Catcher In The Rye Theme Essay

700 Words2 Pages

Universal themes of alienation, phoniness and love can be found throughout the novel, which expresses the concerns of the lost generation and questions our society.
First of all, alienation is a crisis of the relationship between people after the Great war. Throughout the novel, the hero Holden seems to have been excluded and deceived from the world around him. As he said to his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, he feels that he is stuck in the life of another pole. He constantly tried to find the way out in the world that he does not belong to. He is desperate to get in touch with people, but he can neither properly express his feelings of this need to interact with others, nor has the ability to let others understand his feelings. Thus, he is …show more content…

From his perspective, adults are liars without exception, and even worse that they can't see their hypocrisy. In order to fight against the phony, Holden tries his best to find the truth. But the path of pursuing truth is full of disappointment and disillusionment. At the beginning, Holden tries to fight against phony by originality and spontaneity. This is remarkable from Holden criticizing the pianist Ernie: “He’s so good he’s almost corny”(Salinger, 44). He destroys the originality and spontaneity of the music: “Whatever it was, he was really stinking it up. He was putting all these dumb, show-offy ripples in the high notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass”(Salinger, 46). In Holden's opinion, he is not to playing the piano, but pleasing those idiots and fools. His understanding of music has become vulgar. Thus, he has lost the pure beauty and the inspiration of music. Holden’s pursuit of truth is the freezing time. He likes the Museum of natural history because it is a frozen, silent and never changing world. It represents Holden’s ideal world, the world of to be the catcher in the rye. In this world, things never change, everything is very simple can be understood and is

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