The teenage years of an individual’s life can be different for everyone. Being a teenager comes with an excessive amount of stress and high expectations. In addition, being a teenager often involves having an open - mind. When teens have free spirits, they usually do not consider the consequences or results of their actions. In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is a great example of the average teenager. Holden is directionless, and he continuously shows us how unpredictable his day will be. For example, one day he starts off his day on a field trip to New York for his school’s fencing match and ends the day in a hotel room with a prostitute. If Holden had listened to Polonius’s advice in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, …show more content…
In William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, Polonius tells his son, Laertes, to “be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar”(Hamlet 1.3.67). In this piece of advice, Polonius explains to Laertes that in life when he is meeting new people, it is acceptable to become familiar with a new person, but he should not get too comfortable with the person and go overboard with his personality or actions. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden completely did not adhere to Polonius’s guidance about meeting new people. While Holden chills at The Lavender Room, he began giving these “three witches at the next table the eye” (Salinger 78). Eventually he ends up talking to the girls, and he dances with them. While he dances with this one girl, Bernice, he could barely stop himself from “sort of giving her a kiss on the top of her dopey head”, and he oversteps the boundary with Bernice (Salinger 80). Holden offends Bernice when he kisses her head because she did not want to be intimate with Holden. Since Polonius’s advice is about how an individual should be familiar around new people and should not become too comfortable, Holden did exactly what Polonius tells him not to do. If Holden had listened to Polonius’s advice, he would have not kissed Bernice because he knows that is …show more content…
Letting someone borrow something almost always ends in conflict with the person or yourself. For example, when my sister borrows my shoes, we always end up arguing because she spills something on my shoes or gets them all muddy. In the play, Hamlet, one of the pieces of advice that Polonius gives to his son, Laertes, is to be “neither a borrower nor lender be, for loan oft loses the both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry”, which means do not borrow something or lend something to a person because it often leads to conflict with the person or yourself. In addition, the person is technically using the other individual’s money because the person that lended the object the other individual bought the good with their own money. In the part of The Catcher in the Rye, where Holden decides he has to leave his house before his mom sees him, he asks his little sister, Phoebe, for money because he is broke. Phoebe only has “ Christmas dough for presents and all” and Holden “didn’t want to take her Christmas dough” because that is all the money she has and she has been saving up her money for a while (Salinger 197). In this example, Polonius was right because all though Phoebe did not mind lending her Christmas money to Holden; Holden feels bad about taking the money and is left battling with his thoughts and emotions. In addition, Phoebe and Holden did argue for a little bit
Since Holden was isolated from his family, in order to not get hurt again he tries to find hypocrisy in people to stop himself from trusting others. Holden feels isolated after being sent to a boarding school that “was full of phonies” by his parents (Salinger 90). Salinger’s message to the audience with this quote is that when
Again, this is one of the few people that Holden likes and doesn’t consider a phony like everyone else. He talks highly of her and he sees himself in her in the way that she alternates between behaving like an adult and behaving like a child, the way he says he also does. It bothered him greatly when she asks him if he “got the ax again,” referring to his expulsion. She starts asking him questions about his future and what he likes (if he likes anything at all) and it forces him to wake up. Everyone has been telling Holden to realize his situation and put more effort into schoolwork and relationships and to start caring. Holden’s reality is very simple: he wants to be the catcher in the rye to protect children’s innocence and stop them from growing up because all adults are phonies. Again and again, being told that that isn’t plausible annoys him. He feels betrayed, when his own sister, someone who he thought would understand him, joins everyone else in telling him to put forth more
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 Caulfield is a sixteen-year-old who explores New York City after he is expelled from his prep school (Salinger). He cannot return back home because he is afraid of his parents’ response and takes no responsibility for his actions whatsoever. Holden hates the adult world, where he calls all adults “phonies.” In his world, one can’t go back to childhood, but one can’t grow up because that will make one a phony (Bloom, The Catcher in the Rye 124). Holden is stuck in between a world, where he doesn’t want to remain a child or grow up into the adult he is expected to become. According to Chen, Holden fears the “complexity, unpredictability, conflict, and change” of the adult world. He occasionally acts like an adult, when he hires a prostitute (Salinger 119), checks into a hotel room (Salinger 79), and takes care of his sister, Phoebe. As a result of Holden’s immense fear of growing up, he tends to partake in childish tendencies, such as wearing a bright red hunting hat. These actions are his way of isolating and protecting himself. Holden is stuck in his own little world. These actions are very immature; Holden does not accept the adult world for what it is. He needs human contact, care, and love, but he has built a barrier, preventing himself from these interactions (Chen). He also acts like a child by acting out “pretend” scenarios even when no one is
In J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is seen by some critics a a drop out student destined for failure in life, but I see him as a symbol of an adolescent who struggles to adapt to the reality of adulthood.
Holden often talked about how phony people in his life were, however, he was also a phony, which made him a hypocrite. Holden would often mention things he hated that someone did, but sooner or later Holden was guilty of doing the exact same thing. In chapter one Holden is hypocritical towards his older brother, D.B. He says “Now he’s out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute.”(Salinger
Have you ever pondered about when growing up, where does our childlike innocence go and what happens to us to go through this process? It involves abandoning previous memories that are close to our hearts. As we can see in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, we listen to what the main character; Holden Caulfield has to say about it. Holden is an average teenager dealing with academic and life problems. He remains untouched over his expulsion from Pencey Prep; rather, he takes the opportunity to take a “vacation.” As he ventures off companionless in New York City, we are able to observe many things about him. We see that Holden habitually states that he is depressed and undoubtedly, wants to preserve the innocence of others.
Growing up is not easy. The desire to slow down or stop the process is not unusual for adolescents. Resisting adulthood causes those who try to run away from it to eventually come to terms with the reality of life: everyone has to grow up, and fighting against it makes it much harder to accept in the end. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield often tries to resist the process of maturity in an effort to avoid the complicated life he might face as an adult, making him an unusual protagonist for a bildungsroman; this struggle, however, opens Holden’s eyes to the reality and inevitability of growing up, helping him realize that innocence does not last forever.
To some, this argument may seem the most blatant form of mistruth, horrendous, even, in its lack of taste, a kind of literary sacrilege, in fact. Surely we have reached the end, one might say, when one can considerer comparing the immortal Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, with the adolescent protagonist of Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger’s hero has been compared to many literary figures, from Huckleberry Finn to David Copperfield. So many different attitudes have been taken toward him. Let’s stop talking about him and write something else. Isn’t the subject getting boring? Perhaps so, but Holden will not go away. He continues to pester the mind, and while reading A.C. Bradley’s analysis of Hamlet’s character, it was hard to resist the idea that much of what Bradley was saying about Hamlet applied to Holden as well. Perhaps the comparison is not as absurd as it first appears. Of course, there is no similarity between the events of the play and those of the novel. The fascinating thing while reading Bradley was how perfectly his analysis of Hamlet’s character applied to Holden’s, how deeply, in fact, he was going into Holden’s character as well, revealing, among other things, its potentially tragic nature.
In his novel Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger portrays childhood and adolescence as times graced by innocence when his protagonist, Holden Caulfield, is faced with the reality of becoming an adult. Holden’s desperation to maintain his innocence and the manner in which he critiques those he deems to have lost theirs, emphasizes his immaturity and ignorance while highlighting the importance the author places on childhood.
There is no denying the protagonistic similarities between the classic Shakespearean play, “Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark” and J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye.” Holden Caulfield is often referred to as “America’s Hamlet” during these comparisons. Although they are considered to be identical in many ways, Hamlet and Holden are distinctly different by their actions and thoughts..
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. J.D Salinger, in his novel The Catcher in the Rye shows that often times when an individual faces problems in their life they will try to find a means to escape, instead of solving them.
Growing up and becoming mature can be an intimidating experience; it is difficult to let go of one’s childhood and embrace the adult world. For some people, this transition from youthfulness to maturity can be much more difficult than for others. These people often try to hold on to their childhood as long as they can. Unfortunately, life is not so simple. One cannot spend their entire life running from the responsibilities and hardships of adulthood because they will eventually have to accept the fact that they have a role in society that they must fulfill as a responsible, mature individual. The novel “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger follows the endeavours of Holden Caulfield, a sixteen-year-old teenage boy who faces a point in his life where he must make the transition from childhood to adulthood. In an attempt to retain his own childhood, he begins hoping to stop other young children from growing up and losing their innocence as well. As indicated by the title, “The Catcher in the Rye” is a book that explores a theme involving the preservation of innocence, especially of children. It is a story about a boy who is far too hesitant to grow up, and feels the need to ensure that no one else around him has to grow up either. His own fear of maturity and growing up is what leads to Holden’s desire to become a “catcher in the rye” so he can save innocent children from becoming part of the “phoniness” of the adult world.
There is one event that unites all human beings. This event is the process of growing up and becoming an adult. The transition into adulthood from childhood can be very long and confusing. As a kid most of them can not wait to become an adult but once you experience adulthood you miss your childhood. The novel Catcher in the Rye shows how a teenager on the break of entering adulthood can get scared. Through the main protagonist Holden Caulfield, J.D. Salinger captures the confusion of a teenager when faced with the challenge of adapting to an adult society. Holden is faced with many problems as some teens
There is a singular event that unites every single human being on the planet, growing up. Not everyone can say it was pleasant, but no one can deny that it took place. The transition between childhood innocence and adulthood is long and confusing; often forcing one to seek out the answers to questions that likely have no definitive answer. During the process, the adult world seems inviting and free, but only when we are on the brink of entering this cruel, unjust society can the ignorant bliss of childhood be truly recognized. Catcher in the Rye explores the intimidating complexities associated with adulthood and how baffling it seems to the naïve teenage mind. Through the main protagonist, Holden Caulfield, J.D. Salinger captures the confusion of a teenager when faced with the challenge of adapting to an adult society.