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The Overrated Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye is probably the most frequently taught book in American high schools and colleges in the second half of the twentieth century. I am not too sure, though, if the novel deserves the position it has held for so long.
The book sees the narrator, Holden Caulfield, a seventeen-year-old boy from New York City, tell the story of three days in his life. The whole narrative is a kind of therapeutic coming-to-terms-with-the-past story, since Holden obviously tells it from a psychiatric institution. It is the adult world that has made him a "madman," as he often characterizes himself. He just cannot relate to anyone except for his kid sister Phoebe. Everything and all other people seem "phony" to him. He flunks out of three boarding schools in a row, the latest of them Pencey Prep, which is also where the first part of the story takes place.
One Saturday night, after some last experiences with his history teacher "Old Spencer," his roommate Stradlater and the boy next door, Robert Ackley, Holden decides to leave Pencey four days early for Christmas break. He knows that he cannot return and that his parents will get a letter about his suspension on Wednesday. He spends the night and the following two days wandering around New York in a kind of aimless quest: He stays at a cheap hotel for one night, goes to two night clubs, dances with older women, often talks and thinks about sex, even has a callgirl come up to his room, but cannot get himself to perform the act. Finally, he gets beaten up by the callgirl's pimp. The next day, he talks with some nuns about literature and has a date with his former girlfriend Sally Woodruff. They go to a theater show and ice-skating together. When he asks her to run away with him, she gets mad and they part. He is "depressed," thinks about and even talks to his dead brother Allie a lot and finally sneaks into his parents' apartment at night to talk to his sister. He tells her about his dream to be a "catcher in the rye," and that he wants to run away. He then leaves to meet his former teacher, Mr. Antolini. They have a good talk, but Holden leaves in a hurry when his host makes a sexual advance on him.
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
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.
Dr. Sally Miller Gearhart, a Sweet Briar Alumna from the class of 1952, published a story about her own experience with romantic friendship in the collection of gay and lesbian short stories “The New Our Right to Love.” In her story, Dr. Gearhart describes falling in love with one of her fellow Sweet Briar sisters “Lakey.” The two women began an intimate relationship during their sophomore year at Sweet Briar College, even becoming roommates to conceal their romance. These women carried on an intimate and sexual relationship behind closed doors, yet around campus their interactions remained completely plutonic. The story of Dr. Gearhart and “Lakey” is one that is not unusual for romantic friendships that existed from 1920’s to the 1950’s.
The injustices Meursault and Jefferson fight vary in detail but ultimately stem from their deviation from the socially accepted norm. In The Stranger, Meursault does not
What is similar between apples and oranges? And, what are different? It would be easier to see the differences between these two fruits than their similarities. One fruit is orange, the other fruit is red, and both vary in shape. However, they are both sweet, both contain vitamin C, and both are grown on trees. In East of Eden and The Great Gatsby, Adam Trask and Jay Gatsby are the orange and the apple. John Steinbeck, the author of East of Eden, portrays Adam as the naïve, honest man who lives on a farm in the Salinas Valley. F. Scott Fitzgerald writes Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby as the man, who is living the American dream, with money and a mansion. These two characters share something similar. Adam Trask and Jay Gatsby both involve in unrequited affairs that were created by their illusions; however, their lover’s intentions were different.
Southern women needed to hold onto their predetermined roles in society in order for them to maintain their role in minimal role in society, meaning even though use of slavery did not remove all the problems in domestic living, women were forced to appear that the opposite was actually true or risk slipping down the social
Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South by Victoria E. Bynum begins by simply questioning the reader; asking who these “unruly women” would have been in the antebellum South, and what they could have possibly done to mark them in this deviant and disorderly light. Whenever you think of Southern Women during this time a vision of lovely refined yet quieted and weak women come to mind. It’s a time where women were inferior to men in almost every aspect. Women were expected to stay at home raising children. Women were expected to remain in the house, in the private world of home and family. White men wanted control over all dependents in his household; including their wife, children, slaves, and servants. Bynum
Holden had a tough time fitting in at his schools because he thought of almost everyone as phonies. "`It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques' (pg. 131)." He seems to have a history of expulsion and failure at various schools because of his lack of ability to cope with others. Ordinary problems of his had turned into major conflicts with other students. "I hate fist fights. I don't mind getting hit so much - although I'm not crazy about it, naturally - but what scares me most in a fist fight is the guy's face. I can't stand looking at the other guy's face, is my trouble. It wouldn't be so bad if you could both be blindfolded or something. It's a funny kind of yellowness, when you come to think of it, but it's yellowness, all right. I'm not kidding myself. (pg. 90)" Holden got into a fight with his roommate at school because he was going out with his ex-girlfriend. He's afraid that the guy is taking her from him, even though he's not with her anymore. These are problems that are normal, but Holden has trouble dealing with them.
Holden returns to school and goes to his bedroom in the dorm. In his room quietly reading, his neighbor Robert Ackley came in. Holden describes him as a pimply, insecure, annoying boy with a bad dental hygiene. When Holden’s roommate Stradlater who was “madly in love with himself” (27) arrived home after the football game, Ackley abruptly left. Stradlater tells him that he has a date with a friend of his, Jane Gallagher. Jane is someone that Holden really cares for and because he knows the way Stradlater is, Holden became worried for her. “It just drove me stark raving mad when I thought about her and Stradlater parked somewhere in that fat-assed Ed Banky’s car”. (48) Holden became depressed and lonely, so out of the blue Holden decides to pack his things and leave for New York a few days earlier. On the train to New York, Holden meets the mother of one of his schoolmates. Not wanting to tell his whole life story, he told her his name was “Rudolf Schmidt”, the name of th...
The United States spends more than any other country in the world on a failing
At the beginning of his story, Holden is a student at Pencey Prep School. Having been expelled for failing four out of his five classes, Holden leaves school and spends 72 hours in New York City before returning home. There, Holden encounters new ideas, people, and experiences. Holden's psychological battle within himself serves as the tool that uncovers the coming-of-age novel's underlying themes of teen angst, depression, and the disingenuous nature of society. The novel tackles issues of blatant profanity, teenage sex, and other erratic behavior.
“When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.”- Simone de Beauvoir. The theme of gender role is prominent in the novels “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” and “Things Fall Apart.” The Authors of both, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and “Things Fall Apart” uses the theme of gender roles to define women as less than men.
The food wasn 't bad, but if I 'm being honest, I wouldn 't actually rate it any higher than I would a Chili 's. At a theme dining establishment like this you aren 't paying for the outstanding food though, are you? You are paying for the atmosphere and the experience. So, I don 't have any complaints about paying $35 for my $20 Applebee 's steak, because we had such a great time just looking around and watching everything go crazy every few minutes. I wanted meat and to be amazed, and I got it. After dinner we walked around and examined all of the different areas. Don 't sell yourself short by just going straight to your table then straight out when you are done. We loved getting to see the various dinosaurs and once we reached the bar, I was almost overwhelmed by the saturation of colors and the motion of it all. In the center of the lounge is a large saltwater aquarium on top of which are large, bright, moving tentacles! This area is decorated to look like a coral reef, the walls are covered in glowing sprigs of faux coral, light gels project water movement everywhere, various sizes, shapes and colors of jellyfish lights hang from the ceiling, the bar itself glows brilliant blue! It makes me feel like I jumped into the
The cause of Clinical depression has long been a mystery to physicians and researchers. Many different theories have been proposed, but no conclusive evidence has been put forth. However, most of what we know about depression stems from the results of certain drugs which have been successful in treating the clinically depressed. These anti--depressants have led to the assumption that depression is most likely due to a chemical imbalance (of neurotransmitters) which somehow leads to the symptoms of depression. To try and write a paper on all the theories of depression would be endless, as would be a study on all the different types of anti-depressants. Therefore I have tried to focus my paper on the serotonin hypothesis for depression, and more specifically how the serotonergic anti-depressants have backed up this theory. Of course, Any paper on serotonin-based anti-depressants must include the popular Prozac. Because of the excitement And controversy surrounding Prozac, I decided to channel most of my paper into the action of this so-called "wonder drug".
In the past years psychology has used the method acting of science to come to some clearer and less ambiguous understanding of human being nature. Personality is the bailiwick within this scientific psychology that written report individuals. How is someone different from another, or are people fundamentally similar rather than different? How can we understand the moral force that motivates us to act in one way or the other? How do we develop from childhood? (Cloninger, 2009) Innovator of psychology, Sigmund Freud , Carl Jung, Alfred Adler etc. were influential thinkers, early founders, and significant contributor to the Bodoni font science of psychology (Goodwin, 2008).Although their theories were distinct, they were passionate about their enterprise , and never settled with conclusion - their entire lives were spent in earnest search for better intellect of the human psychological fragilities and their betterment (Goodwin, 2008).This essay will systematically and critically compare two major theoretical positions on personality which are psychoanalytic and Alder’s approach as related to their explanation of human motivation.