessness and bewilderment of our young men and boys because no one has anything better to offer.