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Character development introduction
The use of symbolism in the novel
Character development introduction
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Holden Caulfield, the teenage protagonist of Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger, struggles with having to enter the adult world. Holden leaves school early and stays in New York by himself until he is ready to return home. Holden wants to be individual, yet he also wants to fit in and not grow up. The author uses symbolism to represent Holden’s internal struggle. While in New York with the fencing team, Holden loses all of their equipment, then buys a red hunting hat. Holden describes the hat as a, “red hunting hat, with one of those very, very, very long peaks… The way I wore it, I swung the old peak way around back - very corny, I’ll admit, but I liked it that way.”(Salinger, 24) The hat makes him stand out and seem like a unique person. …show more content…
I don’t know why, I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice ‘Sleep tight, ya morons!’”(68) Putting the hat on comforts him and gives him the confidence to yell and wake everyone up. In private he uses the hat to make himself seem more individual and to give himself confidence. He puts the hunting hat on again once he leaves Pencey, “I didn’t give a damn how I looked. Nobody was around anyway.”(69), but once he gets on the train, “All I did was take off my hunting hat and put it in my pocket.” (70). Holden likes how the hat makes him feel individual but he is still embarrassed to wear it in public. He still wants to fit in with all the phonies and …show more content…
He often wonders about the ducks in central park and where they go in the winter. Holden asks a cab driver, “does somebody come around in a truck or something and take them away, or do they fly away by themselves - go south or something?” (107). Just like the ducks must somehow escape winter, Holden must escape the pressure he feels as he struggles with his independence. Should he fly south and escape his life, or get provided for by his parents? Holden wants to be independent but he wonders if it is really the best thing to do. He is too emotionally unstable to address his own issues so he projects them onto the ducks, do they take care of themselves and fly away? Or do they allow themselves to be saved by the truck? The cab driver answers his question by bringing up the fish in the lagoon. He says that the fish do not go anywhere and that they just open their pores so nature can provide for them. Holden wants to be told that someone helps the ducks and the fish through the winter. Holden wants help during his teenage years, but his mother is still grieving over the death of his brother so she is, “nervous as hell” (206). Holden needs to open up to his parents the same way the fish open their pores for nature to provide for
First and foremost, Holden gifted Phoebe with his red hunting hat as a demonstration of his need to protect her “Then I took my hunting hat out of my coat pocket and gave it to her. She likes those kind of crazy hats. She didn’t want to take it, but I made her” (180). In this quote Holden and Phoebe are dancing around, and Phoebe feels like Holden is acting crazy yet she refrains from judging him. Instead Phoebe wants to support him. To Holden, Phoebe is in no way phony, and in handing over his hunting hat he is trying to protect her, and in doing so he is giving up the protection from himself. Holden’s mission to defend Phoebe is rooted in wanting to protect her innocence’s, and keeping her from becoming phony like the rest of society. Moreover, Phoebe also looks to Holden to protect her not just the other way around “Then what she did- it damn near killed me- she reached in my coat pocket and took out my red hunting hat and put it on my head” (212). In Phoebe, giving Holden back his protective hat, she is forcing Holden to watch over her. In order for Holden to protect his sister’s innocence, he will be forced to give up his alienation and be realistic. Holden’s loss of innocence is his driving power to shield Phoebe from the realities of life. The exchange of the red hunting hat from Holden to Phoebe to Phoebe to Holden is the
Holden’s hat allows him to show and hide his emotions. Holden uses his hunting hat to speak freely and emotionally about his brother in an essay for Stradlater. After Holden gets back from being out with Brossard and Ackley he sits down to write a composition about Allie. Before he does this, he “put on [his] pajamas and bathrobe and [his] old hunting hat,” (37). Holden puts on his hunting hat so that he can write about his brother who died three years before this story takes place. Holden would not normally wear his hat to bed, so we can assume that he doesn’t wear it as a part of his pajamas. Putting it on before he writes an essay about his brother suggests that he put it on for that reason. At another time Holden uses h...
How Holden wears his red hunting hat symbolizes his true self by how he wears it. The first time Holden wears the hat, he is alone. “The way I wore it, I swung the old peak way around to the back-very corny, I’ll admit, but I liked it that way. I looked good in it that way.” (18). When he is alone, he thinks of himself as attractive and appears to have more confidence than he does around other people. Holden describes wearing the hat “the way [he] like[s] it” many times to make himself appear the way he likes to look. This self confidence is replaced by anxiety and self consciousness, as shown in the quote, “I’d put on my red hunting cap when I was in the cab, just for the hell of it, but I took it off before I checked in. I didn’t want to look like a screwball or something” (61).
In the beginning of the novel, Holden believes that the world is out to get him, so he alienates himself for protection. A way to do so, he brings forth his hunting hat, “‘This is a people shooting hat,’ I said. ‘I shoot people in this hat.’” (Salinger, 22) Holden’s hunting hat is the strongest symbol in the novel. It gives Holden protection from people who could be potentially harmful to him. Whenever he is afraid or anxious he regresses and puts on his hunting hat for comfort. This anxiety is triggered by memories from his past. The world has stepped on him and beat him down, so now he uses his hunting hat to symbolize his independence and alienation from the world. He consciously knows that the hat will not physically protect him, but, “the nihilist does not believe in the necessity of being logical.” (“On the Pathos of Truth”) So, since he doesn’t need to be logical, he uses the hunting hat regardless if it is actually going to work or not. Holden feels disconnected to the world in the beginning of the novel. Holden states that he feels trapped on “the other side of life.” (Salinger, 8) When Holden says this, he is in a distressed point in his life because he has recently just been expelled from his fourth school. The expulsion could be a reason why he feels so disconnected, but since this didn’t happen during his last expulsions, he
One crucial conversation is with the taxi driver regarding the ducks in Central Park. The conversation seems trivial, of no real significance. However, for Holden it has great importance. His concern about where do the ducks go in the winter seems to deal with the question that young people have about what their direction is in life. The cab driver, Horwitz, responds to an irritating question from Holden: “If you was a fish, Mother Nature’d take care of you, wouldn’t she? Right? You don’t think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya? (Salinger 83) The answer is clear to Holden. Everything will survive the winter, no matter if it’s a duck or a fish. However, this does not give Holden a guarantee of protection from what he fears most-becoming a phony or more importantly, having no choice to become phony in order to
Holden is also aware of the image the hat projects to others, and he often takes it off when he is around someone familiar. This functioned as a metaphor for Holden’s struggle between his need for independence and his need for companionship. Holden doesn’t want people he knows to see him with the hat on because he wants them to continue to be friends with him, and he fears loneliness. However, when nobody is around, Holden has no problem wearing the hat and embracing its quirkiness, because he feels a strong connection to the hat. As he walks down the street in the middle of the night, Holden states that “It was freezing cold, and I took my red hunting hat out of my pocket and put it on—I didn’t give a damn how I looked.
Holden Caulfield, portrayed in the J.D. Salinger novel Catcher in the Rye as an adolescent struggling to find his own identity, possesses many characteristics that easily link him to the typical teenager living today. The fact that the book was written many years ago clearly exemplifies the timeless nature of this work. Holden's actions are those that any teenager can clearly relate with. The desire for independence, the sexually related encounters, and the questioning of ones religion are issues that almost all teens have had or will have to deal with in their adolescent years. The novel and its main character's experiences can easily be related to and will forever link Holden with every member of society, because everyone in the world was or will be a teen sometime in their life.
...orld. Holden distanced himself by wearing this hat. Holden doesn’t want to be a part of the society and created this symbol to isolate from it.
Holden Caulfield, in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, struggles against entering the adult world of responsibilities and leaving the innocent world of childhood by living as a teenager in between these two worlds. In the novel, Holden tells the reader about several events in his life: How he flunks school, wanders around New York City for a few days, and has a mental breakdown after returning home. Holden attempts to cope with the anxiety that compounds with confusion by communicating his feelings through the Red Hunting Hat he buys. Holden's treasured Red Hunting Hat illustrates the importance of individual personality in a teenager and at the same time symbolizes the attachment to adolescence and protection from adulthood whether he or someone else is wearing it.
Holden Caulfield is a teenager filled with many irregular thoughts and ideas for his age. He is dissimilar in the way that his actions and reactions to different situations happen to be so controversial that it is difficult to relate to him. However, he just happens to be the protagonist of our novel. The Catcher In The Rye, by J.D. Salinger, revolves around the mysterious world Holden sees. He is introduced in a mental ward, and he begins to tell his story. After Holden was done with his story, it becomes clear that he was looking for something. His actions towards his acquaintances justified that his desired “something” was one of the strongest human drives everyone has: love and acceptance in this world. On the other hand, a fence was blocking him from reaching his goal. His separation from
Holden Caulfield, the main character in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, distances himself from the society that surrounds him. Over the span of the three days in which the novel unfolds, he is reluctant to interact and communicate with his peers, teachers, and family. Arguably, the challenge of reading the novel is accepting Holden’s impulsive voice, which challenges the blasé, pretentious adults who urge him to live according to societal standards (Evans). Most characters in Salinger's book seem to lead unpleasant and aimless lives centered around self-pity and hypocrisy - lives considered by Holden as substantially “phony”. His childlike perception of the world reveals greater wisdom than the one-dimensional outlook of individuals
Indeed, just the naming of his red hunting cap as a “people-shooting hat” is suspicious enough; but Holden merely wants to stand out in a crowd and be different from all the phonies around him, and the unique hat is enough to do so, despite it making him look foolish. He is going “people-shooting” in the sense that he is putting down partisans of the supposedly fabricated adult world, the same people who put Holden down for his visible immaturity. The cap gives Holden the confidence he needs to feel like his own independent person – an adult – without actually being one. This is yet another one of Holden’s desperate attempts to cling onto whatever shred of youth and innocence he has left and avoid growing
Holden’s inability to transition into adult life and his desire to cling to and preserve the innocence of childhood makes The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger an influential coming of age novel for adolescents on the verge of adulthood. Holden seems to see the adult world as a place filled with phonies and he wants to save his innocence as a child, and as a result he is forced into an isolation because of his inability to transition into adult life. The novel is told through the main character named Holden Caulfield, he talks through the story by explaining the experiences he had getting kicked out of various school, telling family members he is running away, and traveling through New York City.
Holden’s red Hunting hat was very crucial to him as he bought it in New York on the Saturday morning that he visited. The hat is the center of attention for Holden as many people such as Ackley ask about the hat. Holden only puts the hat on at crucial moments in his life such as writing the composition for Stradlater, leaving Pencey Prep, and acting confident in front of the mirror. “It was this red hunting hat, with one of those very, very long peaks. I saw it in the window of the sports store when I got it out of the subway...it only cost me a buck” (17). In the novel, Holden also wears the hat when he leaves Pencey Prep as he says “Sleep tight, ya morons”. In the novel, it can be noted that Holden doesn’t like to wear the hat outside as
Holden Caulfield uses as the red hunting hat as a security blanket in a number of different ways. Holden Caufield will only wear his red hunting hat when he is alone. It makes him feel safe and he knows that he is by himself. After having visiting his teacher, Mr. Spencer, Holden says, “I swung the old peak way around to the back - very corny, I'll admit, but I like it that way. I looked good in it that way” (Salinger, 18). This quote shows how Holden does not care what his appearance is when he is wearing the cap. He admits that he wore it in a “corny” way, but he doesn’t care what he looks like with it on. This also shows how Holden is an individual and doesn’t like to wear it the way it is supposed to be displayed. When Stradlater notices the red hunting hat Holden becomes flustered. The author writes, “He meant my hunting hat. He'd never seen it before. I was out of my breathe anyway, I quit horsing around. I took off my hat and looked at it for about the ninetieth time.” (29). This is an important quote because it shows how Holden is insecure about his cap. When Stradlater acknowledges Holden about his hat he becomes flustered. As said in the quote he took the hat off after Stradlater informed Holden about h...