Seeing the Truth: Ivan Ilych & Holden Caulfield
The quote, "To grasp the truth of one's self is perhaps the most difficult and important task a person faces in life. To the extent we fail to grasp the truth of who we are and how we fit in the larger world, we inevitably increase our suffering and the suffering of others,” illustrates a struggle faced by many around us and even protagonists in literature. Holden Caulfield from J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Ivan Ilych from Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych both struggle with this throughout their stories.
Holden Caulfield, a depressing sixteen year old boy roaming the streets of New York, was also faced with the struggle of acceptance. He tended to feel as if he needed to be
…show more content…
somebody else to impress the world and to fit in. This is seen with his taking up of fake names and identities such as Jim Steele and Rudolph Schmidt.
He used these pseudonyms to impress the world and to make himself feel like that in some way, he was fitting in and conforming to society’s standards for a sixteen year old boy. His failure to recognize his originality and the truth of who he was led him to fall deeper into a hole of mental health issues. Similar to Ivan’s hatred for his family, Holden harbored a hatred to the world and everything in it. He was lonely, suffocating in a world full of phony people with forced expressions and cruel intentions. Stradlater, a roommate of Holden’s who seemed to be a good friend, is one example of this. Later, the reader would find that he had taken advantage of Holden’s writing skills by making him write his composition while he was on a date with Jane Gallagher, who we later discoverwas taken advantage of by him. Another example of Holden’s failure of seeing the …show more content…
truth of who he is, is his obsession with the innocence of children and never growing up. Holden feels comfort when he is in the presence of his younger sister, Phoebe, as she often pulls him back into reality at times where he really needs it. An improvement in Holden’s attitude towards life is seen in the final moments of the novel, when he finally accepts that he is who is and that he couldn’t always be the “catcher in the rye.” From that point, Holden makes big changes in his life and even considers applying himself in school, something he wasn’t willing to do previously. Ivan Ilych too had trouble seeing the truth in his final days.
In his moments of suffering, he often questioned to what extent he had lived his life. The life Ivan lived was prestigious, perfect almost and he had spent much time alone, contemplating whether it was a good life or not. He gad grown used to isolating himself from his family and his pretentious wife, Praskovya by burying himself with work. Ivan claimed that work had been the one thing to give him happiness his whole life, and now he was questioning that. He realizes that he had been doing things in life simply for his own comfort and because it was what society believed a high class, aristocratic man was to do. His marriage to Praskovya, the purchase of his home in the city, and his choice of elegant furnishings all displayed that Ivan was trying his hardest to meet aristocratic standards. As Ivan’s health progressively got worse, and he turned more hostile towards his wife and family, he believed that they didn’t care for him and were disrupting his comfort and happiness with life. In his final moments, when he begins to see the light, he realizes that even though he lived an empty life without much appreciation towards his family, it was okay and that he was now ready to face death once and for all. With that came forgiveness of his wife and children for not being beside in his final days, and for leaving him lonely with only the company of Gerasim to sustain him. Ivan also felt immensely happy when he died
because he no longer feared death and he had finally made peace with himself and with his questionings of the life he lived. The struggle of facing the truth of who you are is often difficult and takes much time as we’ve seen in both books, but once it is found and understood, it brings happiness and joy to those seeking it and for others surrounding them. Both Ivan and Holden found this understanding and acceptance through different means but nevertheless still achieved contentment in their lives.
Holden is an outlier of society, and tries to hide his own weaknesses with his angry thoughts. It is also implied that Holden is enrolled in an institution as he talks about doctor appointments towards the beginning of the book.
As Eugene McNamara stated in his essay “Holden Caulfield as Novelist”, Holden, of J.D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye, had met with long strand of betrayals since he left Pencey Prep. These disappointments led him through the adult world with increasing feelings of depression and self-doubt, leading, finally to his mental breakdown.
On the darker and more atypical side of Holden Caulfield's character is the alarming mental health issues. Holden Cauldfield sadly has a plethora of these types of internal conflicts. Holden Caulfield is a pathological liar, “ If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even if somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. “(16). Holden is also constantly changing his name throughout the novel. Holden is sel...
Holden's idealism is first brought forth when he describes his life at Pency Prep. It is full of phonies, morons and bastards. His roommate, Stradlater, " was at least a pretty friendly guy, It was partly a phony kind of friendly..." (26) and his other roommate, Ackley is "a very nosy bastard" (33). Holden can't stand to be around either one of them for a very long time. Later, he gets into a fight with Stradlater over his date with Jane. Holden is upset because he thinks that Stradlater "gave her the time" and that he doesn't care about her; 'the reason he didn't care was because he was a goddam stupid moron. All morons hate it when you call them a moron' (44). Holden not only sees his roommates as phonies and bastards, but he also sees his headmaster at Pency Prep as a "phony slob" (3). This type of person is exactly what Holden doesn't want to be. He strives to be a mature adult; caring, compassionate, and sensitive.
... is apparent that he is a troubled young man through not only what is said and done, but what is also left as unspoken thoughts inside his mind. Holden Caulfield is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, mentally unstable. He is not classified as a "crazy person" or a "loon" but he is a young man who, as a child, had innocence and purity ripped away with no warning or mercy. Instead of reacting more positively and growing older at a young age, the tragedies caused him to year for the innocence of childhood that he knew in some dark corner of his mind had been long gone and was never returning regardless of how much faith and stubbornness he had.
Thesis: Holden Caufield is a hostile, negatively charged character that suffers from depression which stems from a desire not to grow up and a lack of closure in his brothers death."If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like . . . "(pg. 1) These first words that Holden Caufield communicates during his tell of events that brought him to his breakdown, show the pent up hostility that still lingers. This pattern of speech, the constant expression of negativity, is a character trait of Holden that shows his inner anguish.
A quote by Charles Kegel seems to adequately sum up the problems of Holden Caulfield: "Like Stephen Dedalus of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,Caulfield is in search of the Word. His problem is one of communication: as a teenager, he simply cannot get through to the adult world which surrounds him; as a sensitive teenager, he cannot get through others of his own age" (54).
It is profoundly moving and a disturbing book, but it is not hopeless. Holden Caulfield, sixteen years old and six feet two inches in height, narrates his own story from the time he was dismissed from his third private school to return, ill and in a state of physical and mental shock, to the shelter of his home in New York three days later.... ... middle of paper ... ...
This is the first psychiatric hospital admission for the patient, a 17 year-old male. The subject freely admitted himself to care at 13:00 hours on November 28, 1958. Mr. Holden Caulfield arrived at the hospital in the company of his parents--whose consent was necessary given Holden's legal status as a minor--and his younger sister Phoebe. His induction took place without any incident.
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.
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.
The Song Hurt is a promotional single featured on the album The Downward Spiral By Nine Inch Nails, released in 1994. The Downward Spiral tells the story of a man who psychologically breaks and begins a journey on a downward path to suicide, Hurt, the final song on the album, is his suicide note. Ultimately, feelings of worthlessness and the self destructive nature that Hold Caufield exhibits in the novel the Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger are akin to those Trent Reznor(lead singer of Nine Inch Nails) put into Hurt.
Upon introduction, Holden Caulfield gives the impression of being a textbook teenage boy. He argues that Pencey Prep, the all-boys academy at which he studied, is no greater than any other school and is “full of crooks.”(Salinger, 7) His harsh language only further argues that he is situated in an all-male environment and has no apparent filter for when swearing is inappropriate. Despite all of the indications that Holden is typical, it soon becomes evident that Holden’s personality does not conform to the teenage stereotype. Although he appears to have some friends, namely, his roommate, Stradlater, and ‘Ackley kid’, it is clear that he does not integrate well with his peer group. Holden’s inability to read social cues leaves him in the dust when all of his “friends” have matured enough to recognize his need for improvement. He is constantly making jokes out of everything without any thought as to how h...
Many songs are written for the audience to relate to them. In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger, the protagonist, Holden Caulfield - an adolescent male who refuses to enter the adult world-, has qualities similar to those portrayed inthrough the lyrics of the rock band, Green Day’s Basket Case. The novel circumducts around Holden Caulfield whose story inaugurates from a mental institution where he is currently enduring treatment for his emotional collapse and subsequently his expulsion from his school, Pencey Preparatory Academy. Holden is a despondent teenage boy in mourningsuffering from the bereavement of his younger brother Allie, who died ofwas taken by leukemia when Holden was thirteen. Holden narrates his reclusive
Holden Caulfield, a young boy in his teenage years who lives without his parents alone in a dorming school without any real friends must figure out how he can survive through a world full of “phonies” when he himself has become tainted as well. “A combination of strong vocabulary and the creation of a strong-acid-behavior character was the best formula for a legend to be born: Holden Caulfield became the “older brother” for many adolescents who did not have anyone to turn to, a kind of partner, fellow friend. Caulfield and his existentialistic problems showed the whole world how tough and tiring being a teenager could be” (Pinto 7). Although there are many parts in the book that might make Caulfield seem disapproving such as, “I’M THE MOST terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful,” or “I kept walking around the room, waiting for this prostitute to show up. I kept hoping she’d be good-looking. I didn’t care too much, though. I sort of just wanted to get it over with,” it is important to know why Caulfield acted the way he did (Salinger 16 and