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The catcher in the rye by j.d salinger short analysis about the story
The catcher in the rye by j.d salinger short analysis about the story
The catcher in the rye by j.d salinger short analysis about the story
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Living in a phoney world Today's society can be quite hypocritical most days. We want thinkers and creative people yet we constantly are yelling at people for not fitting in the box of society. Holden Caulfield is able to show people how modern society praises people for being creative but kill many of the things that make people creative. He shows us this through the book called The Catcher and the Rye, written by J.D. Salinger. The start of the Catcher and the Rye has Holden at his school, Pencey Prep. Holden is currently flunking out of another school as his looks down on a football game with Saxon Hall. Looking around in the cold he tells us all about his opinions, and he tells us he great distaste for school. Beyond having no interest in …show more content…
Holden does not agree with this, while he might agree to your face he internal is thinking how wrong that is. A good example of this is when he is talking with his teacher, Mr Spencer. He agrees with him aloud but is completely disagreeing in his head. “Game my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot shots are, then it's a game...But if you are on the other side, where there aren’t any hot shots, then what's the game about it? Nothing.” (8). This actually quite funny because Holden is born on the winning side, yet he's falling to the other side. He gets to spend his summer in summer homes and country clubs, something that's not cheap. He also gets to go to some of the best schools at the time, yet he proceeds to continuously fail at these schools. When Holden was introducing Pence prep to us he talks about how Pencey is no better than any other school that he's been to. We are lead to believe that he's been to a few school that are supposed to be good schools. Not only that, but since Allie death he has quite fallen out of this winning side due despairing for his lost brother. He’s almost is trying to move over to the losing side in
Again, this is one of the few people that Holden likes and doesn’t consider a phony like everyone else. He talks highly of her and he sees himself in her in the way that she alternates between behaving like an adult and behaving like a child, the way he says he also does. It bothered him greatly when she asks him if he “got the ax again,” referring to his expulsion. She starts asking him questions about his future and what he likes (if he likes anything at all) and it forces him to wake up. Everyone has been telling Holden to realize his situation and put more effort into schoolwork and relationships and to start caring. Holden’s reality is very simple: he wants to be the catcher in the rye to protect children’s innocence and stop them from growing up because all adults are phonies. Again and again, being told that that isn’t plausible annoys him. He feels betrayed, when his own sister, someone who he thought would understand him, joins everyone else in telling him to put forth more
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.
Early on in the story Holden shows the readers that he is able to analyze people and make an educated judgement of them. Holden blames his departure from Elkton Hills on the people he was surrounded by. He says,“One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies” (Salinger 17). This quote connects to the story because it seems Holden has trouble staying in one particular place if just a few things are not perfect. By understanding others, Holden is quick to decide that where he was at that particular time is not the place for him. This thinking does force him to go to another school, but at the same time, he decided that Elkton Hills is not the place for him. Being able to make a decision and stick to it without having second thoughts is something all high school students should be able to do. In the novel, Holden has come across people he knows like to manipulate others. With this mindset he does not completely avoid them, rather, he learns to deal with them. In chapter 19, there is an interaction where Holden knows his audience and adjusts his actions accordingly. Holden describes his friend, Luce, as an intellectual guy that voices his opinion. He says, “That’s the trouble with these intellectual guys. They never want to discuss anything serious unless they feel like it” (160). With this, it shows Holden knows his friend and knows how to talk without
Published in 1951, J. D. Salinger's debut novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was one of the most controversial novels of its time. The book received many criticisms, good and bad. While Smith felt the book should be "read more than once" (13), Goodman said the "book is disappointing" (21). All eight of the critics had both good and bad impressions of the work. Overall, the book did not reflect Salinger's ability due to the excessive vulgarity used and the monotony that Holden imposed upon the reader.
Next, he mentions his mistake of leaving fencing equipment on the subway that prevented the fencing team from competing in an away match at McBurney School and forced them to return to school early. This prompted the whole team to “ostracize” him the whole way back, but his response was “it was pretty funny, in a way” (Salinger, 6). The act of carelessness Holden possesses, shows the lack of dedication in the jobs he is provided with. In addition, he states that he “forgot to tell” that he was kicked out of Pencey Prep due to flunking four out of five subjects (Salinger, 6). Another act of ignorance is shown, and he fails to see the importance of his academics and athletic duties. This is similar to the author, J.D. Salinger, who attended McBurney School, but did not excel in school, and the main character, Huckleberry Finn from the novel, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because Huckleberry does not like
good and got all the girls but in fact he was a slob. His razor that made him
Holden dropped out of high school, and occasionally got into fights. According to a quotation on page 5 of The Catcher in the Rye, it states, “Well. . . they 'll be pretty irritated about it," I said. "They really will. This is about the fourth school I 've gone to.
Protected by a cocoon of naiveté, Holden Caulfield, the principal character in the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, therapeutically relates his lonely 24 hour stay in downtown New York city, experiencing the "phony" adult world while dealing with the death of his innocent younger brother. Through this well-developed teenage character, JD Salinger, uses simple language and dialogue to outline many of the complex underlying problems haunting adolescents. With a unique beginning and ending, and an original look at our new society, The Catcher in the Rye is understood and appreciated on multiple levels of comprehension. The book provides new insights and a fresh view of the world in which adolescents live.
Holden Caulfield is a very intelligent teenager, but doesn’t apply himself to school. Holden dropped out of four schools, one of them being Pencey Preparatory School. Holden did not fail out because he wasn’t smart enough. Holden is smart. He constantly reads books, but could not pass anything other than English. In fact, one of his favorite teachers at Whooton, Mr. Antolini, told Holden, “You’re a student- whether the idea appeals to you or not. You’re in love with knowledge…” (pg. 189) He fail...
In J.D. Salinger’s controversial 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, the main character is Holden Caulfield. When the story begins Holden at age sixteen, due to his poor grades is kicked out of Pencey Prep, a boys’ school in Pennsylvania. This being the third school he has been expelled from, he is in no hurry to face his parents. Holden travels to New York for several days to cope with his disappointments. As James Lundquist explains, “Holden is so full of despair and loneliness that he is literally nauseated most of the time.” In this novel, Holden, a lonely and confused teenager, attempts to find love and direction in his life. Holden’s story is realistic because many adolescent’s face similar challenges.
From the protagonists’ point of view, the adult world Holden and Franny are entering and living in is a very superficial place. Holden who is sixteen years of age is going through a time of crisis where he is almost forced to become an adult. This concept is the very thing that makes Holden afraid, causing him to misbehave at school. His latest school, Pencey Prep, expels Holden due to his failing grades. When asked for the reason of his lack of academic enthusiasm, Holden simply states that he is not interested in anything. In every school he has attended, Holden has managed to find different reasons not to care and possibly even hate the institutions.
In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield’s story represents a coming of age for all young adults. In the beginning of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is an immature teenager. Holden gets kicked out of his school, Pencey Prep, for failing four out of five of his classes. He says, “They kicked me out.
In the beginning of the story Holden is watching the Friday night football game from a hill. He had just gotten back from a fencing match that had to be cut short in New York because the captain of the fencing team, which happened to be Holden, left all of the equipment on the subway. Needless to say it was a long trip home for Holden. After all of this has happened Holden gets back only to learn that he has been released from Pency and placed on academic probation. Holden was not stupid by any means but if he did not desire to learn what was being taught he refused to try. The professors on the other hand did not agree with Holden’s reasoning. Therefore, he was failing all but one of his classes. Holden had a friend that was a teacher at Pency. He was probably the only person that halfway understood him. The only problem was that Mr. Spencer was old and senile and did not have much pull with in the school board, which meant he did not serve as much help in Holden’s current situation. Mr. Spencer was always trying to prepare Holden for life. Holden rarely listened but felt obligated to say good-bye to him because he had tried to understand him, which is more than most people had ever done for him. Holden went to visit Mr. Spencer before he left. Holden was a prime example of a spoiled little rich kid who had everything but acted as though he had nothing. He had no real friends to rely on, only other spoiled rich kids who were never deprived of anything. This time was different though. This was not the first time that Holden was removed from a school. Holden always knew there was always another boarding school that would be happy to accept him and his money. This time he was not going to just sit back and wait for the next school to pick him up, he was going to enjoy himself while he could.
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.
...s own idealistic perception of the world around him. Many find it difficult to relate to and like Holden, as his thoughts and actions can be viewed irrational and hysterical. The majority of The Catcher in the Rye is told in Holden’s mind, which is constantly consumed by fast moving thoughts. His thought process is that of a typical teenager who has experienced a traumatizing event that never recieved closure and started a domino effect on their view of the world. Holden is an adolescent who experiencing the great difficulty of coming back up from his downfall, and his frustration towards this is expressed through rebellion. The Catcher in the Rye ends with no closure and definite ending for Holden; it is open for interpretation. The reader is in control of the fate of Holden: will he adapt into a mature adult, evolve into a neurotic misfit, or stay the ideal rebel?