Social Classes in The Catcher and the Rye

1862 Words4 Pages

I sit waiting in my roommates’ apartment here in Canton—I live there as well. I am strapped for cash waiting on my care box (a box full of food and goodies) and an envelope full of cash from my parents. I’m a college student—and I depend on parents for my money and everything else—well for the most part. So I don’t want to eat a lot of my roommates’ food because he is already allowing me to stay here pretty much free of charge although I do pay. I look through my last box of goodies to see if I could find anything. I found some sardines. If you know anything about sardines you know they have this stench that is unbearable and in most cases you will have to mop the entire house with a huge amount of bleach to eradicate the smell. And also they are usually a cuisine of the poor class because of their cheapness. So I eat. Also Marcus eats. He is eating a huge steak—a steak from Texas road house—a restaurant with somewhat authentic Texas food—I say somewhat because I’m not exactly sure what authentic Texans eat— he received the steak free of charge because of Veterans day. Marcus of course offers me a piece. I delightfully reject his offer. And he finally goes into this whole spiel on how I expect him to feel when he is eating steak and I have sardines for dinner. The first thing I think about is—the amount of money my parents are sending is probably more than what he makes in a six month period of time—but I always seem to blow it off quickly on fast-food and whatever else. Even though my family is well off, I still gladly ate a piece of the steak in which I did want a piece but I did not want him to know that I wanted a piece. The catcher and the rye express this same social class and also it dares to overturn them. When H... ... middle of paper ... ...e go throughout the society following every rule and lives a life full of mundane activities. Holden realizes that there are no rules to life—you can go whatever you see fit. Everyone else wanted to be confined, labled, marked but holden did not necessarily want to stic out but he did not want to be the sane as everyone else. Moralality is anthhing you empower to be your compass of judgement—it so happened that Holden chose himself not adults, not society, not social class. He live beyond the confines that gives labels and he created a melting pot. he saw logos and he did everything in his ability to bring it down—he wanted it te balanced although he had many contradictions, he knew that life spent in the shadows of society was equivalent to a drone—death even. Many times he risked his own welfare for the dismantle of the hierarchy. “If moralism, judgementalism

Open Document