A World of Phonies
The “Catcher in the Rye” is a novel about Holden Caulfield and his awkwardness and insecurity. The novels shows what it’s like to be an average teenager crossing the threshold from childhood to adulthood, but also shows the awkward experiences we have all gone through into that journey into adulthood. Holden Caulfield relays his disgust throughout the book with everything and everyone who is “phony” in the world. Is the adult world “phony”, or is our childhood the one who lies to us?
Holden Caulfield is the main character in J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”. He is someone we can all relate to, since we have all been him at one point in our own lives. Caulfield paints himself as an awkward and insecure teenager who
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He describes himself and his family. He comes from a middle-to-upper class family with an older brother, a younger brother, and younger sister. He goes into detail about the death of his younger brother, Allie, and tells the reader how much Allie is adored and missed by everyone. He portrays Allie to be what I think he would have liked to have been himself, “You 'd have liked him.......He was terifically intelligent.......But it wasn 't that he was the most intelligent member in the family......He was also the nicest, in a lot of ways”. (J. D. Salinger. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (Kindle Location 666). Little, Brown and Company). He also talks about his older brother, D.B., but doesn’t seem to have the same high regard for D.B. that he does for Allie. He tells the reader D.B. is in Hollywood, but used to be a writer, and laments about the loss of D.B. being genuine after he moved out to Hollywood, “He wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish,......Now he 's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute”. (J. D. Salinger. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (Kindle Location 24). Little, Brown and …show more content…
He meets a classmate’s mother on the subway; he can’t stop lying to her while he is talking to her. He meets a jaded prostitute named Sunny and thinks he wants to sleep with her, but after he pays for her services – he realizes he can’t go through with it and gets beaten up by her pimp for allegedly short-changing her. He tries to socialize with a group of women in a lounge, and ends up being mocked by the women and stuck with the bill for their drinks at the end of the night. He also tries to go on a couple of dates with different girls closer to his own age, but those end up in disaster as well. The only woman he idolizes and sees as “real” is his old neighbor, Jane Gallagher. He describes her several times throughout the book with only praise for what makes her genuine and unique from all the
J.D Salinger gives his personal vision of the world successfully through his persona Holden Caulfield in the ‘Catcher in the Rye’. Caulfield struggles with the background of New York to portray Salinger’s theme – you must live the world as it is, not as you would like it to be. There by exposing Salinger’s vision on the world.
In Holden’s ordinary world, problems in many aspects of his life are filled with demoralizing dilemmas that portray him as a failure in life. One of the first piece of background information he provides to readers is about how unworthy his older brother is by saying “Now he’s out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute” (Salinger, 4). D.B. is living a successful life by making a large amount of money, but Holden fails to see in the point of view of adults because cognitive development in children often results in a self-involved/egocentric
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.
In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger develops Holden Caulfield as a morally ambiguous character. Throughout the book, Salinger speaks as Holden and introduces him as a callous and subjective individual. However, the author permits the reader to be within Holden’s mind, giving the audience an alternative perspective of Holden’s true character. Without the obscurity of Holden’s personality, the work would lack a crucial element. As the protagonist, Holden serves as an equivocal adolescent that is relatable for the reader.
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.
Salinger had a deep love and fascination with young children, especially young women. In the 1970s, Salinger maintained a close connection with an eighteen year-old girl, Joyce Maynard, who eventually moved in with the author. J.D. Salinger continued to have many relations with younger women, much like this one. His fascination with young women is reflected in Holden, who has a similar mind-set. Even as a seventeen year-old, Holden is infatuated with his perception of Jane Gallagher as a little girl. It is this picture of innocence that Holden is in love with, and not what Jane is like now. The concept of, "the catcher in the rye," itself projects his interest in children. He day-dreams about standing at the edge of the rye field catching any children that are too close to the edge of the cliff.
The novel, The Catcher in the Rye, written by JD Salinger, touches on the themes of innocence, death, and the artifice and the authenticity in the world, while following the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, through his weekend trip to New York City. As the story unfolds, Holden, as narrator, becomes more vulnerable to the reader, and starts to express his feelings surrounding the death of his brother, Allie, as well as his feelings about himself. Holden is faced with a truth that has haunted him for many years: adulthood. Many of the qualities Holden exhibits, which he sees as negative, are those of the average person: struggle, loneliness, deep sadness. He is one of many classic protagonists that encourages the reader to relate to them on
To be called a phony is to be called fake, something that no one wants to be recognized as. Throughout one’s life it is inevitable that one will meet a person who fits the criteria of a phony, which is generally one person’s idea, rather than a set definition. Some base phoniness off of certain actions and behaviors, such as hypocrisy and frequently lying, although for others it is pushed to the extreme, in which phoniness, can be found in everyone, through any action. As for Holden Caulfield, a seventeen year old boy who is thrust into adulthood, after being kicked out of Pencey Prep School in Pennsylvania, and decides to stay in New York City for a few days before going home, he finds himself surrounded by phonies. Holden is able to call people out on their phoniness, after knowing how it feels to be genuinely cared for by people he loves. Though pointing out other’s phoniness has become an automatic reaction after meeting new people, although one can see that there are characteristics of Holden that fit his personalized criteria of a phony. However, through the novel, it seems the author does not intend for all of Holden’s claims of phoniness to be taken seriously, as out of all of the people he has met, only a few are seen as genuine. In J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”, the novel’s protagonist, Holden Caulfield, by being forced to grow up, has become extremely judgemental of others, and while he calls other’s phonies, he himself is one.
Holden Caufield is the child trying desperately not to grow up into a "phony". He feels alone because the only people he sees in the world are phonies and children. Struggling for an adult role for himself he invents the "Catcher in the Rye", always saving children from the consequences of their mistakes. It is ironic that Caufield's ambition is probably shared with some of the people that have tried to censor this book. Holden gives people with this ambition a very wise piece of advice:
In the novel The Catcher In The Rye, the protagonist Holden Caulfield views his surroundings with hypocrisy and contempt in an attempt to avoid the corruption of adulthood. Holden places himself above the crowd because he believes everyone acts phony. In the process, Caulfield reveals his true problem: his refusal to change.
This novel by J.D Salinger is about a rebellious teenage, Holden Caulfield. Holden's brother, Allie death affects Holden academics and future. Holden goes through many different experiences that make his pyschoanalytic traits stand out.
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.
Many young people often find themselves struggling to find their own identity and place in society. This search for self worth often leaves these young people feeling lonely and isolated because they are unsure of themselves. Holden Caulfield, J.D. Salinger's main character in the book The Catcher In the Rye, is young man on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. One contributor to this breakdown, is the loneliness that Holden experiences. His loneliness is apparent through many ways including: his lack of friends, his longing for his dead brother, and the way he attempts to gain acceptance from others.
...at lead us to believe that life has leading characters and minor characters, important details and unimportant details, beginnings, middles, ends" (Bryfonski, 521). Many critics acclaim that Nine Stories and The Catcher in The Rye are Salinger’s most famous and important works (Bryfonski, 521). The Glass family saga starting in Nine Stories and continuing in and ending in Franny and Zooey shows how the lack of love and the influence of society can lead to destruction unless you find enough inner strength to rise above it. Many of Salinger’s characters are connected to other fictional characters by other authors. In The Catcher in The Rye, the young Holden Caulfield is compared by critics to Huckleberry Finn: He has a colloquialism as marked as Huck’s…Like Huck, Holden is neither comical or misanthrope. He is an observer. Unlike Huck, he makes judgements by the dozen, but these are not to be taken seriously; they are concepts (Lomazoff, 7). Holden is also compared to Hamlet but to a lesser degree; they are both not totally in the minds. The majority of Salinger’s characters learn from being alienated. Through learning this one aspect, they gain strength from it to move on.
Jerome David Salinger’s only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, is based on the life events shaping main character, Holden Caulfield, into the troubled teen that is telling the story in 1950. The theme of the story is one of emotional disconnection felt by the alienated teenagers of this time period. The quote, “ I didn’t know anyone there that was splendid and clear thinking and all” (Salinger 4) sets the tone that Holden cannot find a connection with anyone around him and that he is on a lonely endeavor in pursuit of identity, acceptance and legitimacy. The trials and failures that Holden faces on his journey to find himself in total shed light on Holden’s archenemy, himself.