Holden Caulfield is every parent’s worst nightmare. From his unwillingness to come to terms with, and take responsibility for, his future to his inability to see past the flaws of others, Holden dooms himself to social and professional failure. After flunking out of his third boarding school, he wanders the streets of New York in order to avoid confronting his parents about his academic performance. Although he has an extraordinary support system, as well as countless interactions that ultimately shape his perspective of the world, Holden finds himself growing more and more depressed. In J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, isolation is the root of Holden’s unhappiness. Holden is in desperate need of connection, yet his cynical outlook …show more content…
For the entirety of the book, Holden accuses others of phoniness, yet he completely disregards his own superficiality. Concerning his refusal to take responsibility for his education, Mr. Spencer, Holden’s history teacher, explains to Holden that “life is a game one plays according to the rules” (11). After quickly agreeing with supposed sincerity, Holden silently contradicts everything Mr. Spencer has just stated. He mentally retorts that if one lives in a world of privileged “hot-shots,” life is certainly a game. “On the other side,” however, “where there aren’t any hot-shots,” then nothing is “a game about it” (11). Additionally, Holden lies to the mother of arguably the most hated and obnoxious student at Pencey. Solely out of a need to avoid confrontation and keep others content, Holden insists that “he’s one of the most popular boys at Pencey” and is simply too modest to run for class elections (63). Holden grows so engrossed in the undesirable characteristics of others that he overlooks the stream of perpetual, wild lies in which he is constantly stuck. Frequently, Holden finds himself lying about his age in order to appeal to “dopey girls” with whom “it is practically impossible” to engage in “a little intelligent conversation” (80, 82). Not only does Holden lack self-awareness regarding his fakeness, but he refuses to accept his inevitable entrance into the adult world. With each passing, influential experience, Holden clings more to the past and hopes to prevent others from landing in the same predicament that he now faces: the loss of his innocence. He dreads change, as becomes evident in the Natural History museum when he discusses the most appealing aspect of the museum: the fact that “everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move” (135). Because Holden is so dependant on
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.
As Eugene McNamara stated in his essay “Holden Caulfield as Novelist”, Holden, of J.D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye, had met with long strand of betrayals since he left Pencey Prep. These disappointments led him through the adult world with increasing feelings of depression and self-doubt, leading, finally to his mental breakdown.
In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the main character, Holden, cannot accept that he must move out of childhood and into adulthood. One of Holden’s most important major problems is his lack of maturity. Holden also has a negative perspective of life that makes things seem worse than they really are. In addition to Holden’s problems he is unable to accept the death of his brother at a young age. Holden’s immaturity, negative mentality, and inability to face reality hold him back from moving into adulthood.
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.
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.
In J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, the main character Holden Caufield believes that innocence is corrupted by society. He exposes his self-inflicted emotional struggles as he is reminiscing the past. For Holden, teenage adolescence is a complicated time for him, his teenage mentality in allows him to transition from the teenage era to the reality of an adult in the real world. As he is struggling to find his own meaning of life, he cares less about others and worries about how he can be a hero not only to himself but also to the innocent youth. As Holden is grasping the idea of growing up, he sets his priorities of where he belongs and how to establish it. As he talks about how ‘phony’ the outside world is, he has specific recollections that signify importance to his life and he uses these time and time again because these memories are ones that he wont ever let go of. The death of his younger brother Allie has had a major impact on him emotionally and mentally. The freedom of the ducks in Central Park symbolize his ‘get away’ from reality into his own world. His ideology of letting kids grow up and breaking the chain loose to discover for themselves portrays the carrousel and the gold ring. These are three major moments that will be explored to understand the life of Holden Caufield and his significant personal encounters as he transitions from adolescence into manhood.
In the novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger, there is a boy named Holden Caulfield who flunked out of school and spends the remainder of time before winter break in New York. Holden has to spend the remainder of his time alone with his thoughts before coming home to his parents. While in New York Holden would have to face all of his griefs and sorrows he has for people and for society. Holden faces struggles with his viewpoints on children, the loss of his one care, and the wrongs society has caused.
The Catcher in the Rye revolves around Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the novel, and his disillusionment. Holden’s disillusionment illustrates that he has a problem accepting such. Aforesaid is based upon multiple factors, most which have brought Holden lasting traumas. A remedy is required for Holden to accept his disillusionment and enable an improvement of his situation. For Holden’s remedy, the consultation of psychologists, and additional specialized health professionals would be the core of an apt remedy for Holden’s psychological and physiological state based upon the numerous causes of such and the everlasting trauma of some of the determinants of aforesaid situation. The origins of Holden’s disillusionment revolved mainly around the death of his younger brother Allie three years ago, of which he still experiences the trauma to this day. His disillusionment is caused by both
Throughout the book Catcher in the Rye, the main character Holden Caulfield is often critical of adults, such as Mr. Spencer and Ossenburger, but rarely ever finds fault in young children like his little sister Phoebe or the singing boy on the street simply because he views them as pure, incorrupt people. This appreciation of childhood demonstrates Holden’s fear of growing up by showing his distaste in maturing himself and his aversion of setting himself straight. In his fiction novel Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger shows how teenage experiences can be used to reflect the inevitable pain of growing up.
Having a character that is going through a rough patch and struggling to be independent draws the reader into what the outcome will be and connects with the readers on how we used ugly, childish names for people we didn't like. Holden continues this hatred phase of "phonies" and the schools he's gone through when he comments, "Its full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you learn enough to be smart enough to buy a goddam Cadillac" (Salinger 131).
Rebellion and alienation are central themes in the book Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. Throughout the book the main character, Holden Caulfield, struggles in his relationships with others; especially with adults. Holden does not seem to fit in wherever he goes; whether in his private school or at the bar in New York. Through all of the misfortune he encounters while searching for his identity, he encounters a great deal of resistance and rejection from the world. This rejection from the world is a result of Holden’s rebellious actions, which are a cry for help stemming from his need for companionship. Holden’s desire for a meaningful relationship however, is an external portrayal of his innate longing to find himself; culminating in his incessant creation of problems for himself.
In The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield has devised this idea that adulthood is a time of phoniness, while childhood is a time of purity and innocence. Holden dislikes phonies and since many of the adults in his life he has categorized as phonies, he is afraid of growing up and becoming a phony himself. Throughout this novel, Holden consistently calls people phony which is his way of expressing his fear of growing up.
At the beginning of the story, Holden warns readers that he’s “the most terrific liar...ever,” which demonstrate that he’s being straightforward and telling the truth that he’ll lie most of the time, digresses, and talk little about the harsh reality (Salinger 16). Holden like to isolate himself from the the adult world to protect himself from the cruel society, which depicts why he’s being deceitful. Furthermore, Holden feels that he need everything to stay the same, after his little brother, Allie, die. Holden confronts that the “museum was that everything always stayed right where it was” (Salinger 120) This delineates that he feels more secluded as he continues to grow older and try to live on his life, but can’t since he want to stay in the past, just like the museum, it never changes. Holden doesn’t like the brutal society or what it had offered to him because he suffers enough just from the death of someone, which ultimately destroy him and how he views the brutal reality of the adult world. Throughout his lifetime, Holden had already witnessed two deaths, his little brother, Allie, and a guy named James Castle. Ever since then, Holden has been restraining himself and protecting himself in this wanton society. Even though they’re dead, those two boys will remain in Holden's heart not “just because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop liking them,” but “they were about a
Everybody feels depressed at some time or another in their lives. However, it becomes a problem when depression is so much a part of a person's life that he or she can no longer experience happiness. This happens to the young boy, Holden Caulfield in J.D Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye. Mr. Antolini accurately views the cause of Holden's depression as his lack of personal motivation, his inability to self-reflect and his stubbornness to overlook the obvious which collectively results in him giving up on life before he ever really has a chance to get it started.
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.