e Stephens Per. 1 November 5, 2015 English 12 Erickson Moral Ambiguity Moral ambiguity is ordinary in literature, not just with minor characters but with main characters too.
Has a person ever existed that hasn’t judged someone else in their lifetime? Judging by reality as well as literature it seems that no person like that has ever existed. It appears that it is human nature to want to separate others as purely good or evil. Does everyone fit into the mold of good or evil? In the two novels The Five People You Meet in Heaven and The Catcher and the Rye the main characters are morally ambiguous and this plays a major part in the novels as a whole and the theme the authors are trying to portray.
Throughout The Five People You Meet in Heaven, there is moral ambiguity shown with the main
…show more content…
character, Eddie. Eddie is a war veteran who lives a meaningless life at Ruby Pier repairing the rides. As the park transformed over time, he slowly changed from being optimistic to pessimistic and became full of loneliness and regret. Then on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies from trying to save a little child from a falling cart on one of the rides at the amusement park. Then he wakes up not to heaven but to a place where his life on earth is explained by five people that were in it. Those people could have been distant strangers or loved ones. One by one Eddie sees the earthly connection to life and how it changed his path. “No life is a waste. The only time we waste is time thinking that we are alone” (Albom 50). This quote which is said by the Blue Man, may have a positive affirmation but there is more beneath the surface. On the day of his death, Eddie is surrounded by families, which puts him in the mindset of thinking he is lonesome since he doesn’t have one of his own. He is convinced that he doesn’t live a happy life outside of the park and nothing will ever make his life meaningful. Eddie lacks the skill to see the effects his life has had on others until his death. The five people he meets are there to help Eddie recognize his impact on the world. He was indirectly responsible for the death of the Blue Man, and the captain had died trying to evacuate him. However, he was responsible for saving the little girl’s life at Ruby Pier and making many children happy throughout the years of working at the park. This represents moral ambiguity because of the aspects that are applied to both the good and evil sides of Eddie; he isn’t one or the other. The Catcher in the Rye displays moral ambiguity within the main character as well. This novel is about a 16 year old boy, Holden Caufield. He gets kicked out of his high school, Pencey Prep. That wasn’t the only school he happened to be kicked out of, he was also expelled from many schools before that also. Holden is a very depressed young man and he has been grieving over the death of his little brother, Allie for three years now. He has a hard time connecting to people, and it seems the only person he can connect to and trust is Phoebe, his little sister. Holden decides to leave Pencey Prep without telling anyone and head to New York City where he gets into trouble. Towards the end of the book you realize that Holden is explaining his story while he is undergoing treatment at a mental institution. “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move…Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you” (Salinger ___). By Holden saying this it is presumed that he doesn’t enjoy change. He has a connection with the museum because no matter how many times he went back and how long it has been, all of the display cases will remain the same. The museum represents a world that Holden wants to live in; a world without change. Holden is troubled by that because every time he goes back he is always going to be different, even if it’s in the smallest ways. Although Holden’s assets may not come off as purely evil, he still comes off as unlikeable to the reader because of his beliefs and different moods he presents himself with. On the contrary, the assets that make Holden seem like an unpleasant character can be contradicted by the generous person he can be. As the novel continues Holden displays how kind he can be by his reaction to all of the new people he had met and how he had treated them; especially with his sister, Phoebe. Phoebe helps Holden rediscover himself and for the first time in this novel he sees happiness in someone other than him. The moral ambiguity of Holden Caufield is displayed from the beginning to the end of the novel because of his qualities that reside as both good and evil. The two novels, The Five People You Meet in Heaven and The Catcher in the Rye are very much alike in certain aspects, but also different.
Both of the main characters are presented as morally ambiguous along with protagonists. The conflicts in these novels are person vs. self. In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Eddie is conflicted with himself because he doesn’t think he has lived his life to the fullest and he has failed as a person. Correspondingly Eddie has a conflict with his father, who has always defeated him whenever he was up. He was always looking to seek approval from his father and he wasn’t able to receive it at any time in his life. Therefore, the conflict with his father soon developed into a conflict of his own residing with himself. With the novel The Catcher in the Rye, Holden has a problem with his own self because of the struggle he has with adulthood and change. He makes up a fantasy land where his world is innocence which represents his childhood. The differences that make up the two novels are the themes. Reoccurring themes that show up in The Five People You Meet in Heaven are sacrifice, forgiveness, and love. Whereas in The Catcher in the Rye the themes that exist are change, loneliness, and the painfulness of growing
up.
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.
The battle of Gene with himself and Holden with himself creates the similar major conflicts between the novels. In this case, Holden has it much more difficult in The Catcher in the Rye because he has to struggle with a great depression and he constantly tries to escape it through drinking, sexual intimations, his awful attitude, and attempts of being out going after he leaves Pencey Prep early. The cause of this depression is the death of his younger brother Ally. In the novel, he describes that h...
Salinger went through many of the experiences Holden went though. Salinger much like Holden had a sister that he loved very much, in the novel Phoebe is the only person that Holden speaks highly of; both men also spent time in a mental institution; Holden is telling the story from inside a institution; they were both kicked out of prep school and most importantly they were both a recluse from society. This is why Salinger uses Holden as his persona all though out the book. The ‘catcher in they Rye’ is almost like an autobiography for Salinger. He is using Holden as his persona to let us, the reader, dive into his thought pattern and find out some of the thoughts that he kept locked up in there.
In the novel, Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is an example of a prosaic rich adolescent boy,with a pedestrian set of problems, but a psychoanalysis reveals that Holden has a plethora of atypical internal conflicts. Internal conflicts that other students at Pencey, such as Stradlater and Ackley, would not normally experience.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger is a popular novel that was originally published in the 1950’s. In the book, Salinger explores various themes through the main character Holden and his interactions with others. Some of these themes include, alienation, loss and betrayal. Holden constantly feels betrayed throughout the novel by several people, including his roommate, teacher, and sister.
In the Story Catcher in the Rye Holden has a “ideal” view of the world that contradicts his perception in reality. Holdens “ideal” view of the world is that everyone contains childhood innocence and no one should try to break that innocence so people can just be who they want to be and not get made fun of or attacked. In Holden's mind he thinks that everyone thinks like he does and his view of reality is that all the phonies try to break childhood innocence so his reality trys to break his ideal world he has in his head. This unique way of thinking causes Holden to run into internal and external conflicts because not everyone thinks like he does.
J. D. Salinger’s novel, Catcher in the Rye explores the ambiguity of the adult world Holden must eventually learn to accept. Throughout the novel, Holden resists the society grownups represent, coloring his childlike dreams with innocence and naivety. He only wants to protect those he loves, but he cannot do it the way he desires. As he watches Phoebe on the carousel, he begins to understand certain aspects of truth. He writes:
Has there ever existed a person that has not judged someone else over their lifetime? Judging by reality as well as literature it seems that no person like that has ever existed. It appears that it is human nature to want to pronounce others as either purely good or evil. But does everyone fit into the mold of good or evil? In Albert Camus's The Stranger, Meursault is a morally ambiguous character, and this ethical indistinctness plays a major part in the novel as a whole and the theme that Camus is trying to portray.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is an enthralling and captivating novel about a boy and his struggle with life. The teenage boy ,Holden, is in turmoil with school, loneliness, and finding his place in the world. The author J.D. Salinger examines the many sides of behavior and moral dilemma of many characters throughout the novel. The author develops three distinct character types for Holden the confused and struggling teenage boy, Ackley, a peculiar boy without many friends, and Phoebe, a funny and kindhearted young girl.
The Catcher in the Rye has been described, analyzed, rebuffed, and critiqued over the years. Each writer expresses a different point of view: It is a story reflecting teen-ager's talk--thoughts-emotions--actions; or angst. I believe it is an adult's reflection of his own unresolved grief and bereavements. That adult is the author, J.D. Salinger. He uses his main character, Holden, as the voice to vent the psychological misery he will not expose -or admit to.
I think The Catcher in the Rye can be compared to The Outsiders. In both books, both of the protagonists felt they were isolated from the society. Holden is clear that he was not part of any social group and showed no interest in joining one. While in The Outsiders, the title alone tells the readers that they are from the outside, they are outside of the society. The only difference is that Holden was alone, while Ponyboy had a gang (Greasers). Since Holden was alone, he had no one to express his emotions to, while Ponyboy had a gang and they understood one another like a gang.
“The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger is considered one of the best books of all time. This book hit many people around the world on a personal level, affecting them both positively and negatively. People claim this book was written specifically for them because of how much they can relate to Holden. This, for some people, was a good thing and the main reason they enjoyed the book, but others took it the wrong way. The two biggest cases of this was John Hinckley and Mark David Chapman, both of which murdered or attempted murder because they felt the book was telling them they had to. I am going to take a psychological approach on why these two men thought this, other people who thought the same thing, and Holden’s own criminal mindset.
I believe that when J.D. Salinger was calling The catcher in the rye as his spiritual Autobiography he was referring to some of holden's struggles as those he faced in adolescence and Holden's feelings as something he struggled with after world war two. Growing up Salinger struggled with academics and fitting in.After his time in the military Salinger Struggled with some mental health issues, and isolated himself.He is very similar to holden in this way.
This quote is in the exposition of the story, The Five People You Meet In Heaven. The quote demonstrates many elements of fiction including conflict, theme and it also has some foreshadowing incorporated into it as well. The conflict that this quote foreshadows is the cable snapping and the car that was held up by this cable falling. This quote is another foreshadowing of Eddie’s death and also of the theme of the whole book which is: there are no random acts in life. The theme is demonstrated in this quote because it was a seemingly innocent story, an innocent act which affects many people. All Nikki did was, was drop a key, not even on purpose. The key merely fell out of his pocket when he was riding a ride and it fell into the base of Freddy's
The internal conflicts in The Catcher In The Rye are often viewed as sentimental subplots that provide depth to the coming of age story ...