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The way that people can view life can be based on their home life and the people they decide to surround themselves with. Holden Caulfield struggles to be happy with his life and the people around him. In The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Holden believes there is better for him beyond school and decides to run away and hide in New York until he is supposed to be home for christmas break. Holden struggles with some teenagers struggles that are common. Reading The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger there were many connections that I made such as having a strong love for a family member, being alone in the big world, and people that are close to you are constantly changing.
Holden has a difficulty forming relationships with new people. The people that he has known for a long time he has better relationships with.
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Out of all the relationships that Holden has in the novel the strongest is with Phoebe, his sister. He admires his sister especially in the way that she dances “I taught her how to dance and all when she a tiny little kid. She’s a very good dancer. I mean I just taught her a few things. She learned mostly by herself. You can’t teach somebody how to really dance” (Salinger 175). Phoebe is the first person that he thinks about before he thinks that he might die of pneumonia. I can relate to this because I do have a close relationship with my sister. We may not seem that we are close but I know that she might actually love me just a little bit. I love attending all of my sister’s sporting events to show how proud I am of her. According to Bethany Lee and some young people she interviewed on how they define family they said “somebody that stay together; you can call on each other for anything’ and someone that was close to you, you bonded with” (Lee 445). This is a perfect description of what family means to me and how a family should be for someone. Having to leave for college it is hard to imagine not home everyday to see my family. For me it is going to be hard because my sister will be a freshman next year and I will not be able to watch all of her games. When I do leave my family and attend Missouri State I will be going by myself. For Holden when he was in New York he was alone and by himself in the big world Holden does not want to belong to the big world. I feel the same because when I attend Missouri State I will be going by myself. I will be alone without knowing anyone. Hopefully the roomates that were chosen for me will help me make this journey of college fun. Many college students also feel as if they are alone in the world According to the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse said that “students are indeed not alone at being alone” (Kilmer, Cronce 412) I know that just as Holden learned by the end of the novel that becoming a grown up is something that is bound that happen there are other people that feel the same way. When Holden is at the carousel his sister asks him to join her and he tells her no. At this point in the novel Holden understands that he is going to have to embrace adulthood. Holden had a good point about adulthood by saying “The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything, If they fall off, they fall off, but it’s bad if you say something to them” (Salinger 211). Grabbing the rings is taking a chance that you may miss. Children must be allowed to take their own risks and grow into adulthood. Kids might learn best from the mistakes that they make. Staying a child is great but being an adult there comes a lot of more freedom. With this new adventure of college you are going to meet tons of new people that are constantly changing. The people that Holden believes that he knows are constantly changing and becoming different people.
One of his life long friends Jane does not even want to play checkers anymore. I can see that in my life right now. You think you have a friend that will be there for you for ever but throughout high school they change and become distant. They hang out with different friends and when I try to make plans they always say they are busy and can not go. When she wants to make plans with me she thinks that I should be able to drop what I am doing and go with her. It seems that each year in high school I seemed to become more and more distant with her and get closer with other friends. For Holden the people around him that he surrounds himself with are constantly changing. Most of these people leave him alone. That is one of the reasons why Holden seems to love the museum so much because it will never leave him on his own. Holden even says “Boy, I used to know exactly where they were, but I hadn’t been in that museum for years” (Salinger 203). Like everything else in his life the museum is not changing unlike the friends and we both surround ourselves
with. Even though Holden has a different view and feeling towards the world the are still many connections to still be made. The life that Holden is living is different than the life that I am in right now. Holden is embarking on a new life that is scary for what the future holds. I was able to make connections in The Catcher in the Rye such as being close to my family, being alone in the big world, and people changing around me. In the novel Holden is going through all of these experiences and after graduating high school and starting college I will be able to experience these with the help of the new friends that I will be making.
J.D Salinger gives his personal vision of the world successfully through his persona Holden Caulfield in the ‘Catcher in the Rye’. Caulfield struggles with the background of New York to portray Salinger’s theme – you must live the world as it is, not as you would like it to be. There by exposing Salinger’s vision on the world.
Since Holden was isolated from his family, in order to not get hurt again he tries to find hypocrisy in people to stop himself from trusting others. Holden feels isolated after being sent to a boarding school that “was full of phonies” by his parents (Salinger 90). Salinger’s message to the audience with this quote is that when
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
Holden alienates himself by believing he is better than everybody else. Every time Holden meets or talks about someone he is judgemental. Even when he is talking about someone he spends time with, he cannot help but ridicule them, “I never even once saw him [Ackley] brush his teeth....he had a lot of pimples. Not just on his forehead or his chin, like most guys, but all over his whole face. And not only that, he had a terrible personality. He was also sort of a nasty guy. I wasn't too crazy about him, to tell you the truth.”(Salinger,14 ). Ackley is probably the closest thing to a friend Holden has. Yet he criticizes him is a very nitpicky way, convincing himself he does not like
His inability to have normal conversations and relationships is possibly one of the factors that has him shunned by his peers. Holden's insecurity is one of the reasons for his compulsive lying. This, in turn, is why he can't find his place in the world.
Holden, throughout the book, is fed up with the phony lifestyle many of those in adulthood live. He constantly talks about people he hates and rarely touches on those he likes. He gets in fights with his roommates and has a very pessimistic and bleak view of his future. “Name something you 'd like to be. Like a scientist.
Depression is the storm whose rain can drown a person to oblivion if they have nothing to cling onto. This sea of confusion swirls in an endless tsunami of despair whose only savior is love, for its intensity shines through the storm and calms the sea. Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D Salinger, explores this emotion through Holden Caulfield. Adolescence is often a time of confusion and yearning to find a place of belonging; this is no exception to Holden who seeks connection with other people and struggles to understand the changing world alongside his transition into young adulthood. Holden’s struggle throughout the novel ultimately illustrates the hypocritical notions society tries to teach the new generations such as being an individual
From the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, the youthful protagonist Holden Caufield, employs the word “phony” to describe the behavior of a number of characters including Mr. Spencer and Ossenburger, however it is not them who are“phony”, it is the young main character. First, Mr. Spencer, Holden’s ex- history teacher, is not described as phony, but according to the adolescent, his choice of words are. Secondly, according to our main character, Ossenburger is not the generous philanthropist he portrays himself to be, but rather a greedy undertaker. Lastly, the protagonist could quite possibly be the authentic phony. All in all, the main character’s use to describe many other characters in the book is with the single word phony, when in fact the word phony would be the most probable word to describe the lead character.
Many young people often find themselves struggling to find their own identity and place in society. This search for self worth often leaves these young people feeling lonely and isolated because they are unsure of themselves. Holden Caulfield, J.D. Salinger's main character in the book The Catcher In the Rye, is young man on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. One contributor to this breakdown, is the loneliness that Holden experiences. His loneliness is apparent through many ways including: his lack of friends, his longing for his dead brother, and the way he attempts to gain acceptance from others.
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
Holden had a tough time fitting in at his schools because he thought of almost everyone as phonies. "`It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques' (pg. 131)." He seems to have a history of expulsion and failure at various schools because of his lack of ability to cope with others. Ordinary problems of his had turned into major conflicts with other students. "I hate fist fights. I don't mind getting hit so much - although I'm not crazy about it, naturally - but what scares me most in a fist fight is the guy's face. I can't stand looking at the other guy's face, is my trouble. It wouldn't be so bad if you could both be blindfolded or something. It's a funny kind of yellowness, when you come to think of it, but it's yellowness, all right. I'm not kidding myself. (pg. 90)" Holden got into a fight with his roommate at school because he was going out with his ex-girlfriend. He's afraid that the guy is taking her from him, even though he's not with her anymore. These are problems that are normal, but Holden has trouble dealing with them.
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.
... Even people Holden has close relationships with, he still can’t reveal details that mean a lot to him; for example, his roommate from Pency Prep, Stradlater, has a close relationship with Holden, but Holden has still never told him about his dead brother Allie’s baseball mitt. “All I had to do was change Allie’s name so nobody would know it was my brother’s.”(pg. 34. Although Holden alienates himself, there are times when he wants company; for instance when he sees Luce at the bar, “I didn’t say anything, I was sort of afraid he’d get up and leave on me if I didn’t shut up.”
Instead of admitting that he gets so distracted easily with these things, he pretends not to care about the addictive distractions his classmates speak about. This leads to Holden looking at his school life as if he is of a higher status than everyone else and that everyone should be exactly like him. The constant thought of superiority over his classmates leads him to the alienation of his classmates, because he feels that there is no one else in his world who can see through the “phonies”. It is because of his lack of real relationships that he concludes the phonies are what alienate him from society, not his personal
Holden doesn’t like the complexity of life and relationships. This is why he distances himself from his family and friends. After Holden is expelled from his school, he tries to stay away from his parents for fear of their reaction, even though learning of his expulsion is inevitable. He visits his sister Phoebe in their home multiple times throughout the novel because due to her young age, his sister and his relationship is simple. "For instance, within Holden, the desire to reject others conflicts with the desire to be accepted by others: he doesn't want to lend Stradlater his coat, but his overt actions belie this covert, warring want: he despises Ackley, but he invites him to see a movie; he hates movies, believing them to foster phoniness in society” (Mitchell). Holden struggles to “catch” others because he believes he is not accepted by others.