Holden Caulfield, a charismatic teenager from New York City, recounts his excursion in the novel, The Catcher in the Rye. After fleeing from Pencey Prep boarding school as a result of his expulsion, Holden commences his lonely three-day journey into New York City. Holden’s brother and best friend, Allie, died of leukemia in the Caulfield’s summer home in Maine. This heartrending event emotionally obliterates Holden at a young age. Because he feels adulthood taints purity and leads to death, Holden becomes the catcher in the rye, saving all children from the cruelness of adulthood. “A point central to the novel is that Holden is the innocent youth in a world of cruel and hypocritical adults” (Bloom 21). To aspire to stay young forever renders …show more content…
a hatred for adults in Holden’s life. He allows the blame of not being able to save Allie invade his mind; thus he conceives of saving children from adulthood as the only alternative to diminishing his guilt.
Holden’s travel through the city enables him to interact with various types of people. He connects with his younger sister, Phoebe, amidst his attempt to also save her from adulthood. Phoebe is the only person in Holden’s family with whom he has sustained a relationship; he lacks authority from his parents in his life because he hardly spends time with them because. Holden constructs bonds with the ducks in the Central Park lagoon as well as the Natural History Museum. His need to be the catcher in the rye formulates false identities that he believes to be true. Vanishing from reality, he views Allie as an aide. The climax of Holden’s mental breakdown occurs when he is strolling through the city, “I'd say to him, ‘Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Please, Allie.’ And then when I'd reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I'd thank him” (Salinger 198). Holden exhibits his aloneness and love for his brother. At the end of his journey, with the help of his sister, Phoebe, Holden appears to …show more content…
heal. Allie’s death depletes Holden, changing his thoughts about his peers and family. Allie is a godlike being in his eyes; no one can compare to him. Using Allie as a comparison, Holden negates the people who surround him. To protect and keep distance between him and others, Holden identifies his peers as “phonies”. “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” (Salinger 131). This feeling of fear is symmetrical to the way Holden feels in the beginning of the novel, “After I got across the road, I felt like I was sort of disappearing…it was that kind of crazy afternoon…you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed the road” (Salinger 5). Holden’s loneliness suits him better than having relationships with people. At the end of his journey, with the help of his sister, Phoebe, Holden appears to heal. Many motifs are employed to convey Holden’s emotional paralysis including his red hunting hat, the ducks, the museum and his fantasy to become the catcher in the rye. An indivisible image from Holden, the red hunting hat, reveals his uniqueness and provides Holden with protection.
Feeling vulnerable after leaving his fencing team’s equipment on the subway, Holden purchases his red hunting hat. “ In this sense, Holden's red hunting cap is both concrete evidence of how he does not fit into the Pencey mold and a symbol of the backwards hunt he will pursue in the wilds of Manhattan” (Pinsker, Pinsker 9). The red hunting hat manifests Holden’s uniqueness among his peers. He wears the hat backwards, connecting to the backwards trip he makes throughout New York City, eventually leading him to come to a sense of reality. The hat bestows him with a sense of confidence, "... I swung the old peak way around to the back - very corny, I'll admit, but I like it that way. I looked good in it that way" (Salinger 18). Holden exploits the hunting hat for protection, just as the thought of Allie did when Holden experienced the peak of his mental breakdown. Holden details, " My hunting hat really gave me quite a lot of protection, in a way, but I got soaked anyway." (Salinger 213). Connoting to Allie’s read hair, the hunting hat too, is red. This is Holden’s method of figuratively keeping his brother with him. “Protected only by the red hat, which he now wears like a baseball catcher as he evokes Allie's favorite sport” (Bryan 65), emphasizing Holden’s use of the hat as one of the last ways he can hold onto
Allie. Inhabitants of the lagoon, Central Park ducks become an obsession for Holden. His life parallels those of the ducks: wandering, frozen, and seeking a warm habitat. Holden expresses this constant thought as a recurring motif in the novel, “I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over...If some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo...or if they just flew away” (Salinger 13). Salinger uses the ducks as a way to convey Holden’s internal problems, later contributing to his mental breakdown. Holden wonders where the ducks go because he is lost, feeling unaccepted most places he goes. The symbol of the zoo corresponds to Holden’s boarding school, “What Holden really wants to know is whether there is a benevolent authority that takes care of ducks. If there is one for the ducks, it follows that there may be one for people as well” (Baumbach 69). Holden’s prevalent concern for the ducks simultaneously grows with his emotional paralysis. He desperately finds himself sharing this two-fold concern his cab driver, “By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over?” his unreasonable question for the cab driver, receives no response other than “What're ya tryna do, bud? Kid me?” (Salinger 60). Horowitz, the cab driver, continues his forced conversation with Holden with the statement “The fish don't go no place. They stay right where they are” and with “it's tougher for the ducks, for Chrissake” (Salinger 82). “Unfortunately, Holden is not a fish. Mother Nature has not fulfilled his need. Being warm-blooded he shares the plight of the ducks”, Holden finally realizes the vulnerability of the ducks (Glasser 95). Fish and ducks cannot survive in the frozen water of the Central Park lagoon. The ducks are extracted from their natural habitats, left homeless, relating to Holden’s nomadic travels.
While in New York with the fencing team, Holden loses all of their equipment, then buys a red hunting hat. Holden describes the hat as a, “red hunting hat, with one of those very, very, very long peaks… The way I wore it, I swung the old peak way around back - very corny, I’ll admit, but I liked it that way.”(Salinger, 24) The hat makes him stand out and seem like a unique person.
Imagine if your best friend or someone close to you suddenly dies of a fatal disease. The death of this person would physically and mentally inflict trauma. All though the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is a grieving seventeen year old because he endures a traumatic experience at the age of 13. His 11 year old brother, Allie, dies of leukemia, and this affects Holden throughout the novel. It causes him to yearn for his innocence and childhood back because he wants to return to the stage in his life when there are no worries. He realizes that it is not realistic to become a child again, and he begins to accept the fact that he must grow up and set an example for his sister, Phoebe. Growing up with the loss of a close brother, Holden wants to be a protector of all innocence, and later in the novel, he begins to notice he must find a solution to his traumatic experiences in order to become successful in his lifetime.
In J.D. Sallinger's Catcher in the Rye, is based on the sullen life of Holden Caulfield, a 16-year-old teen-ager is trying to find his sense of direction. Holden, a growing adult, cannot accept the responsibilities of an adult. Eventually realizing that there is no way to avoid the adult life, he can only but accept this alternative lifestyle. What Holden describes the adult world as a sinful, corrupted life, he avoids it for three important reasons: His hatred towards phonies and liars, unable to accept adult responsibilities, and thirdly to enshrine his childhood youth.
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.
The novel “The Catcher in the Rye,” revolves around the protagonist Holden Caulfield as the story is told from his perspective. J.D. Salinger constructed Holden Caulfield as a cynical person who cannot accept to grow up. Throughout “The Catcher in the Rye,” J.D. Salinger uses symbolism to reveal and reinforce critical aspects of the protagonist Holden Caulfield. Three important aspects Holden acquired through Salinger’s use of symbolism are: his stubborn, uncompromising mentality; his softer, more caring respectful side; Holden’s cowardly way of acting and thinking.
Catcher in the Rye is one of the most famous books in American literature. Written by J. D. Salinger, it captures the epitome of adolescence through Salinger’s infamous anti-hero, Holden Caulfield. Holden Caulfield learns about himself and his negative tendencies, and realizes that if he does not do something to change his perspective, he may end up like his acquaintance James Castle whom he met at Elkton Hills. Holden tries to find help to mend his outlook on life through Mr. Antolini so he does not end up like James, who did not want to face the problems he created for himself. This is proven by the similarities between James Castle and Holden, Mr. Antolini’s willingness to try and help Holden, and Holden’s future being forecasted by James.
Holden Caulfield can be analyzed through his thoughts, actions and circumstances which surround his everyday life. Holden acts like a careless teenager. Holden has been to several prep-schools, all of which he got kicked out of for failing classes. After being kicked out of the latest, Pency Prep, he went off to New York on his own. Holden seems to have a motivation problem which apparently affects his reasoning. The basis of his reasoning comes from his thoughts. Holden thinks the world is full of a bunch of phonies. All his toughs about people he meets are negative. The only good thoughts he has are about his sister Phoebe and his dead brother Alley. Holden, perhaps, wishes that everyone, including himself, should be like his brother and sister. That is to be intelligent, real and loving. Holden’s problem is with his heart. It was broken when his brother died. Now Holden goes around the world as his fake self, wearing his mask. Holden is looking for love, peace and understanding. He is scared to love because he is afraid he might lose it like he did with his brother. That is the reason for Holden's love of the museum, he feels safe because it never changes it always stays the same. Holden is troubled with the pain of death, it effects every aspect of his life causing him to not care about the future, himself or anyone, except Phoebe and Alley.
Holden Caulfield is a typical depressive teenager that exhibits negative views about growing up. Depression is made up of many categories of symptoms, such as emotional, physical, behavioral, and how one perceives life. These symptoms, take over Holden, due to his lack of knowledge on how to control his feelings.
When Phoebe asks Holden what he wants to do with his life he replied. This reveals Holden’s fantasy of an idealistic childhood and his role as the guardian of innocence. Preventing children from “going over the cliff” and losing their innocence is his way of vicariously protecting himself from growing up as well. Holden acknowledges that this is “crazy,” yet he cannot come up with a different lifestyle because he struggles to see the world for how it truly is, and fears not knowing what might happen next. Holden’s “catcher in the rye” fantasy reflects his innocence, his belief in a pure, uncorrupted youth, and his desire to protect it. This fantasy also represents his disconnection from reality, as he thinks he can stop the process of growing up, yet he
Holden and the Complexity of Adult Life What was wrong with Holden, the main character in The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D.Salinger, was his moral revulsion against anything that was ugly, evil, cruel, or what he called "phoney" and his acute responsiveness to beauty and innocence, especially the innocence of the very young, in whom he saw reflected his own lost childhood. There is something wrong or lacking in the novels of despair and frustration of many writers. The sour note of bitterness and the recurring theme of sadism have become almost a convention, never thoroughly explained by the author's dependence on a psychoanalytical interpretation of a major character. The boys who are spoiled or turned into budding homosexuals by their mothers and a loveless home life are as familiar to us today as stalwart and dependable young heroes such as John Wayne were to an earlier generation. We have accepted this interpretation of the restlessness and bewilderment of our young men and boys because no one has anything better to offer.
In his novel Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger portrays childhood and adolescence as times graced by innocence when his protagonist, Holden Caulfield, is faced with the reality of becoming an adult. Holden’s desperation to maintain his innocence and the manner in which he critiques those he deems to have lost theirs, emphasizes his immaturity and ignorance while highlighting the importance the author places on childhood.
A family can be classified as one of many things. It can be a group of people living under one roof; a group of people of common ancestry; or even a unit of a crime syndicate like the Mafia (Merriam Webster). But to Holden Caulfield, the main character of J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher In The Rye, his family was what we as a society normally think of when that word is spoken. There are always variations on a theme, but a typical family consists of two parents and at least one child. During the 1950’s when the novel is set, adoption was virtually unheard of and divorce could be considered a sin where as today these are common practices. But one thing about family that has prevailed through the decades is the family’s affect on a person’s existence. The way a person interacts with their family can affect them for the rest of their lives. And the way a family interacts with a specific person can affect that person for the rest of their life. It is a two way relationship which is often complicated and confusing, especially to Holden.
In J.D. Salinger’s controversial 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, the main character is Holden Caulfield. When the story begins Holden at age sixteen, due to his poor grades is kicked out of Pencey Prep, a boys’ school in Pennsylvania. This being the third school he has been expelled from, he is in no hurry to face his parents. Holden travels to New York for several days to cope with his disappointments. As James Lundquist explains, “Holden is so full of despair and loneliness that he is literally nauseated most of the time.” In this novel, Holden, a lonely and confused teenager, attempts to find love and direction in his life. Holden’s story is realistic because many adolescent’s face similar challenges.
Some people feel all alone in this world, with no direction to follow but their empty loneliness. The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D Salinger, follows a sixteen-year-old boy, Holden Caulfield, who despises society and calls everyone a “phony.” Holden can be seen as a delinquent who smokes tobacco, drinks alcohol, and gets expelled from a prestigious boarding school. This coming-of-age book follows the themes of isolation, innocence, and corrupted maturity which is influenced from the author's life and modernism, and is shown through the setting, symbolism, and diction.
Unlike most teenage boys, Holden Caulfield always found himself asking the question, why his little brother died at such a young age. A question like this is not always the easiest to answer especially when nobody has an answer that is comforting. Sadly, a lot of people have to experience tragedies such as this, but it is very rare for people too handle the situation the way that Holden and his family did. No one wanted to deal with his mourning so he was sent to boarding school. Unfortunately this did not help his case at all, but only made him worse.