Catcher In The Rye Character Development

Throughout the story, “ Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, we see the development of the main protagonist. Given that the story takes place in the 1950’s, we see how Holden interacts with others differently compared to modern day people. With that being said, while being in New York City during Christmas, Holden experiences the appearance of those he talks to, to be inconsistent to their reality. Due to me being able to relate to his events and milestones, I can understand why Holden does what he does.
To begin, Holden is a teenage boy who lives in New York. He is currently in high school however, he had just gotten kicked out of Pency. While narrating his experience, “[He forgets] to tell [us] about... that Pencey kicked [him] out” (6).

He has been trying to prolong his return to his house. He finally goes home but he only goes to see Phoebe. When he gets there he finds Phoebe sleeping so he decides to wake her up. Throughout the story, we have only heard about Phoebe, this is the first interaction between him and her. We get too see an important conversation between the two. She asks Holden what does he like and he says “[He] likes Allie” and she responds to him by saying bluntly that “Allie’s dead”(189). This is not expected by someone like Phoebe because of her age. At her age, Holden does not expect her to be this mature. This shows the difference in what Holden sees on the outside compared to how she actually is in the inside. This also shows that maturity is not dependent on things such as age. This is a sad reality for Holden because he is seeing the fact that Phoebe is maturing on the inside even though she does not seem mature on the outside. This is significant to Holden Bildungsroman because this is the first time he has talked to someone about Allie’s death. It is even more important that is was with Phoebe. This is important because as mentioned as before, Phoebe is just a little kid who is more mature than the average child during the 1950’s. This is the moment when Holden finally lets go of the fact that Allie is alive and finally realizes he is dead. With this realization, he is now able to

I am part Black and part Hispanic. I have had many examples of my ethnicity being involved with my social interactions with people. Last year when I was going to school, I say this Hispanic women standing on the corner. I tried to avoid interaction with her. However, she came up to me speaking Spanish because of the fact that I look Hispanic. But because of how I was raised, I do not know a lot of Spanish. I was not able to help the women. It made me sad because of the fact that I should know Spanish given that I am Hispanic. Similar to Holden, I also have a younger sibling. Just like Holden, my brother helped me out once. I wanted to get a PS4 for Christmas but instead I just got money. However, I got almost enough money to buy one. I was only short by $20. Luckily, my brother offered me $20 to buy it. This moment is a moment I will always cherish because of the fact that he helped me instead of me helping him. It also showed to me that he is more selfless than selfish. When I paid him back I gave him $30 instead of $20 because I felt like he deserved it. It was amazing because he got so happy when he saw the money. When I was in 7th grade, I was getting good grades. Since I was getting good grades, I would come home and brag to my mom about them. One day my brother over heard and got interested. He said “When I grow up I want to be just like Isaiah”. Truthfully, this made me tear up a little