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Intoxication with Innocence Adolescence a period of life when a child develops from a child into an adult. It is the stage of development in which psychological changes occur and efforts towards creating an identity begin. Clearly, it is an emotionally straining and stressful period. In The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger we are introduce to an adolescence boy. From first impressions would let one to believe Holden Caulfield is just any other teenager going through a phase of rebellion. The truth of the matter is that Holden’s angst arises from a deeper problem. He detains himself from accepting adulthood and latches on to a perfection that results from child-like innocence. By gripping on to the idea of maintaining permanent innocence Holden becomes a more than a rebellious teenager, he becomes lost and further problems emerge. According to Jonathan Baumbach Holden hungers for a wise and benevolent authority (467). He seeks direction from the adults that surround him but only finds disillusion. The relationship between Holden and his parents is not very defined throughout the book. Holden only speaks of his father with criticism and judgement toward his profession as a lawyer. Since he is not accepting of this father’s conformity with society, Holden is left without a father figure he can truly call ideal. Baumbach states that Holden seeks out Mr. Antolini as a substitute father. He sees Mr. Antolin as his last resort after all the other adults in his life, including his father, failed him. He hopes a substitute father will be able to pick him up before he is fallen (463). Holden also seeks a maternal figure to serve as a possible savior. According to Baumbach, “His attraction to older women suggests that... ... middle of paper ... ... him to insanity. When one does not stand for something, one is bound to fall for anything. Because Holden lacked paternal figures in his life or a greater influence he took the idea of innocence as his mantra. His need to find an identity led him to find a role model in children, which led him to believe permanent innocence would mean happiness and sanity. He held on to his idea and sought out to find innocence in the dimmest of places. His intoxication with this idea and his disappointing encounters with adults ensure him that nothing but corruption is found once a child grows up. He rejected the idea of adulthood and created further problems for himself. In the process of this well-intentioned plan, Holden loses the little of himself he had. He is left standing only with a hunger for innocence. Because, to him, innocence is all and love is innocence.
To conclude, Holden try’s desperately on holding on to his innocents. Triggered by the loss of his brother, Holden makes it his mission to protect kids from there inevitable maturity, sealing them from phony’s and. When he realised that he could not achieve the qoel of saving all children from growing up Holden has a nervous breakdown. He dosint understand the proses of life ad he can’t pick to stay a child for ever when in reality growing up is inevitable. ‘’We've let the blade of our innocence dull over time, and it's only in innocence that you find any kind of magic, any kind of courage.”
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... ...
Holden madly wants to protect the innocence and purity of childhood, but of course cannot. After the death of Allie, Holden’s brother, he wants to save others from what was painfully taken away from him. Holden desperately tries to protect children from losing their purity, to protect them from the same ...
In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden’s outlook in life is either the innocence of childhood or the cruelty of adulthood. He believes that the innocence of childhood is very valuable and it should be protected from the cruelty and phoniness of the adult world. Therefore Holden has a desire and is compelled to protect a child’s innocence at all costs. This is revealed when Holden tells Phoebe that he wants to be the catcher in the rye. Holden says to Phoebe, “What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they’re ru...
...oes want them to turn into “phonies.” Holden seeks for a peaceful and uncorrupt world but he cannot obtain that due to the actions of others. Despite Holden’s attitude and outlook on life, he is quite passionate. Although he is a firm pessimist, calling every person he comes across a “phony,” there is an alternate side to him. In his interaction with Phoebe and the other children in the book, he tries to protect them from the rest of society, since children are still naïve and pure. It is justifiable why Holden craves to preserve the innocence of others. For most of us, growing up, we begin to understand more. We start to look at life in a different perspective, different from the one we did when we were young, but as a person who has seen and experienced more in life.
In essence, Holden’s individual loss of innocence from his own experiences leads to his desire to prevent it from happening to other children. The deaths of Allie and James give Holden a new perspective of the world and also introduce the concept of suicide, which he deliberates over multiple times. Holden’s view on death causes him to slowly mature into adulthood, making him to leave his ideal of living forever in his childhood. Nevertheless, Holden does not want things around him to change in order to preserve the innocence in children and tries to rid messages that would cause children to worry and mature. Yet, the change and descent into maturity is inevitable, and Holden learns of the importance of encountering the harsh realities of life.
Ultimately, Holden Caulfield’s decisions were incredibly based on his yearning for innocence in life when it is slowly fading away from the world. The audience feels sympathy towards Holden because they know Holden’s past years have been traumatizing with his brother’s death and his moving of schools. The audience knows now that Holden’s alienation is because he does not want to lose his or anyone’s innocence. Thus, the overall lesson is that one cannot prevent another person to do what they want to do, and if they fall, let them.
J.D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye depicts a short span in the life of a
Holden cannot accept the loss of innocence as a step into the growing up process. The ones that he loves most, are those who are younger to him, they are innocent, and untouched by society’s truths. Holden says, “…I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around-nobody big. I mean – except me.
Holden is a teenage character who has suffered a lot in his life. He has suffered a lot. He doesn?t care about anybody other than his sister, Phoebe. He did not like the adulthood because he thought that every adult was a phony. Holden thinks that when people lie, they are being phony.
Growing up is something that everyone experiences, and along with growing up comes the loss of innocence. In J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist Holden Caulfield wishes to be the “catcher in the rye” so that he can preserve the innocence of individuals. As Holden travels the streets of New York City, he realizes how ugly the adult world really is. As a troubled teenage boy, Holden does not want to grow up but soon concludes that he cannot stop himself from this process. Because of Holden’s belief that the adult world is full of phonies, his brother Allie’s death, and the loss of his own innocence, Holden feels compelled to protect the innocence of the people around him.
Part of the irony in Holden’s story is that physically, he looks mature, but mentally, he is still very much a child: “I act quite young for my age, sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I’m seventeen now … I’m six foot two and a half and I have gray hair ” (9). There is no middle ground, adolescence, for Holden. He can only be an adult, physically, or a child, mentally. Holden’s history teacher, Mr. Spencer, tries to appeal to him by using a metaphor: “Life is a game, boy.
To begin with, Holden’s love for the innocence and purity of childhood makes him very hesitant to transition into an adult life. Generally, he finds children to be straightforward, easygoing, and simply pure in every way. This is because they always say what they mean, and never try to set a false façade for...
The two worlds of childhood and adulthood are not as separate as Holden thinks they are. He cuts himself off from the rest of the world by judging others around him, mostly adults. In the book it says, “ What I liked about her, she didn’t give you a lot of horse manure about what a great guy her father was. She probably knew what a phony slob he was.” (Pg 3). The book starts off with him judging an adult that he barely knows. Holden is physically an adult, but in his mind, he is only a child. He can relate to a child better than he can with an