Catcher In The Rye Adulthood

371 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Catcher in the rye a classic

In the book, Catcher in the Rye, J.D Salinger depicts the theme of difficulty when facing adulthood and moving on from childhood through Holden's thoughts about the pond’s frozen state. After meeting up with an old friend, Holden leaves a bar drunk to go find the pond that holds the ducks in Central Park. He wondered about this pond before, but this is the first time Salinger portrays him actually seeing it. Salinger writes, “Then, finally, I found it. What it was, it was partly frozen and partly not frozen. But I didn’t see any ducks around”(171). Holden has asked questions about the pond and how the ducks in it futures relate to his own. After searching for a long time, Holden wants answers to guide his future. Holden describes the pond to

Show More
Related

  • Flight In Catcher In The Rye

    218 Words  | 1 Pages

    In chapter 2 of The Catcher in the Rye Holden ponders while conversing with his teacher “where the ducks go when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over.” Holden views himself as one of the ducks that are forced to adapt

    Read More

  • Examples Of Dialectical Journal For The Catcher In The Rye

    904 Words  | 2 Pages

    Holden twice inquired about the “disappearing” ducks in Central Park. When the pond is frozen in the winter, where would the ducks go? This symbolizes that Holden is curious about his own mortality which was affected him by his brother’s death. So he came here to look for answers, but he didn’t find any duck. “I nearly fell in, but I couldn’t find any…Boy, I was still shivering like a bastard… I thought I probably get pneumonia and die.” (154)

    Read More

  • The Catcher in the Rye: Stuck In Adolescence

    692 Words  | 2 Pages

    The novel The Catcher in the Rye follows Holden Caulfield for a weekend. The story begins in Agerstown, PA at Pencey Prep school with Holden standing on top of the Thomson Hill on his way to Mr. Spencer’s, his history teacher, to say good bye because Holden was expelled for not following rules. On his way to Spencer’s, Holden “felt like [he] was sort of disappearing”. (Salinger 5) The sense of symbolism with the word “disappearing” is that he feels alone and almost invisible. When Mr. Spencer starts to read Holden’s failed paper, Holden starts to daydream about “wondering where ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over” (13) in Central Park in New York. The symbolic significance in this comment is that Holden is frozen in adolescence.

    Read More

  • Free Catcher in the Rye Essays: Symbols and Symbolism

    826 Words  | 2 Pages

    At several points during the course of the novel, Holden asks as to what happens to the ducks who are normally on a pond in Central Park, when winter comes and the water freezes. On page 60, Holden asks, "You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over?

    Read More

  • Catcher in the Rye

    329 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is an enthralling and captivating novel about a boy and his struggle with life. The teenage boy ,Holden, is in turmoil with school, loneliness, and finding his place in the world. The author J.D. Salinger examines the many sides of behavior and moral dilemma of many characters throughout the novel. The author develops three distinct character types for Holden the confused and struggling teenage boy, Ackley, a peculiar boy without many friends, and Phoebe, a funny and kindhearted young girl.

    Read More

  • Catcher in the Rye Essay: Holden and the Complexity of Adult Life

    1175 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Catcher In The Rye

    429 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, describes a period of time in a young

    Read More

  • Catcher In The Rye

    1225 Words  | 3 Pages

    In JD Salingers' Catcher in the Rye, a troubled teenager named Holden Caufield struggles with the fact that everyone has to grow up. The book gets its title from Holden's constant concern with the loss of innocence. He did not want children to grow up because he felt that adults are corrupt. This is seen when Holden tries to erase naughty words from the walls of an elementary school where his younger sister Phoebe attended. "While I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy.

    Read More

  • The Influence Of Adulthood In The Catcher On The Rye

    765 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the modern world, everyone must make the transition, no matter how scary or daunting it may be, into adulthood at some point in their lives. Most individuals are gradually exposed to more mature concepts, and over time, they begin to accept that they can no longer posses the blissful ignorance that they once had as a child. Others, however, are violently thrown from their otherwise pure and uncorrupted adolescent lives through a traumatic event that hurls them into adulthood before they are ready. The novel The Catcher on the Rye written by J.D. Salinger, explores the struggle children face to adapt to adult society through the main character Holden Caulfield, a teen that lost his innocence, and is still attempting to cope with the fact that everyone grows up.

    Read More

  • Growing Up in The Catcher in the Rye

    764 Words  | 2 Pages

    Growing up poses challenges to most people at some point in their lives. 16-year-old Holden Caufield is no exception. He is an apathetic teenager who’s flunked out of many schools. Underneath the cynical exterior though, Holden is troubled. He has different methods for escaping his problems but in the end they just cause him more problems. J.D Salinger, in his novel The Catcher in the Rye shows that often times when an individual faces problems in their life they will try to find a means to escape, instead of solving them.

    Read More

  • The Catcher In The Rye

    701 Words  | 2 Pages

    In a novel, the theme is the insight of real life. J.D. Salinger’s initiation novel, The Catcher In The Rye, describes the adventures of 16-year old Holden Caulfield, the protagonist and first person narrator, who refuses to grow up and enter manhood. The most important theme developed by Salinger is Holden’s problem of dealing with change; he has trouble dealing with death, he refuses to accept children’s loss of innocence as a necessary step in the growing-up process, and has difficulties with growing up.

    Read More

  • The Catcher In The Rye

    4208 Words  | 9 Pages

    “I swear to God I’m crazy. I admit it.” It is very easy to automatically assume that Holden Caulfield is crazy. It’s even a logical assumption since Caulfield himself admits to being crazy twice throughout the course of the book. However, calling Holden Caulfield crazy is almost the same as calling the majority of the human race crazy also. Holden Caulfield is just an adolescent trying to prevent himself from turning into what he despises the most, a phony. Most of Caulfield’s actions and thoughts are the same as of many people, the difference being that Holden acts upon those thoughts and has them down in writing.

    Read More

  • Catcher In The Rye

    1349 Words  | 3 Pages

    The book, Catcher in the Rye, has been steeped in controversy since it was banned in America after its first publication. John Lennon’s assassin Mark Chapman, asked the former Beatle to sign a copy of the book earlier in the morning of the day he murdered Lennon. Police found the book in his possession upon apprehending the psychologically disturbed Chapman. However, the book itself contains nothing that might have lead Chapman to act as he did. It could have been just any book that he was reading the day he decided to kill John Lennon and as a result, it was the Catcher in the Rye, a book describing a nervous breakdown, that caused the media to speculate widely about the possible connection. This gave the book even more recognition. The character Holden Caulfield ponders the thoughts of death, accuses ordinary people of being phonies, and expresses his love for his sister through out the novel. So what is the book Catcher in the Rye really about?

    Read More

  • Catcher in the Rye

    1243 Words  | 3 Pages

    He even condemns people he doesn’t know as phonies, such as the man that his

    Read More

  • The Desire to Perpetuate the Purity of Children

    1189 Words  | 3 Pages

    Preventing and protecting children from enduring adulthood demonstrates this innocence through the pond and Holden’s desire for being a “catcher in the rye”. When Holden questions Horwitz about the ducks, Horwitz replies, “…the fish… live right in the goddam ice. They get frozen right in one position… Their bodies take in nutrition and all, right through the goddam seaweed and crap that’s in the ice. They got their pores open the whole time” (75). The freezing pond resembles moral progeny. Their mortality is perpetuated, because they are frozen into place. The fish represent Holden for his preservation on naiveté, because he is stuck in the pond of purity for loathing fraudulent people. Being fastened in a pond of pureness relates to being saved from adulthood by maintaining the mortality of children. While Phoebe and Holden have a conversation about what Holden likes, he remarks, “… I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean...

    Read More

More about Catcher In The Rye Adulthood

Open Document