Salinger employs a multitude of narrative devices in order to reveal and craft Holden’s mood as he narrates. Throughout this excerpt, Holden is portrayed as being in a despondent mood as walks through Central Park, drunk due to drinking during the night. He has reached a point in his destructive depression where he no longer maintains the will to live. Salinger crafts this scene with specific details in a chronological order to reveal Holden’s mood as being despondent. The excerpt begins with Holden breaking the record he bought for Phoebe, initially depicting Holden’s despondent mood as he “damn near cried” (170) due to the event. By specifically depicting that Holden nearly came to crying due to the small event of the record-breaking, Salinger building the fragile state of Holden’s mind that has left him in a despondent mood. Everything bad that can happen in the world is occurring …show more content…
to Holden in his view and he has lost all hope for a better life.
Thus, Salinger is directly introducing Holden’s despondent mood at the beginning of the passage and continues to build it as the passage continues. This becomes prevalent as Holden begins to throw coins on the lake in Central Park even though he is close to having no money left to spend. He claims that he doesn't “know why [he] did it, but [he] did” (173), illustrating the despondent mood that Holden, the narrator, possesses. His lack of caring expresses the helplessness that Holden feels as he has lost the will to live, due to his life never working out correctly. Moreover, Salinger specifically picks coins as Holden is similar to them in that no one truly cares about them and will allow for them to be wasted away. That the only thing Holden has control over are his actions, but even this ability lacks the power to change Holden’s life. Finally, Salinger finishes carving Holden’s despondent mood as he reaches the point where he has accepted his death but worries how it
will affect Phoebe if he “got pneumonia and died” (173). Salinger thus completes the chronological order of the passage as he has stacked event on event that has built up Holden’s despondent mood. Through this he has presented the deterioration of Holden’s will to live, accepting his death, and reaching the despondent mood present throughout the excerpt. In addition, Salinger produces repetition with imagery weaved in as means to heighten the despondent mood that Holden expresses throughout the excerpt. As Holden was searching for the lake in Central Park he crafts the loneliness that surrounds him that as he is “walking and walking, and it kept getting darker and darker and spookier and spookier” (170). Through repetition Holden produces visual imagery, establishing the setting of his journey through Central Park. That the increasing darkness correlates with Holden having a despondent mood as the light of hope at the end of the tunnel is just getting dimmer and will be nowhere to be found by Holden by the time he reaches the end of the tunnel. Likewise, as Holden describes a visit to Allie’s grave, he repeats “it rained” (172), building his despondent mood that dominates the narration of the scene. Holden is unable to understand why it had to rain on Allie’s tomb since he never did anything. He is unable to handle the fact that other people are able to leave cemetery to leave, unlike Allie who is stuck there in his grave. Thus, his despondent mood becomes present as he lacks the ability to control the weather or other people’s action highlighting the lack of control over his life. That he no longer maintains the will to live, as he sees no point in it and will no longer put up with the phony people that plague society.
In J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in The Rye Salinger writes about the main character Holden Caulfield and his life. Holden is a teenager who comes from a wealthy family, he loves his family and lives very happy until the death of his brother Allie. After his brother died Holden becomes troubled, being kicked out of school again and again developing a negative view of the world. Holden throughout the book shows anger,denial, and acceptance over the loss of his brother.
Salinger’s view of the world is lived out thought Holden – his persona. The novel is Holden’s steam of conscience as he is talking to a psychoanalyst “what would an psychoanalyst do…gets you to talk…for one thing he’d help you to recognise the patterns of your mind”. At the start of the novel it is addressed directly to us “if you really want to hear about it”. This gives us a sense of reality as though it is us that is the psychiatrist. We see the random thought patterns of Holden’s mind as he starts to feel more comfortable, Holden goes off on to many different tangents while he is talking. Salinger is using Holden as a type of easy way out to confess his view of the world.
He also adds, "I wasn’t feeling sleepy or anything, but I was feeling sort of lousy. Depressed and all, I almost wished I was dead," (90). Holden states this during one of the first nights that he is staying in New York. Holden expresses many thoughts of depression. Compulsive lying is another characteristic that Holden exhibits.
The first way J.D. Salinger shows that Holden’s depression is not only affecting him, but also the people around him, is...
The way that Salinger writes gives the audience a very personal and insightful look into what Holden is feeling. It’s told in the first person, in a confessional style, and utilises digression. This creates a sense of closeness with the protagonist. It’s like Holden is talking directly to the reader.
He comes to some realizations, but nothing that makes him less pessimistic, making him a shining example of how being immoderately idealistic can disrupt your expectations for the world. It is glaringly clear that Salinger purposely portrayed Holden as a mess in order to show off the flaws of setting expectations above the healthy dose. If you only accept people without flaws and never leave room for air, you will always be
Published in 1951, J. D. Salinger's debut novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was one of the most controversial novels of its time. The book received many criticisms, good and bad. While Smith felt the book should be "read more than once" (13), Goodman said the "book is disappointing" (21). All eight of the critics had both good and bad impressions of the work. Overall, the book did not reflect Salinger's ability due to the excessive vulgarity used and the monotony that Holden imposed upon the reader.
Salinger continues his use of installing reality in fiction by Holden’s hospitalization. The reader finds out within the first chapter that Holden is being hospitalized due to a recent mental breakdown (Salinger). Interestingly enough, Salinger was also hospitalized shortly after his combat in WWII for his mental breakdown (Biography). Clearly, Salinger was making a major connection to himself through Holden by giving his character his
Some phrases are merely embodiments of his everyday mannerisms, such as the suffixation ‘and all’. However, certain key words and phrases provide insight into Holden’s thought process. For instance, consider Holden’s constant assertion that he is truthful in his own speech: “I was personally acquainted with at least two girls he gave the time to. That’s the truth” (Salinger 63). In this quote, Holden rejects the idea that he may be embellishing his story for dramatic effect. Likewise, Holden feels compelled to remind the reader that he is impartial and genuine in his observations, as if to attest to both the reader and himself that he is not—and cannot be—phony. In the face of mounting circumstantial evidence that he is a phony (e.g. lying, refusing to call Jane Gallagher, etc.), his repeated insistence otherwise demonstrates Holden’s inability to come to terms with himself. This idea is further exemplified in the pivotal carousel scene, “I felt so damn happy all of a sudden . . . I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth. I don’t know why” (Salinger 275). This scene, commonly understood as one of resolve, portrays Holden’s incapacity to identify why he reacted a certain way, yet he continues to insist that he is telling the truth. Even in entirely positive moments, Holden still lacks the introspection necessary to truly reflect on himself, creating a dichotomy for
The narrative allows the reader to be exposed to Holden Caulfield’s mind to form a psychoanalytical perspective and emphasize how he goes through many experiences. An example of when Holden went through a violent outburst is when his brother, Allie passed away. “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.” (Salinger 39). This citation is meaningful and clearly shows what kind of person Holden becomes. He was very close with his brother Allie and that mentally broke him. He had a very strong and sad mental breakdown in the moment that affected his futu...
From the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, the youthful protagonist Holden Caufield, employs the word “phony” to describe the behavior of a number of characters including Mr. Spencer and Ossenburger, however it is not them who are“phony”, it is the young main character. First, Mr. Spencer, Holden’s ex- history teacher, is not described as phony, but according to the adolescent, his choice of words are. Secondly, according to our main character, Ossenburger is not the generous philanthropist he portrays himself to be, but rather a greedy undertaker. Lastly, the protagonist could quite possibly be the authentic phony. All in all, the main character’s use to describe many other characters in the book is with the single word phony, when in fact the word phony would be the most probable word to describe the lead character.
Holden is a pessimistic, remote, and miserable character and he expresses this attitude through dialogue, tone, and diction. Throughout the book he has remained to be a liar, a failure, a loner, and lastly, a suicidal guy who feels like he has no purpose in life. Perhaps Salinger expressed his perceptions and emotions of his teen years in this book and it was a form of conveying his deep inner feelings of his childhood. Readers can see this clearly shown in The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger.
The overcoming of his psychological obstacles does not obstruct his learning, it molds and transitions him to an adult. Salinger manifests these obstacles when Holden is feeling miserable and depressed when thinking about his brother who had passed away, Allie. “Boy, I felt miserable. I felt so depressed, you can’t imagine. What I did, I started talking, sort of out loud, to Allie” (98).
First off, Salinger utilizes Holden’s interactions with others to highlight how easily and unreasonably Holden gets irritable. As Holden engages in conversation with three women in
Jerome David Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is a truly unique novel in terms of writing style. The story is told in a second person narrative style by a character named Holden Caulfield, and is written loosely in a fashion known as 'stream of consciousness writing'.