Similarities Between Catcher In The Rye And Into The Wild

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Society, the great living community that gives us the guidelines and general way to live, some say it is corrupt and some find a way out of it to live a humble life elsewhere, but for the few unfortunate they can be rejected from society on the basis that they can not fit in. Society’s cruel margins and rigorous standards are laid out thoroughly in J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye and the film Into the Wild through the experiences of Holden Caulfield and Chris McCandless while they venture farther and farther from those standards that are all followed in society. Everyone is born into society and grow up expected to conform, but for these boys conforming to society would mean giving up who they really are. Holden seems to be the …show more content…

Chris and Holden both agree that wealth is not the priority or helping their social well being, as Chris literally burns his money in an act to be less cautious, Holden is depressed by wealth’s way of dividing people. Before the longest stretch of Chris’s journey he burned his cash in a bonfire because “money [and] power is an illusion”, his distaste and rejection of money is also seen when Chris comments that his trip became “too easy” with money that he earned from working(Krakauer). The pent up anger towards money and wealth came from his father and mother’s life style of well off business people, all the money they earned or married into made them corrupt and bad parents for Chris and his sister. Another line of his was that “money made people too cautious”, the cautiousness that Chris mentions is the way someone is caution of losing the money they have, without that money people are less “cautious” and they can really live so Chris is really saying that money is holding everyone back from living their lives(Krakauer). Though Chris comes out purely against wealth and money, Holden follows suite with suddeler tactics by sharing his discomfort with money. Holden remarks “That depressed me. I hate it if I'm eating bacon and eggs or something and somebody else is only eating toast and coffee,” he is depressed because of someone else's lesser status than him which correlates with his wealth hiddering him and causing unnecessary “conflict” for lack of a better word(Salinger 122). There was also Holden’s story about his old room mate that had a cheaper bag than his, he ends on a negative note because the bags got in the way of a possible friend. Since wealth in society is so important, for Holden and Chris to resent it will not yield complete acceptance into society. Chris

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