Catcher in the Rye, All Quiet on the Western Front, A Separate Peace, Great Expectations, and Romeo

The Search for Identity in Catcher in the Rye, All Quiet on the Western Front, A Separate Peace, Great Expectations, and Romeo and Juliet

Adolescence is a time when everything we've ever known is being changed. Relationships, friends, thoughts, and other things that shape who we are become more awkward and confusing and are changed from what they have been in the past. Consequently, we will change also because all these things shape who we are. During a period of such change, it's hard to know who we really are. Adolescence is the time when we find out who we truly are, but not until we know who we aren't. Adolescents use common words, actions, and rivalries to try to define their unique personalities, goals, and ideas. They label themselves in different ways, trying to find a single word that defines them entirely. Through this ongoing change of identity, adolescents fully realize who they are by trying on different identities until they find the one that fits them the best.

Labeling themselves and their peers is one way that adolescents are able to sort through the world around them and classify all of it into easily identifiable groups. Adolescents want to describe themselves in one or two words, and they try to define their peers in one or two words. Holden of Catcher in the Rye always places people he meets into a number of categories. The basic category for anyone he dislikes is "phonies." He carries on this need for definition into his own identity. At different points in the book, he refers to himself as a "pacifist" (Salinger 46) and "yellow" (Salinger 88), but then he imagines killing Maurice, the felonious elevator boy, as revenge. His self-definition is so unsure that at one point he says he's an "atheist" (S...

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