Holden Internal Conflict

993 Words2 Pages

Independent Reading Literary Analysis
The Catcher in the Rye is a coming-of-age fictional novel written by J.D Salinger in 1945. The novel is published by Little,Brown and Company and was published on July 16, 1951. The novel is considered a classic because it revolves around problems that most teenagers go through when growing up. The novel is a 234 page book about the main character's life in the present and the past.
The novel was set in the 1950s in Agerstown Pennsylvania and New York. The Catcher in the Rye introduces many different and unique people throughout the novel. The main characters in the novel are Holden Caulfield, Phoebe,D.B, and Allie. The protagonist in the book is Holden Caulfield and the antagonist in the book are the …show more content…

The internal conflict that Holden has is the grief he keeps feeling from his brother Allies passing away from leukemia three years ago and as he mentally keeps breaking down he keeps asking Allie to not let him disappear. The external conflict Holden has is he is always concerned with things that other people do not even care about. Another external conflict Holden has is with all of the profanity that is written in Phoebe’s school and thinks that it is intimidating to the little children who read it. The author uses first person, so the reader only knows the thoughts and feeling of Holden Caulfield.
The plot is very easy to follow but a little hard to understand. In the exposition, the readers are introduced to Holden, who is writing his story about what happened around last Christmas. He has just been expelled from Pencey a boarding school he went to and needs to spend some time before he goes back home to face his parents. Holden runs away from Pencey in the middle of the night to New York after having a fight with his roommate Stradlater which leads into the rising action. Holden meets many different people through his journey. When he is in the elevator of the hotel he is …show more content…

The novel has a very deep meaningful moral and many different symbols throughout the book. One symbol that was used often in the book was Holden's red hunting hat. His red hunting hat was a symbol of security for him because whenever he put on the red hunting hat he felt safe. “ I was sort of crying. I don't know why. I put on my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back,the way I liked it…” (Salinger 59). Another symbol in the novel is the profanity Holden sees everywhere. The profanity is a symbol of children losing their innocence when they are so young, this bothers Holden because he wants to stop the children from losing their innocence by becoming “the Catcher in the Rye”. The moral of the story is that everyone needs to be more like Holden's sister Phoebe who instead of telling him that he is going to face a lot of consequences if he runs away packs her bags to go with him because she knows that he is struggling and hurting in the

Open Document