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Essay on the characters of the catcher in the rye
The catcher in the rye about
The catcher in the rye character analysis
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Plot summary The Catcher in the Rye is narrated by the main character, Holden Caulfield, who we later find out is writing from a mental hospital. It takes place somewhere during the 1950s mostly around New York. It starts out at Pencey prep school, the Saturday after classes end for Christmas. Holden has failed out of three schools already and has been expelled from Pencey for failing four of his five classes. He visits his history teacher, Spencer, to say goodbye but instead gets scolded for not applying himself. Stradlater went on a date with Jane Gallagher, who Holden grew up with. He gets upset with Stradlater and tries to fight him but ends up getting a bloody nose and left on the ground. Holden decides to leave Pencey three days early …show more content…
and stay at a hotel in New York. On the train to New York he meets a classmate's mom and tells her fake stories about how shy and respected her son is instead of how mean he is. Arriving at Penn Station he decides against calling anyone and gets a cab. He asks to be taken to the Edmont Hotel. After checking into the hotel Holden watches other guests in the opposite wing, including a man putting on women's clothes and a couple spitting their drinks on each other’s faces. Holden decides to call Faith Cavendish, who he remembers is a stripper, whose number he got from a guy from Princeton. He calls wanting to hook up, but because she can only meet the next day, he hangs up without scheduling to meet. Holden spends the rest of the night at the nightclub in the hotel where he dances and flirts with three women in their thirties. He finds himself half in love with one of the ladies but they laugh at his age leaving him with their whole bill. He leaves the hotel taking a cab to a jazz club where he watches and judges the other people in the club while sitting alone. He runs into his brother's ex-girlfriend. When she invites him to sit with her and her date he makes an excuse saying he needs to meet with someone and walks back to his hotel. Once at the hotel the elevator man offers to send a prostitute up to his room and Holden agrees.
When she arrives at Holden's room he makes up a lie telling her he can't have sex with her. While he offers to pay her anyway the five dollars the agreed upon price she says that it's ten dollars. Holden refuses to pay the other five dollars and she leaves only to return with the elevator man. The man insists on ten dollars and even though Holden resists the man punches him in the gut and takes the money from his wallet. The next morning he calls an ex-girlfriend Sally Hayes, and they agree to a date later that day. He tries to call his childhood friend Jane Gallinger but her mom answers so he hangs up. He then goes to Central Park looking for his younger sister Phoebe but doesn't find her. He takes a cab to meet Sally for their date but becomes annoyed when she talks to another boy she knows. He starts ranting about how unhappy he is with society and school and asks her to run away with him. She refuses and he calls her a pain in the butt. She gets angry but won’t except his apology so he leaves. Holden tries to call Jane again but no one answers. Instead he calls a young man, Carl Luce who used to be his student advisor and meets him for a drink. In the past Luce used to talk openly so boys about sex but he gets irritated by Holden's childish behavior and remarks towards homosexual and Luce's Chinese girlfriend and
leaves. Holden stays and continues to drink and calls Sally while drunk. He babbles about Christmas Eve plans saying he's going to come trim her tree like she said in a letter. He then gets lost in Central Park looking for the lagoon he used to visit as a child. Freezing cold and afraid he'll get pneumonia he decides to sneak into his own apartment waking Phoebe. She becomes mad at him for failing out of school saying that he doesn't like anything. He tells her of his dream of being the "catcher in the rye" who is a person who catches children before they fall off of a cliff. Holden calls his former teacher Mr. Antolini who invites him to come stay at his apartment. Mr. Antolini tries to talk to him about his future but Holden is too tired. He wakes up to Mr. Antolini stroking his forehead. Thinking it’s a homosexual gesture he leaves quickly and sleeps on a bench at Grand Central Station. Holden sends a note to Phoebe at school asking her to meet him at the museum during lunch. He explains he is leaving home for good. She arrives wanting to go with him but he gets mad and refuses causing her to cry. He leads her across the park to the carousel buying her a ticket to ride. He is so happy watching her ride the carousel in the rain that he is close to crying himself. Holden ends the story here stating that he isn't going to explain how he went home and "got sick". He leaves the reader with the information that he will return to school in the fall but not knowing if he will apply himself.
In his fight with Stradlater, Holden’s character is shown as a defender of innocence. He defends the memory of his brother through the report he writes for Stradlater. Because of Stradlater’s criticism on his brother’s death, Holden destroys the essay and says “All right, give it back to me, then,’ I said. I went over and pulled it right out of his goddamn hand. Then I tore it up.” Holden is tormented by the memory of his brother throughout the novel, and in this fight he defends his brothers memory by protecting the baseball glove. Later in this scene Holden is upset with Stradlater’s relationship with Jane. Holden explains, “If you knew Stradlater, you 'd have been worried, too. I 'd double-dated with the bastard a couple of times, and I know what I 'm talking about. He was unscrupulous.” Holden tries to defend Jane’s innocence and the reader is able to see Holden’s ethical code to protect the innocence and memory of others. In Holden’s confrontation with Maurice, Holden displays his detestation of the evil phony. “All of a sudden I started to cry. I 'd give anything if I hadn 't, but I did. 'No, you 're no crooks, ' I said. 'You 're just steeling five ' 'Shut up, ' old Maurice said and gave me a shove.” The scene between Maurice and Holden over the prostitute Sunny shows his emotions when it comes to fake people. In this scene he
Holden checked into the Edmont Hotel in Manhattan, where he hired a young prostitute named Sunny. This scene depicts Holden’s struggle with confused adolescence. Holden thought that sleeping with a prostitute would make him a man. However, when he was confronted with the burgeoning sexual situation, he yielded. After all, he is still just a child. “The trouble was, I just didn’t want to do it. I felt more depressed than
Holden’s first betrayal was that of his memory and innocence by an egotistical peer. At Pencey Prep, he roomed with a student named Stradlater; the epitome of a teenage jock. Stradlater was openly very vain; as Holden stated as he watched Stradlater gaze at himself in the mirror, “he was madly in love with himself. He thought he was the handsomest guy in the Western Hemisphere” (27). Because of his inflated ego and good looks, Stradlater figured that he would steal the breath from any girl he wanted. To Holden, he admitted that the girl of the hour was a “Jean Gallagher” (31). Here was the betrayal: this “Jean” and the Jane that Holden had spent childhood summers with playing a cool game of checkers on the porch were one and the same. Holden had ...
Holden really listens to women and he pays attention to what they have to say or do. When Holden found out that Stradlater was going on a date with Jane, he kept talking about her. He was telling Stradlater about the things they did as kids. Holden was telling Stradlater about the time they were playing checkers. Holden
Holden returns to school and goes to his bedroom in the dorm. In his room quietly reading, his neighbor Robert Ackley came in. Holden describes him as a pimply, insecure, annoying boy with a bad dental hygiene. When Holden’s roommate Stradlater who was “madly in love with himself” (27) arrived home after the football game, Ackley abruptly left. Stradlater tells him that he has a date with a friend of his, Jane Gallagher. Jane is someone that Holden really cares for and because he knows the way Stradlater is, Holden became worried for her. “It just drove me stark raving mad when I thought about her and Stradlater parked somewhere in that fat-assed Ed Banky’s car”. (48) Holden became depressed and lonely, so out of the blue Holden decides to pack his things and leave for New York a few days earlier. On the train to New York, Holden meets the mother of one of his schoolmates. Not wanting to tell his whole life story, he told her his name was “Rudolf Schmidt”, the name of th...
Holden, before leaving for New York, attended a boarding school named Pencey Prep. He makes it clear that he thinks everyone, teachers and students alike, is a “phony.” At one point, his roommate Stradlater goes out with a girl who ends up being Jane Gallagher, a childhood friend and crush of Holden. In his eyes, this is a betrayal. Holden is annoyed
The Catcher in the Rye by, J.D. Salinger is told through Holden the narrative in the story. The setting of the novel takes place in the 1940's early 1950's. Holden is sixteen years old and he has a lot of problems in his life. He becomes seriously depressed to the point he cannot deal with people and life around him. The 1940's were different from today. However, Holden Caulfield is similar to many other teenagers who go through the same problems.
Catcher in the Rye is a complicated book about a young man going through, what appears to be a nervous break down. This is a book about the boy’s negative self-talk, horrible outlook on life, and a life itself that seems to keep swirling down the toilet. He keeps trying to fill his life with something, but the reality of it is he doesn’t exactly now what he needs. It’s complicated to understand at parts, because all he does is think of things in the worst possible conditions.
It is made evident that Holden is enamored with Jane Gallagher, and this first manifests itself when Holden talks about her to Stradlater. “I used to play checkers with her,” Holden recounts. “ ‘She’d get [her kings] all lined up in the back row. Then she’d never use them. She just liked the way they looked when they were all in the back row.’ Stradlater didn’t say anything. That kind of stuff doesn’t interest most people” (41). In a world where almost everything is so “goddam depressing,” thinking about Jane’s minor traits actually makes Holden happy, even if it is the kind of stuff that does not interest most people. It allows him to channel his childhood, where he was oblivious to the phoniness around him. However, this silly nostalgia cannot get across to Stradlater, who is more interested in Jane as a sexual being than trivialities such as her checker tactics or struggles with ballet. This physical interest eventually becomes the root of their brawl in their dorm. Although Holden’s interrogative mood agitates Stradlater, Holden is only showing his genuine care for Jane. Unlike Stradlaer, Holden has enough sense to know that Jane, being the humble, intelligent girl she is, deserves to be treated right. So, even though Holden lets his anger get the better of him and eventually start a fight, he has reason to do
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
that he is trying to hide his true identity. He does not want people to know who he really is or that he was kicked out of his fourth school. Holden is always using fake names and tries speaking in a tone to persuade someone to think a cretin way. He does this when he talks to women. While he is talking to the psychiatrist he explains peoples reactions to his lies like they really believe him, when it is very possible that he is a horrible liar and they are looking at him with a “what are you talking a bout?” expression. Holden often lies to the point where he is lying to him self.
Holden has a respect for women that he views as unnatural. He feels that his sexual desires should be similar to those of his roommate Stradlater and peer, Luce. Holden shows his confusion by saying, "The thing is, most of the time when you're coming close to doing it with a girl, a girl that isn't ...
Holden's sensitivity is revealed, throughout the novel, by his actions and attitudes towards sex. The first reference made to sex in the novel comes when Holden refers to his roommate, Stradlater, as a "very sexy bastard" (32). Holden thinks this after Stradlater expresses interest in hearing about Holden's old friend Jane and her experiences with her "booze hound" stepfather, "running around the house naked, with Jane around" (32). Stradlater's lack of sympathy provokes Holden to think of him as a "bastard." While Holden does sympathize with Jane, Stradlater is more interested in the perverse connotations of Jane's past because "Only very sexy stuff interested him" (32). On the other hand, Holden "knew her like a book" and has come to the realization that "you don't have to get too sexy to get to know a girl" (76). Holden also demonstrates his sensitivity in the form of respect for the ...
His initiation is the taxi ride Holden takes from the train. Here he is presented with a choice: he can go to his family’s home and be under his parents control, or he can continue on his journey from innocence to maturity. Holden chooses independence and continues onto his first trial. The first trial is when Holden hires a prostitute, but is unable to embrace his sexuality and thereby his maturity. In fact, he even attempts to protect Sunny’s innocence by requesting that they just try to have a conversation instead of sex. This refusal to let go of his innocence even in the face of great temptation keeps Holden secure in his childish state. His second trial is the date with Sally Hayes. On this date, Holden proposes a very childish and immature dream of them running away and living off the land, completely cut off from society. Holden’s trial comes, however, when he has to defend his innocent dream against the realistic remarks that Sally makes regarding their young age and the lack of money to fund this off-grid experiment. The responses to her challenges are unsatisfactory to Sally and prove his childish state is not as logical as he believes it to be, pushing him closer to recognizing adult behavior. His third and final trial is when he attempts to have a conversation with an old friend Carl Luce. Holden's maturity is tested when Carl wants to have an adult conversation and catch up while Holden remains
The Catcher in the Rye is a historical fiction novel by J.D Salinger. The book starts with Holden Caulfield, the main character, explaining a little about himself and goes on to tell his story of what happened after he left Pencey. Everyone strives to set themselves to a place in life where they feel safe, comfortable, and secure, that is the American dream. The journey to achieve this dream is known as the American experience. In the novel, Holden tries to act and look older. He reflects on his shortcomings and the setbacks in life, and leaves to collect himself, all reflecting elements of the American experience.