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Innocence in american literature
Character analysis of Holden Caulfield
Analysis of holden caufield character
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Teenagers eventually have to face the harsh, vile reality of growing up. Others however try to retain their innocence. In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger portrays Holden Caulfield, the main character, as a teen who wants to hold onto, and is obsessed with, childhood innocence. Because of this, he sets out to protect people from the corruption of the world. This “desire” to protect is important to Holden’s life as it stems from his brother Allie who died at a young age, and because he himself has lost his innocence and despises all things “phony” (Holden’s term for individuals that are not genuine or have lost their innocence). In addition, his desire to be a protector leads him to realise that change is not only inevitable, but also …show more content…
necessary. In conclusion, Holden’s desire to protect others is significant to his life as it stems from his younger brothers death, loss of his innocence, and because it leads to great change in his character. As a child, Holden experiences the death of a loved one.
Holden’s younger brother, Allie, contracts and dies from leukemia, at the age of eleven when Holden was thirteen. This very death is the catalyst of Holden’s desire to protect the innocent. Holden, enraged over the loss of his much-loved brother, breaks his hand destroying the windows in his garage. I slept in the garage that night when he died, and I broke all the goddamn windows with my fist… I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon… but my hand was already broken and everything by that time (Salinger 39) To Holden, Allie is the biggest, most important representation of the death of innocence. Holden praises Allie immensely, calling him the most intelligent and nicest member of the family, on several occasions. Resulting from the death of his brother, Holden experiences a change in his perception of society. The only people that Holden finds pure are children, like Allie, whereas he finds adults “phony” and corrupt. Because of this Holden tries to protect children from maturing as he believes this will stop them from becoming corrupt. As a result, Holden’s desire to protect the pure is important to his life as it arises from the death of his brother Allie. Holden’s youth however, also plays a role in his desire to
protect. The Catcher in the Rye is almost like a “backwards coming of age story” as Holden has already crossed the border from innocent to tainted before the start of the book, and is now trying to revert back to an innocent state. Holden does this because he obsesses over innocence and hates all things phony. When talking with his younger sister, Phoebe, Holden proclaims his desire to protect others: I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all...nobody's around—nobody big, I mean—except me.What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy. (Salinger 173) The field of rye symbolizes childhood innocence, whilst the cliff represents the fall into adulthood and maturity. Holden “catches” the children, as he doesn’t want them to struggle with and fall into the corrupted world of adulthood like he has. Holden has experienced many detriments as a maturing individual, witnessing the ugliness of the adult world first-hand. For example, Holden’s encounter with a prostitute, which leaves him beaten up and robbed. Holden believes that by preventing their maturity and by retaining their innocence, he is protecting them from terrible experiences. Though Holden tries to protect people from the struggle and pain he has experienced in the past, he ultimately realizes that the pain is very much needed. Holden spends most of the book chasing his aspiration to shield the innocent. This aspiration, however, leads to his biggest change as a character. Near the end of the book, Holden takes his little sister, Phoebe, to a park, where she goes to ride on a carousel. When on the carousel, she tries to grab a ring, with the potential to fall and Holden remarks: The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the golden ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it’s bad if you say anything. (Salinger 211) Instead of protecting Phoebe from the possibility of falling, Holden allows her to ride on the carousel; a complete turn in character. This acceptance indicates the realisation for Holden, that Phoebe must be able to live her own life and take risks. Holden now realises the importance and inevitability of growing up. This mentality completely parallels Holden from the beginning of the text. Thusly, Holden’s desire to protect the pure is important to his life as it brings about the most impactful change in his life. In conclusion, Holden is someone who cares about, and wants to protect, the innocent. This desire is significant to his life, as it stems from the death of his younger brother, his own tribulations in life, and because Holden’s aspiration ultimately brings about the most important and impactful change as a character. For these aforementioned reasons, Holden’s desire to protect the innocence is significant to his life.
Holden Caulfield values his brother, Allie. When Allie died of Leukemia on July 19, 1946, Holden was left devastated. However, Holden always thought that Allie was the most interesting person that he has ever met. Allie was one person that Holden mentions that he loves in the novel. When Holden’s younger sister Phoebe asks Holden what he likes he says, “I like Allie” (171). Holden hides or at least does not want to join the world because of Allie’s death. He cannot come to terms with himself to see that Allie’s death has nothing to do with how he should live his own life. Holden carries A...
Allie, Holden's young brother who died several years earlier, was a major symbol throughout the story. When Holden remembers incidents from his past involving Allie, his attitude changes, such as when he writes the composition about Allie's baseball glove or when Holden broke his hand after punching all of the windows after Allie died. "I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it". (39) He feels that Allie was one of the few people who were not phony in a world full of phonies. More importantly, Allie represents the innocence and childhood that Holden strives to find throughout his three-day journey. In Holden's opinion, Allie represents the purity that Holden looks for in the world. Holden admits that he admires Allie more than he admires Jesus, and even prays to Allie at one point, rather than Jesus. Allie is Holden's role model, whom he judges the rest of the world according to. When Allie dies, it creates turbulence in Holden's life.
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.
Holden’s apparent desire to be separated from the majority of his family and friends appears to have been triggered by the death of his younger brother Allie. From Allie’s there has been a downward spiral in Holden’s relationships, as he begins to avoid contact with others and isolate himself more. The reason I believe this is because we can see how immense his anger is after Allie’s death, ‘I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist’. The death of Allie has become like an awakening to Holden, and has alerted him how precious childhood innocence is, when Holden comes to this realisation he convinces himself to do everything within his power to protect the innocence of himself and those around him, to protect them from what he sees as a false adult world. Although Holden clearly fails to protect himself, as he falls into all sorts of situations which hardly boasts of innocence and virt... ...
S.N. Behrman, in his review for The New Yorker, also took a sharp look at Holden's personality. Behrman found Caulfield to be very self-critical, as he often refers to himself as a terrible liar, a madman, and a moron. Holden is driven crazy by phoniness, an idea under which he lumps insincerity, snobbery, injustice, callousness, and a lot more. He is a prodigious worrier, and someone who is moved to pity quite often. Behrman wrote: "Grown men sometimes find the emblazoned obscenities of life too much for them, and leave this world indecorously, so the fact that a 16-year old boy is overwhelmed should not be surprising" (71). Holden is also labeled as curious and compassionate, a true moral idealist whose attitude comes from an intense hatred of hypocrisy. The novel opens in a doctor's office, where Holden is recuperating from physical illness and a mental breakdown. In Holden's fight with Stradlater, his roommate, he reveals his moral ideals: he fears his roommate's sexual motives, and he values children for their sincerity and innocence, seeking to protect them from the phony adult society. Jane Gallagher and Allie, the younger brother of Holden who died at age 11, represent his everlasting symbols of goodness (Davis 317).
Have you ever pondered about when growing up, where does our childlike innocence go and what happens to us to go through this process? It involves abandoning previous memories that are close to our hearts. As we can see in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, we listen to what the main character; Holden Caulfield has to say about it. Holden is an average teenager dealing with academic and life problems. He remains untouched over his expulsion from Pencey Prep; rather, he takes the opportunity to take a “vacation.” As he ventures off companionless in New York City, we are able to observe many things about him. We see that Holden habitually states that he is depressed and undoubtedly, wants to preserve the innocence of others.
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.
However, his feelings suggest that the true reason for his depression is his loss of innocence. When he was 13 years old, he lost his little brother Allie to leukemia. Allie meant a lot to Holden. He even became a symbol in the book. Allie is the one who keeps Holden from falling off the cliff, he’s the reason that he hasn’t lost his innocence yet.
Holden’s little brother, Allie, also influences a lot on him. For example, Holden states, “…You’d have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent…He was also the nicest member of the family in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody…” Holden always thinks of his brother Allie as a good and intelligent boy. When Holden thinks about Allie, Holden shows his love for him and how much he likes him. Another important scene is when Holden says, “…I kept walking and walking up Fifth Avenue…Then all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening. Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I’d never get to the other side of the street.
Innocence lies within everyone in at least one point in their lives, but as reality consumes them, that purity begins to vanish slowly as they learn new experiences. In the coming of age novel set in the nineteen-forties, J.D Salinger writes about a sixteen-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield who stands between a road that separates childhood from adulthood and is confused about which path to take. On a three-day trip in New York away from his family and fellow peers at school, Holden encounters many situations in which lead him to think twice about who he wants to become and how he wants to guide others who are in the same situation he is in. In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D Salinger utilizes symbolism, vivid imagery, and slangy diction to expose Holden’s struggle to preserve the innocence of the people that he loves while alienating himself from the adult world he calls “phony.”
Holden has a near obsession with the death of his younger brother Allie, who died at age thirteen due to leukemia. Holden had punched and broke all the windows in the garage out of anger; he says that his hands still hurt from the incident. Throughout the novel, Holden dwells on Allies’ death. From Holden's thoughts, it is obvious that he loves and misses Allie. In order to hold on to his brother and to minimize the pain of his loss, Holden brings Allie's baseball mitt along with him where ever he goes. The mitt has additional meaning and significance for Holden because Allie had written poetry, which Holden reads, from the baseball mitt. Towards the end of the book, Holden proves again that he can’t cope with death. Phoebe, his younger sister, is putting him on the spot by asking him what he likes, but Holden can only think of two nuns and a boy, James W. Castle. James W. Castle was a boy who Holden had lent his sweater to, Castle died unfortunately by being thrown out of a window wearing Holden’s sweater. Another thing that haunts Holden is the fact that during roll call in class, his last name always is called after Castles’ last name. After the brief moment of reminiscing, Holden irritates Phoebe by saying, “I like Allie…”. He has trouble acknowledging the death of his brother.
In J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, the main character Holden Caufield believes that innocence is corrupted by society. He exposes his self-inflicted emotional struggles as he is reminiscing the past. For Holden, teenage adolescence is a complicated time for him, his teenage mentality in allows him to transition from the teenage era to the reality of an adult in the real world. As he is struggling to find his own meaning of life, he cares less about others and worries about how he can be a hero not only to himself but also to the innocent youth. As Holden is grasping the idea of growing up, he sets his priorities of where he belongs and how to establish it. As he talks about how ‘phony’ the outside world is, he has specific recollections that signify importance to his life and he uses these time and time again because these memories are ones that he wont ever let go of. The death of his younger brother Allie has had a major impact on him emotionally and mentally. The freedom of the ducks in Central Park symbolize his ‘get away’ from reality into his own world. His ideology of letting kids grow up and breaking the chain loose to discover for themselves portrays the carrousel and the gold ring. These are three major moments that will be explored to understand the life of Holden Caufield and his significant personal encounters as he transitions from adolescence into manhood.
Growing up and becoming mature can be an intimidating experience; it is difficult to let go of one’s childhood and embrace the adult world. For some people, this transition from youthfulness to maturity can be much more difficult than for others. These people often try to hold on to their childhood as long as they can. Unfortunately, life is not so simple. One cannot spend their entire life running from the responsibilities and hardships of adulthood because they will eventually have to accept the fact that they have a role in society that they must fulfill as a responsible, mature individual. The novel “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger follows the endeavours of Holden Caulfield, a sixteen-year-old teenage boy who faces a point in his life where he must make the transition from childhood to adulthood. In an attempt to retain his own childhood, he begins hoping to stop other young children from growing up and losing their innocence as well. As indicated by the title, “The Catcher in the Rye” is a book that explores a theme involving the preservation of innocence, especially of children. It is a story about a boy who is far too hesitant to grow up, and feels the need to ensure that no one else around him has to grow up either. His own fear of maturity and growing up is what leads to Holden’s desire to become a “catcher in the rye” so he can save innocent children from becoming part of the “phoniness” of the adult world.
The way Holden speaks about him just portrays how much he meant to him. One of the first things he says about Allie is “He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. […] God, he was a nice kid, though. He used to laugh so hard at something he thought of at the dinner table that he just about fell off his chair”(Salinger 38). Holden seems to connect innocence to Allie and he feels like his was taken away from him when he passed away. The more Holden speaks about his brother the better it makes him feel because instead of drowning in the pool of despair he constantly feels he is in, he can look back on a happier time and feel some sort of relief. Some think that “Holden does not refuse to grow up so much as he agonizes over the state of being grown up”(Galloway 79-80). Some of the hesitancy he has over growing up stems from his childhood, he had been so naive to all the horrors of the world and he had fresh eyes to view life with but after the death of Allie his mind seemed to almost stop growing with him and everything that “normal” kids would want to do as they grew older seemed to become very hard for him like how he could never follow through with a sexual act with anyone no matter who it was. Allies dying stunted Holden’s growth in all ways because he just wanted to
True innocence is defined as the absence of experience; where one is pure and trusts the idealism of the world. More often than not, this innocence is shattered as one gains insight into the reality of mankind. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D Salinger, along with, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz, questions the innocence of reality through the eyes of both Holden Caulfield and Oscar Wao respectively. Holden’s quest to see the true reality of the adult world is shaped by the influence of his sister, Phoebe and the people he encounters during his journey. In comparison, Oscar’s teenage years of life create struggle by convincing him he does not fit the required stereotype necessary to live a happy life. Through eye opening experiences