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Abstract on the catcher in the rye
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Analysis essay on a catcher in the rye
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Introduction:
Clothing can show many different things about an individual such as their interests and hobbies. Clothing has dimensions that can “speak” to others and ourselves. Clothing can put us in a place where we feel we belong. Our wardrobe can express a secret identity when nobody knows it. In J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist Holden Caulfield has an inner self he expresses through his clothing choices. Clothing choices can show more than just your personal likings, it can show you alter ego. Holden uses clothing to show his internal self through his red hunting hat. He uses the hat as a way to show his true identity and change what others think about him. Holden thinks the hat places him in a certain social
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class. Change in the Hat Holden transforms into a completely different person when he puts on his red hunting hat. Holden likes to put his hat on at certain times to make himself feel comfortable and safe. Holden decides to leave Pencey, as he leaves he puts on his red hunting hat: “I put my red hunting hat on and turned the peak around to the back the way I liked it and then I yelled at the top of my goddamn voice ‘sleep tight ya morons!’” (Salinger 59). Holden undergoes a transformation when he puts on his red hunting hat. Holden feels sad leaving Pencey early, but when he puts on his hat, Holden’s confidence is boosted. Holden put on the hat before he screamed as a way to not stop himself from yelling because it was the way he felt about everybody at Pencey. The hat allows Holden to show his true identity and the way he feels. Holden’s red hunting hat can “protect” him from others thoughts about him. As Holden is walking in the city shortly after leaving Pencey, he decides to put on his red hunting hat. Holden’s ears were cold and the hat had earlaps on them, but he thought they made him look funny. Due to the fact Holden’s ears were freezing cold, he decided to, “put them on”(Salinger 60) and he, “didn’t give a damn how I looked. Nobody was around anyway”(Salinger 60). Holden’s red hunting hat distracts Holden from his train of thought. The hat gives Holden’s mind the opportunity to wander freely and discover himself instead of worrying about the thoughts of other people. Holden’s red hunting hat can show Holden’s actual feelings and thoughts. Different types of clothing can bring different effects among people. During an experiment performed by Dr. Galinsky, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, a group of students were told to wear either a painter’s coat or a doctor’s coat. However, the coats were actually the same and the students were just told it was a doctor’s coat. The students then had to look at two similar images and write differences between the images. As imagined, those who were wearing the doctor’s coat found more differences between the images than those who wore the painter’s coat. According to Galinsky, those who wore the doctor’s coat, “showed the greatest improvement in attention. You have to wear the coat, see it on your body and feel it on your skin for it to influence your psychological processes”(Blakeslee 2). The doctor’s coat effects are similar to the ones Holden acquires while wearing his red hunting hat. Holden’s focus is enhanced through the hat and his true feelings are expressed. When Holden puts on his red hunting hat, he feels it on his body and the feel of the hat changes Holden’s psychological processes. The doctor’s coat could inform others of your profession and emotions much like Holden’s red hunting hat. In an article titled What Your Clothes Say About You published by Forbes magazine, the author states, “What you wear can inform passersby of your type of employment, as well as your ambitions, emotions and spending habits”(“What Your Clothes Say About You” 1). Holden’s hat reveals his emotions in how he thinks about certain topics. The hat also shows Holden’s ambitions. Holden bought the red hunting hat because the hat was red and abstract. Holden’s siblings Phoebe and Allie both have red hair. Holden praises both of them even though Allie died of cancer. The red in the hunting hat symbolizes Allie and Phoebe’s red hair and how Holden wants to be like them. Holden’s red hunting hat takes him to a new place where he acts differently. II. Appearance vs. Reality Holden decides to put on and take off his red hunting hat at different locations throughout the novel to change people’s point of view on him.. When Holden is checkng into a hotel in New York City and decides that he should take off his red hunting hat because he, “didn’t want to look like a screwball or something”(Salinger 68). Holden wants to appear mature to the people at the hotel. The red hunting hat would limit Holden’s ability to check into the hotel because the hat makes Holden look like a little kid in the eyes of the hotel workers. Holden’s hat can change the way people perceive him as an individual. If he were to keep the hat on, Holden feared the workers would think he was some type of clown and what not. Holden is not the only person in the novel that uses his clothing to change people’s point of view. Holden decides to order a prostitute because of his depression, Sunny and she has a green dress. Holden interprets the man at the store counter, “just thought she was a regular girl when she bought it”(Salinger 107). Sunny appeared to be a normal teenage girl to the store clerk, but the store clerk had no idea what the dress was really for. In reality, Sunny bought the dress to look sexy to her clients. Clothing can make individuals appear differently than who they really are. The clothes you decide to wear can change what people think about you and even what you think of yourself. Some people use their clothes as a type of disguise to hide themselves from people perspective. Justine Picardie knows much about this. In her article The secrets your clothes reveal:few things trigger such vivid memories as a special item of clothing. Whether it’s the dress you wore when you first fell in love or a bag your mom bequeathed to you, your closet offers a colorful window into your past, Picardie recalls when she was 19 and how her outfit was not made by top class brands. However, Picardie enjoyed her outfit and felt, “it was the perfect disguise and made [her] look very formal”(Picardie 3). Holden gets the opposite effect from his hunting hat. Holden thinks his hat makes him look informal and childish. Holden uses his hat as a disguise from himself. He uses the hat to escape his thoughts. Holden’s thinks his hat makes him look like a kid. In an article titled What Your Clothes Say About You published by Forbes magazine, the author states, “one piece or style that makes a person look unsuccessful” (“What Your Clothes Say About You” 2). This is how Holden feels when he wears his red hunting hat in a public environment. Holden does not like to appear young to others because he feels he will be treated differently. The wardrobe of an individual can foreshadow what others will think of them. III. Social Class Holden is told by Old Spencer he needs to start playing the “Game of Life” seriously.
Holden thinks he will not fit into the “Game of Life” because he can not fit into any cliques in his school. Holden’s clothing choices pertain to why he will never be in a clique. When Holden is on his date with Sally Hayes, Sally eyes looks at, “Some guy in one of those very dark flannel suits and one of those checkered vests. Strictly Ivy League”(Salinger 141). Holden sees the Ivy League guy as a stuck up, classy type of guy. The clothing the guy wore allowed Holden to perceive him that way. Clothing choices play a major part in how a stranger, like Holden can judge somebody’s level on the social pyramid just by the preference of clothing. The clothing the Ivy League guy wore determined his own social class when in reality, the guy may have only dressed up fancy for the given event. Holden’s interaction with the Ivy League guy justifies how clothing can place people into social class. The Ivy League guy’s clothes may have been a trick to Holden’s mind. In an article titled What Your Clothes Say About You published by Forbes magazine, the author states how the Kardashian’s use their clothes as a, “tool to know where they fit in and as a weapon against others” (“What Your Clothes Say About You” 2). The Ivy League guy could have possibly using his clothes as a tool of deception. His clothes may have been a way of showing somebody he is not. This is similar to what Holden does with his hunting hat. Holden takes off his red hunting hat at certain points in the story to appear more mature. Holden takes off the hat to appear like somebody he is not. The clothing choices by the Ivy League guy and Holden were a way of deceiving the mind of a stranger to look as if they were more mature then they
are. Americans use clothing as a social class. Instead of having a certain social class, humans create their own based on clothing. In an article What Your Clothes Say About You published by Forbes magazine, the article states, “ Americans rely on clothing as an economic and social indicator because there aren’t official marks of rank such as a caste system or aristocracy”(“What Your Clothes Say About You” 2). Humans use clothing in the modern day as a way of interpreting the social class of others. In the ancient civilizations like India, there were social classes called the caste system that determined what you could and could not do based on your class. Similar to that, humans today can do certain activities based on what they wear. For example, if a poor homeless man wearing ripped shirts and jeans showed up to a fancy restaurant, he would not be allowed to enter. Clothing is used by humans today as a form of social class. Clothing can say many things about an individual. Our wardrobe can give others an idea about our true identity and where we fit in. Holden uses clothing throughout Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye to hint the reader how his clothes change him. Even in the modern day, clothes give us a way of expressing how we feel without using words.
(70). Holden likes how the hat makes him feel individual but he is still embarrassed to wear it in public. He still wants to fit in with all the phonies and
Holden’s red Hunting hat was very crucial to him as he bought it in New York on the Saturday morning that he visited. The hat is the center of attention for Holden as many people such as Ackley ask about the hat. Holden only puts the hat on at crucial moments in his life such as writing the composition for Stradlater, leaving Pencey Prep, and acting confident in front of the mirror. “It was this red hunting hat, with one of those very, very long peaks. I saw it in the window of the sports store when I got it out of the subway...it only cost me a buck” (17). In the novel, Holden also wears the hat when he leaves Pencey Prep as he says “Sleep tight, ya morons”. In the novel, it can be noted that Holden doesn’t like to wear the hat outside as
Indeed, just the naming of his red hunting cap as a “people-shooting hat” is suspicious enough; but Holden merely wants to stand out in a crowd and be different from all the phonies around him, and the unique hat is enough to do so, despite it making him look foolish. He is going “people-shooting” in the sense that he is putting down partisans of the supposedly fabricated adult world, the same people who put Holden down for his visible immaturity. The cap gives Holden the confidence he needs to feel like his own independent person – an adult – without actually being one. This is yet another one of Holden’s desperate attempts to cling onto whatever shred of youth and innocence he has left and avoid growing
A big trait in Holden’s character is the stubbornness. Holden is not willing to accept his problems in addition to let others help him. It is equally important to realize that Holden’s stubbornness is fatal to changing, otherwise growing up. One of the first symbols introduced is Holden’s red hunting hat. “This is a people shooting hat. I shoot people in this hat. (3.31)” gives signs that this hat is a way to alienate himself from the world. When Holden articulates it is for shooting people; shooting really means calling them phonies to only stubbornly protect himself from the outer world. Proceeding to Holden’s visit to Phoebe’s school, the f**k you signs on the wall are a way of representing the negative influences on kids. Holden’s stubbornness is shown when he attempts to erase them off the wall, although states “you couldn’t rub out even half the ‘F**k You’ signs in the world.(25.18)” The symbol’s meaning towards the story is understood that it’d be pointless to erase even all of the negative influences in the world because they’d just re-appear, except the protagonist cannot accept the reality of the situation. Jumping right to the end of the novel, when Phoebe ...
The distance that Holden makes sure to keep in place isolates him from others and manifests in curious actions and mannerisms. One example could be the red hunting hat, which advertises his uniqueness and also gives him a sense of protection. Holden explains to Ackley that his red hat is not a “deer shooting hat” but a “people shooting hat”. Out of all the mentions of the red hat in the novel, this is the most enlightening. Holden uses the hat as a sign of individuality and independence; this hat serves as another way Holden is able to isolate himself from the rest of the world. The red hat serves as symbol for Holden’s desperate desire for independence and his distaste for conformity. Although Holden does not kill anyone in the novel, he does “shoot people” in his own cynical way by spending all of his time and energy belittling the people around
How Holden wears his red hunting hat symbolizes his true self by how he wears it. The first time Holden wears the hat, he is alone. “The way I wore it, I swung the old peak way around to the back-very corny, I’ll admit, but I liked it that way. I looked good in it that way.” (18). When he is alone, he thinks of himself as attractive and appears to have more confidence than he does around other people. Holden describes wearing the hat “the way [he] like[s] it” many times to make himself appear the way he likes to look. This self confidence is replaced by anxiety and self consciousness, as shown in the quote, “I’d put on my red hunting cap when I was in the cab, just for the hell of it, but I took it off before I checked in. I didn’t want to look like a screwball or something” (61).
Holden is also aware of the image the hat projects to others, and he often takes it off when he is around someone familiar. This functions as a metaphor for Holden’s struggle between his need for independence and his need for companionship. Holden doesn’t want people he knows to see him with the hat on because he wants them to continue to be friends with him, and he fears loneliness. However, when nobody is around, Holden has no problem wearing the hat and embracing its quirkiness, because he feels a strong connection to the hat. As he is walking down the street in the middle of the night, Holden states that “It was freezing cold, and I took my red hunting hat out of my pocket and put it on--I didn 't give a damn how I looked. I even put the earlaps down” (Salinger 88). Here, Holden doesn’t care how he looks because the only people who might spot him on the desolate street are strangers to him. His image around strangers doesn’t faze him as much as his image around people his is familiar
In “The Catcher In The Rye”, J.D. Salinger uses Holden’s red hunting cap, the exhibits at the Museum of Natural History and “kings in the back row” as symbols whose meanings help tell the story. Holden’s red hunting hat stands for Holden’s disapproval of adult society and phonies. Although, Holden and his hat are out of place in New York, he loves this hat because it demonstrates his difference and independence from other kids his age. He becomes more and more attached to his hat because he feels like a catcher in the rye when he wears the hat. Holden cannot let go of his hat, like he cannot let go of his childhood.
In the beginning of the novel, Holden says to Mr. Spencer he feels trapped on the “other side of life.” This clearly demonstrates how Holden doesn’t feel that he belongs in the world he lives in. Holden has his hunting hat as a source of protection. Holden buys a red hunting hat in New York for a dollar. The hat has a very long peak, and Holden wears it backwards with the peak aiming behind him. “…I swung the old peak way around to the back-very corny, I’ll admit, but I liked it that way” (17), Holden explains. Holden puts his hat on when he’s under a lot of stress. The hunting hat not only symbolizes protection, but it also symbolizes Holden’s uniqueness and individuality. Holden doesn’t wear his hat because it’s fashionable, but only to keep his individuality and to feel safe. In the cab Holden put his hat on and says, “I’d put my red hunting hat when I was in the cab, just for the hell of it, but I took it off before I checked in” (61). This quote illustrates how Holden thinks it’s necessary to wear the hat in order to feel safe. But at the same time, Holde...
The symbolism throughout the novel illustrates Holden’s isolation from the adult world. In the beginning of the Chapter Three, Holden returns to his dorm room where he finds his pestering roommate, Ackley. After seeing Holden’s red hunting hat, which he purchased in New York, Ackley is fascinated by it and tells Holden that “Up home [he] wears a hat like that to shoot deer in,” (22) Holden then takes the red hunting hat off of Ackleys’ head and closes one eye as if he is trying to shoot it. “This is a people shooting hat,” he says (22). It is obvious from the start of the novel that Holden’s red hat symbolizes his mark of individuality and independence. In this scene, the audience sees how his desire for independence is connected to the feeling of alienation and the bitterness Holden feels for the people in society. Of course, Holden will not actually sh...
Unlike other protagonists with amazing superpowers or cunning wits, the characters from the film Rushmore, and the novel “The Catcher in the Rye” share many of the same characteristics. In Wes Anderson’s film, Rushmore, the main character, Max Fischer, played by Jason Schwartzman has an unprecedented amount of similarities to J.D Salinger’s character Holden Caulfield from “The Catcher in the Rye”. Both stories focus on the idea of children wanting to grow up quickly whilst still being too immature to do so. The similarities include their personality traits, and the relationships they have, but the characters also differ in one major way, their views on sex. These similarities create a feel of familiarity in the reader or viewer allowing them
A human society is often described as a group of people involved in persistent personal relationships, or as a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or social territory. People tend to believe that doing what everyone else does, is the only correct path for life. If someone dares to break the pattern, does what he wants, or wears different clothes from what everybody else wear, he would frequently be seen as a strange or weird person. This is not it, every little thing someone does that differs from what it is “normal”, is seen as bad or bizarre. Holden Caulfield, of “Catcher in the Rye” is a character who stands out from common people. Holden doesn’t believe that he needs to follow what everyone else does. Contrary to that, Holden does what he wants and acts how he likes. By acting like this, Holden is not considered as a normal teenager, but as a unique one. Caulfield has often trouble fitting in society. Holden won’t fit into society because he doesn’t want to be a part of it. Hints displaying Holden not wanting to be part of society are his constant failing at school, his powerful revulsion for “phony” qualities, and his distancing himself from people.
Holden’s outlandish hat expresses his individuality and uniqueness. The statement piece shows his desire to stand out and be different from everyone else. In such situations as when he is taking off from Pencey he says “I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it and then I yelled ‘Sleep tight, ya morons!’” (Salinger 59). The style is already ridiculous but he still manages make a statement with his comment. (commentary). At the same time, Holden is often self-conscious of wearing the hat itself. Though he claims to wear it purely to his liking, as
In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger develops Holden Caulfield as a morally ambiguous character. Throughout the book, Salinger speaks as Holden and introduces him as a callous and subjective individual. However, the author permits the reader to be within Holden’s mind, giving the audience an alternative perspective of Holden’s true character. Without the obscurity of Holden’s personality, the work would lack a crucial element. As the protagonist, Holden serves as an equivocal adolescent that is relatable for the reader.
When Holden was leaving Pency Prep, "put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice,'Sleep tight, ya morons!' I'll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out" (Salinger 29). When Holden turned his hat backwards, he felt more confident. Holden has more of a shy and awkward personality. He typically does care about what others think of him. However, when he turned his hat backwards, he gains the confidence to be who he really is. As children transition into adults, they typically try to gain a sense of they really are. Sometimes, they will follow what the crowd does. Yet, other times they do what they want to do to be unique. For example, when Holden was on his date with Sally, he told her, "‘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'" (Salinger 70). Holden identifies a group of people and tries to not be like them which is why he is naming all the negative aspects of the people in Pency Prep. Holden does not