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Essay on the characters of the catcher in the rye
The catcher in the rye holden character analysis
Female sexuality in literature
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In chapter four of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is sitting in the bathroom with Stradlater as he shaves, when he finds out that Stradlater is going out on a date with Jane Gallagher. From the conversation between the two, it is obvious that he is not happy that Stradlater is going out with her. We can tell that Holden has a strong connection with Jane or at least knows her well enough to worry about her. He tells Stradlater that her parents are divorced and that her mother has remarried. Holden also mentions that she had a rough childhood: “…And run around the goddam house, naked. With Jane around, and all. …She had a lousy childhood. I'm not kidding” (Salinger 32). This sentence suggests that Jane may have been sexually …show more content…
It was a funny thing to do. I mean she was quite young and all, and most girls if you see them putting their hand on the back of somebody's neck, they're around twenty-five or thirty and usually they're doing it to their husband or their little kid—I do it to my kid sister Phoebe once in a while, for instance. But if a girl's quite young and all and she does it, it's so pretty it just about kills you. (79-80) Earlier, Holden went out of his way to avoid kissing Jane’s lips. Now at the movies, Jane is also going out of her way to avoid being sexual with Holden by touching him the way a woman would touch her husband or child. Holden and Jane both continuously stray from being sexual with one another. We know that Jane may have been abused by her stepfather, which could be the reason causing her to avoid sexual relations, but is Holden’s reason the same? For a sex maniac, Holden seems to reject every offer he gets. Once Holden gets to his hotel room, he states that he is horny and he decides to call Faith Cavendish. While they are talking on the phone, she offers to meet up with him: "Where ya stopping at? Perhaps we could get together for cocktails
I guess you can say he is trying to transition from adult hood but he can’t. He believes childhood is a beautiful and innocent thing where as adulthood is evil and corrupted. In the text Holden says “That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose” Pg. 204 Another reason why Holden is stuck between adult hood and childhood is because he doesn’t understand the concept of sex. He doesn’t get how two adults can have sex without loving each other. Holden tells Luce "You know what the trouble with me is? I can never get really sexy—I mean really sexy with a girl I don’t like a lot. I mean I have to like her a lot. If I don’t, I sort of lose my goddam desire for her and all.”Pg148 Luce then later says “When are you going to grow up?"Pg. 144. This is another example how Holden can’t really grow up. Mr. Antolini brings up an examples that goes “this fall I think you’re riding for – it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling."Pg. 187. This quote is illustrating that Holden doesn’t know where to go, he’s lost and confused from the transition from childhood to
It is made evident that Holden is enamored with Jane Gallagher, and this first manifests itself when Holden talks about her to Stradlater. “I used to play checkers with her,” Holden recounts. “ ‘She’d get [her kings] all lined up in the back row. Then she’d never use them. She just liked the way they looked when they were all in the back row.’ Stradlater didn’t say anything. That kind of stuff doesn’t interest most people” (41). In a world where almost everything is so “goddam depressing,” thinking about Jane’s minor traits actually makes Holden happy, even if it is the kind of stuff that does not interest most people. It allows him to channel his childhood, where he was oblivious to the phoniness around him. However, this silly nostalgia cannot get across to Stradlater, who is more interested in Jane as a sexual being than trivialities such as her checker tactics or struggles with ballet. This physical interest eventually becomes the root of their brawl in their dorm. Although Holden’s interrogative mood agitates Stradlater, Holden is only showing his genuine care for Jane. Unlike Stradlaer, Holden has enough sense to know that Jane, being the humble, intelligent girl she is, deserves to be treated right. So, even though Holden lets his anger get the better of him and eventually start a fight, he has reason to do
Holden struggles to make connections with other people, and usually resorts to calling them phonies whenever they upset him. He finds natural human flaws in people and runs away from connection immediately. His date with Sally shows this. Near the end of the date, Holden tells Sally about his plans to run away from life. When Sally gives him practical advice, Holden is quick to escape connection by calling her “a pain”. Sally’s advice would definitely guide Holden in a more realistic direction, but that is not what he wants to hear. Conflict always arises in his mind even if there is little in reality. His struggles with finding connection also make him too apprehensive to call his old friend Jane. Holden likes to think of Jane as a pure and perfect girl that he can
..., and lives his life in regret even though there was nothing he ultimately could have done to save him. Jane, was the first girl Holden really liked. When Holden has to deal with either sex or women, Jane is always in his thoughts and she impacts his decisions on what to do and it is always to say no because of how much he likes and cares about Jane. Both don't appear in the novel which gives them a figurehead-like role that also makes them seem more empowered. Many people in society can relate to Holden because of these two people. Many people’s losses or wants affect the way they make decisions like Allie and Jane do for Holden. Holden is a relatable character for a lot of readers already, and this makes him even more relatable. Jane and Allie greatly impact Holden and his decisions in the novel, like people in society’s wants and losses impact their own decisions.
Holden never seems interested in anything that he does. When he goes back to New York, he goes to all kinds of shows and movies and ends up uninterested half way through. When Holden goes to see a movie at Radio City Music Hall he tells a little bit about the movie and then says, “I’d tell you the rest of the story, but I might puke if I did. There isn’t anything to spoil, for Chrissake” (Salinger, 139). This shows that Holden becomes easily uninterested in normal things, which is a common cause of depression. The whole time Holden is in New York, he goes out to things but ends up uninterested extremely fast. The first night he is in New York, an elevator operator gets Holden a prostitute and he is excited and felt sexy. Once the girl arrives and takes off her dress, his mood completely changes and he wants her to leave. He says “The trouble was, I just didn’t want to do it. I felt more depressed than sexy, if you want to know the truth” (Salinger, 96). Just like being uninterested in normal activities is a symptom of depression, so is being uninterested in sex. Holden gets excited and nervous when he talks about sex, but w...
Before this book was written in it's time frame, Holden deals with some struggles that change and impact his life quite a bit. The author portrays Holden's personality through his actions for the audience to understand him. Some of the actions are going back to visit the museum, calling and visiting Phoebe at home, visiting the park, keeping Allie's baseball mitt, wearing the red hunting hat, and asking about the ducks. These examples all play a part in showing that Holden is afraid of change. Holden is starting to grow up and make the transition into an adult, but the audience can tell Holden is struggling. Holden's decisions such as smoking, drinking constantly, buying a prostitute, and staying out late at night show his attempts to face adult life. However, when faced
Jane Gallagher has a lot of influence on Holden. For example he states, “…You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.” In this scene, Holden shows how Holden feels when he gets around Jane. Holden says that he feels good and happy when around Jane. Another scene where Jane demonstrates her influence over Holden, is when he states, “…Then I’d crawl back to my room and call up Jane and have her come over and bandage up my guts. I pictured her holding a cigarette for me to smoke while I was…” Here, Holden imagines Jane coming over to help him, which reveals that Holden feels secure and protected by her. It also shows how Holden feels about Jane, the girl of his dreams, who he feels in love with. Jane clearly has much influence over Holden.
Holden’s sexual struggles are visible through his interactions with Sunny, Sally Hayes, and Carl Luce. Holden’s fascination with sex interferes with his elevated morals; as much as he wants to engage in intercourse, he voices his need to establish an emotional connection with his partner first, which prevents him from having casual sex. As much as physical intimacy is important to him, Holden needs to be taken care of and understood emotionally, as well, displaying that he holds sex in high regards and does not view it as something to be done carelessly. Holden just needs to be loved; but, unfortunately, his romantic life is sub-par at best, and until that changes, he’ll always feel confused – and very, very lonely.
...y voice was shaking something awful.” Holden’s helplessness to realize that sex can be casual is showing that he is immature and that he doesn’t want to let go of his childhood innocence. Jane’s character, a girl who Holden knows very well and has affection for, has casual sex which makes Holden very upset, this helps the reader better understand Holden’s immatureness and his refusal to let go of his childhood innocence.
Holden has a respect for women that he views as unnatural. He feels that his sexual desires should be similar to those of his roommate Stradlater and peer, Luce. Holden shows his confusion by saying, "The thing is, most of the time when you're coming close to doing it with a girl, a girl that isn't ...
Also, Holden had resisted one of the factors leading towards the loss of his innocence; losing his virginity. He "had quite a few opportunities to lose [his] virginity...[he] came quite close to doing it a couple of times...she keeps telling [him] to stop, and [he] stops." This not only shows that he doesn't want to lose his purity, but that he cares for the girl's innocence too, and does not want her to lose it.
Holden's nervous impulse to protect women seems to have sprung up in his psyche from a very young age. After his brother, Allie, started to experience more severe symptoms of leukemia, Holden notes that his mother seemed "nervous as hell." His own mother's emotional problems (Lombardi) transfer to Holden on a very deep, psychological level because he feels partially responsible for his brother's fate in the first place. Seeing his mother in such a distraught state makes him feel even guiltier. The unintended consequence of this is that Holden grows up with a constant fear that he is going to hurt any woman that he grows close to. This manifests itself many times during his time in New York, with one of the earliest examples being his meeting with Sunny in the hotel room. Holden protects her innocence, but not for any particularly noble reason. He hangs her dress back up and insists that he just wants to talk, but Holden did not do this in an attempt to be some paragon of righteousness. Holden, on a deep, psychological lev...
Holden is becoming a man and the thought of sex should not scare him. He should be able to uphold conversations with them, even if the topic is racy. You both are grownups and it is human nature, it is natural and it is nothing to feel embarrassed or ashamed to talk about. While he is at the train station talking to the nuns about the play Romeo and Juliet he gets real uncomfortable. He said ?It feels weird talking to nuns about a book that gets pretty sexy at points.? Holden is now a young adult and should be able to talk about a book that contains that. The sexy parts we not even a part of the conversation just the thought of the book made him uneasy. He really likes to avoid discussions that contain sex.
He complains about his school, saying that it is just like any other school and uses language that makes him sound very obnoxious. Holden seems to focus on girls quite a bit, just like any other teenage boy. He seems to focus on one girl in particular, a girl named Jane. We soon learn that Holden’s personality is not your average personality. Holden does seem to have some friends but he does not fall into many peer groups with the type of personality he has. Holden isn’t able to read social cues like most teenagers learn to do. For this reason, he seems to play around a lot in the wrong situations. Even his friends have matured enough to recognise that Holden needs to ‘grow up’. Holden’s resistance to emerging adulthood is the cause of many of the problems he is faced with during the
Some people feel all alone in this world, with no direction to follow but their empty loneliness. The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D Salinger, follows a sixteen-year-old boy, Holden Caulfield, who despises society and calls everyone a “phony.” Holden can be seen as a delinquent who smokes tobacco, drinks alcohol, and gets expelled from a prestigious boarding school. This coming-of-age book follows the themes of isolation, innocence, and corrupted maturity which is influenced from the author's life and modernism, and is shown through the setting, symbolism, and diction.