Holden Caulfield is every parent’s worst nightmare. From his unwillingness to come to terms with, and take responsibility for, his future to his inability to see past the flaws of others, Holden dooms himself to social and professional failure. After flunking out of his third boarding school, he wanders the streets of New York in order to avoid confronting his parents about his academic performance. Although he has an extraordinary support system, as well as countless interactions that ultimately shape his perspective of the world, Holden finds himself growing more and more depressed. In J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, isolation is the root of Holden’s unhappiness. Holden is in desperate need of connection, yet his cynical outlook …show more content…
For the entirety of the book, Holden accuses others of phoniness, yet he completely disregards his own superficiality. Concerning his refusal to take responsibility for his education, Mr. Spencer, Holden’s history teacher, explains to Holden that “life is a game one plays according to the rules” (11). After quickly agreeing with supposed sincerity, Holden silently contradicts everything Mr. Spencer has just stated. He mentally retorts that if one lives in a world of privileged “hot-shots,” life is certainly a game. “On the other side,” however, “where there aren’t any hot-shots,” then nothing is “a game about it” (11). Additionally, Holden lies to the mother of arguably the most hated and obnoxious student at Pencey. Solely out of a need to avoid confrontation and keep others content, Holden insists that “he’s one of the most popular boys at Pencey” and is simply too modest to run for class elections (63). Holden grows so engrossed in the undesirable characteristics of others that he overlooks the stream of perpetual, wild lies in which he is constantly stuck. Frequently, Holden finds himself lying about his age in order to appeal to “dopey girls” with whom “it is practically impossible” to engage in “a little intelligent conversation” (80, 82). Not only does Holden lack self-awareness regarding his fakeness, but he refuses to accept his inevitable entrance into the adult world. With each passing, influential experience, Holden clings more to the past and hopes to prevent others from landing in the same predicament that he now faces: the loss of his innocence. He dreads change, as becomes evident in the Natural History museum when he discusses the most appealing aspect of the museum: the fact that “everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move” (135). Because Holden is so dependant on
In J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in The Rye Salinger writes about the main character Holden Caulfield and his life. Holden is a teenager who comes from a wealthy family, he loves his family and lives very happy until the death of his brother Allie. After his brother died Holden becomes troubled, being kicked out of school again and again developing a negative view of the world. Holden throughout the book shows anger,denial, and acceptance over the loss of his brother.
Holden Caulfield, the teenage protagonist of Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger, struggles with having to enter the adult world. Holden leaves school early and stays in New York by himself until he is ready to return home. Holden wants to be individual, yet he also wants to fit in and not grow up. The author uses symbolism to represent Holden’s internal struggle.
In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the main character, Holden, cannot accept that he must move out of childhood and into adulthood. One of Holden’s most important major problems is his lack of maturity. Holden also has a negative perspective of life that makes things seem worse than they really are. In addition to Holden’s problems he is unable to accept the death of his brother at a young age. Holden’s immaturity, negative mentality, and inability to face reality hold him back from moving into adulthood.
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.
Growing up poses challenges to most people at some point in their lives. 16-year-old Holden Caufield is no exception. He is an apathetic teenager who’s flunked out of many schools. Underneath the cynical exterior though, Holden is troubled. He has different methods for escaping his problems but in the end they just cause him more problems. J.D Salinger, in his novel The Catcher in the Rye shows that often times when an individual faces problems in their life they will try to find a means to escape, instead of solving them.
Part of the irony in Holden’s story is that physically, he looks mature, but mentally, he is still very much a child: “I act quite young for my age, sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I’m seventeen now … I’m six foot two and a half and I have gray hair ” (9). There is no middle ground, adolescence, for Holden. He can only be an adult, physically, or a child, mentally. Holden’s history teacher, Mr. Spencer, tries to appeal to him by using a metaphor: “Life is a game, boy.
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.
Lies, failure, depression, and loneliness are only some of the aspects that Holden Caulfield goes through in the novel The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger. Salinger reflects Holden’s character through his own childhood experiences. Salinger admitted in a 1953 interview that "My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book.… [I]t was a great relief telling people about it” (Wikipedia). Thus, the book is somewhat the life story of J.D. Salinger as a reckless seventeen-year-old who lives in New York City and goes through awful hardships after his expulsion and departure from an elite prep school. Holden, the protagonist in this novel, is created as a depressed, cynical, and isolated character and he expresses this attitude through his dialogue, tone, and diction.
In the novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger, there is a boy named Holden Caulfield who flunked out of school and spends the remainder of time before winter break in New York. Holden has to spend the remainder of his time alone with his thoughts before coming home to his parents. While in New York Holden would have to face all of his griefs and sorrows he has for people and for society. Holden faces struggles with his viewpoints on children, the loss of his one care, and the wrongs society has caused.
Everybody feels depressed at some time or another in their lives. However, it becomes a problem when depression is so much a part of a person's life that he or she can no longer experience happiness. This happens to the young boy, Holden Caulfield in J.D Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye. Mr. Antolini accurately views the cause of Holden's depression as his lack of personal motivation, his inability to self-reflect and his stubbornness to overlook the obvious which collectively results in him giving up on life before he ever really has a chance to get it started.
Throughout the book Catcher in the Rye, the main character Holden Caulfield is often critical of adults, such as Mr. Spencer and Ossenburger, but rarely ever finds fault in young children like his little sister Phoebe or the singing boy on the street simply because he views them as pure, incorrupt people. This appreciation of childhood demonstrates Holden’s fear of growing up by showing his distaste in maturing himself and his aversion of setting himself straight. In his fiction novel Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger shows how teenage experiences can be used to reflect the inevitable pain of growing up.
Having a character that is going through a rough patch and struggling to be independent draws the reader into what the outcome will be and connects with the readers on how we used ugly, childish names for people we didn't like. Holden continues this hatred phase of "phonies" and the schools he's gone through when he comments, "Its full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you learn enough to be smart enough to buy a goddam Cadillac" (Salinger 131).
Rebellion and alienation are central themes in the book Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. Throughout the book the main character, Holden Caulfield, struggles in his relationships with others; especially with adults. Holden does not seem to fit in wherever he goes; whether in his private school or at the bar in New York. Through all of the misfortune he encounters while searching for his identity, he encounters a great deal of resistance and rejection from the world. This rejection from the world is a result of Holden’s rebellious actions, which are a cry for help stemming from his need for companionship. Holden’s desire for a meaningful relationship however, is an external portrayal of his innate longing to find himself; culminating in his incessant creation of problems for himself.
In The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield has devised this idea that adulthood is a time of phoniness, while childhood is a time of purity and innocence. Holden dislikes phonies and since many of the adults in his life he has categorized as phonies, he is afraid of growing up and becoming a phony himself. Throughout this novel, Holden consistently calls people phony which is his way of expressing his fear of growing up.
At the beginning of the story, Holden warns readers that he’s “the most terrific liar...ever,” which demonstrate that he’s being straightforward and telling the truth that he’ll lie most of the time, digresses, and talk little about the harsh reality (Salinger 16). Holden like to isolate himself from the the adult world to protect himself from the cruel society, which depicts why he’s being deceitful. Furthermore, Holden feels that he need everything to stay the same, after his little brother, Allie, die. Holden confronts that the “museum was that everything always stayed right where it was” (Salinger 120) This delineates that he feels more secluded as he continues to grow older and try to live on his life, but can’t since he want to stay in the past, just like the museum, it never changes. Holden doesn’t like the brutal society or what it had offered to him because he suffers enough just from the death of someone, which ultimately destroy him and how he views the brutal reality of the adult world. Throughout his lifetime, Holden had already witnessed two deaths, his little brother, Allie, and a guy named James Castle. Ever since then, Holden has been restraining himself and protecting himself in this wanton society. Even though they’re dead, those two boys will remain in Holden's heart not “just because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop liking them,” but “they were about a