In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is a very complex and interesting person to take into consideration and psychoanalyze. His various traits make him a different person from the rest of the phonies in the world. Holden says, “All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn't.” What Holden doesn’t realize is that he is a phony as well. This is ironic because he says you don’t know if you are a phony, but he is. Salinger’s life is reflected in the book, there are many similarities to his life and Holden’s. Holden is a perfect example of Freud’s theory on personality who he believed, “The personality consists of three mental entities: the id, the ego, and the superego” (Nevid 470). Holden has all these entities and he shows them in various ways. Holden is mentally unstable. He is lonely and depressed, fantasy worlds, a bad family relationship and isolates himself. He is a very complex person. Holden is a very lonely young man; he doesn’t have any true friends. Holden talks to the people he lives with in his dormitory but thinks that they are all phonies. Salinger is alike with Holden as well, “Despite his slim body of work and reclusive lifestyle, Salinger was one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century” (Biography.com).He has an argument with old Stradlater and went to sleep in Ackley’s room, they talked for a while but Holden decided to go somewhere else. “All of a sudden, I decided what I'd really do; I'd get the hell out of Pencey-right that same night and all. I mean not wait till Wednesday or anything. I just didn... ... middle of paper ... ... and even Maurice who hit him. There is no doubt that Holden tries to isolate himself from others. Holden is mentally unstable, because he is alone and depressed, has a mixed relationship with his family, isolates himself, and has a fantasy world that he escapes to. There is no one theory that can describe Holden or anybody dead on. The human mind is a complex subject to study. Freud theory explains many parts of Holden. When traumatic past happen, then your future will build around that one thing. Joshua Sylvester once said, “They say that shadows of deceased ghosts Do haunt the houses and the graves about, Of such whose life's lamp went untimely out, Delighting still in their forsaken hosts.” Holden remains one of the most studied protagonists in literature. This book has been censored in many places but the amount of knowledge we gain of one person is humongous.
of childhood enveloped you on a day-to-day basis? These were the times when committing wrong doings were not only met with meager consequences, but also expected of you by the parental guardians or guides in your life. In "The Catcher in the Rye" , written by J.D. Salinger, the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, expresses his yearning for this feeling continuously throughout this detailed depiction of a struggling young man who craves nothing more than to make the dream he has given his entire being
J.D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye depicts a short span in the life of a sixteen-year-old boy who has a lot to say about others yet recognizes little about himself, in the beginning of the book. Holden Caulfield is not your typical bildungsroman protagonist. From open to close, the story only details a few days of life. This novel gives a new twist to the typical Bildungsroman story, as many might question if Holden
with happy personal associations”. The Catcher in the Rye contains characters which follow the definition of nostalgia, to the point where it will affect their outcome in life, causing nostalgia to become an egregious trait. Everyone who overly desire or reliant on nostalgia can not be successful in life. The Catcher in the Rye begins with stating “the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born...but I don't feel like going into it...”(Salinger 6). This statement denies the inclusion
The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger is one of the most controversial and timeless books written in our history. A “catcher in the rye” is someone that’s stands at the edge of a rye field and saves children from falling over a cliff. Holden Caulfield, a troubled young teenager and also the main character of the novel, pictures himself as being this “catcher in the rye” protecting all children from losing their innocence. Towards the end of Catcher in The Rye he realizes that this idea
Holden’s Valuable Accessory “The Catcher in the Rye” is a 1950’s novel written by J.D. Salinger. It tells a story about a teenage boy who travels to multiple locations throughout New York after being kicked out of his school, Pencey. Throughout the book, Salinger uses numerous amount of symbolism to show the feelings of the main character, Holden Caulfield. One of the most recognized symbol is Holden’s red hunting hat. It is present in many situations and has abundance amount of symbolic characteristics
Holden Caulfield, the narrator of The Catcher in the Rye, is a troubled man who does not have everything going right for him. He shows obvious signs of depression and a few symptoms of an anxiety disorder. Throughout the book he keeps thinking about his brother Allie, who passed away. The only reasonable explanation for his mental illnesses is that he misses Allie, and he does not know how to function normally again. Everything he does reminds him of Allie in some sort of way. Mental illness is very
cutting into wet cement. It is hard to overcome for a child because it is so foreign to them. Death leaves a scar on every person, but fo a child the wound is harder to mend because of their ignorance of death and innocence. In The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger due to Holden’s experience of the death of a close family member, he is left with unresolved feelings of depressions and loneliness, and an adoration of children. Holden Caulfield was so young when it happened. It, is referring to the
In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, a sixteen year old boy named Holden Caulfield gets expelled from his school and runs away before his parents find out. He goes to his home town, New York, and encounters many people. Throughout the novel, Caulfield is still coping with the death of his brother Allie. His attitude slowly decreases and various signs of a mental disorder are exhibited through his actions and his thoughts. Some people believe that he does not have a mental disorder
In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye, Holden Caulfield, a seventeen-year-old boy, transitions from childhood to adulthood. The death of Holden’s little brother signifies the beginning his loss of innocence and growth of maturity. As he enters adulthood, Holden views society differently from his peers by characterizing most of his peers and adults he meets as “phonies.” Thus, Holden takes the impossible challenge of preserving the innocence in children because he wants to prevent children from
older the innocence and naivety of childhood begins to fade into a hardness caused by the harsh realties of adulthood. Though the transition from childhood is hard, one most remember not to rush into adulthood savor your innocence . In Catcher In the Rye , by J.D. Salinger the main character Holden Caulfield is in the transitional stage, he finds it hard for him to grow-up and act like an adult. So instead of rushing in to adulthood, he finds slowing down the process and acting less adult like is better
When The Catcher in the Rye was first published in 1951, it was ranked number one on the New York Times Best Seller list (Time Magazine). Yet it has been one of the most frequently banned books in schools and libraries. Written in the late 1940’s by J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye tells the story of Holden Caulfield, a teenage boy, who gets kicked out of boarding school and how he passes the days before returning home ,wandering New York City. Since its publication, it has been a book both
Would you try to stop it? Or would you just look the other way and pretend it was not there? In today’s society, corruption is almost everywhere, and too often, people just look the other way, allowing it to continue. In writing The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger attempts to show people the evils of a corrupt society, and how it can harm anyone. He does this through Holden’s experiences at Pencey and in NYC, as well as the uncertainty and confusion that Holden feels about sex. While he is at
subjects can make a good book? The Catcher in the Rye has been on the banned reading list for exactly those reasons. The book was mainly put on disapproval from between 1966 and 1975 in almost every school district in the United States. The book was said to be so bad that in 1960 a teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was fired for assigning the book to an eleventh-grade English class. Despite some opposition to the novel, however, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye should be on a reading list for the
In The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the protagonist, a 16-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield who lives in the 1940s, struggles to concur with the views of his society. After getting kicked out of boarding school once again, Holden runs away to New York. He decides to have an adventure of his own, instead of returning home. Holden's experiences in New York lead to further disruptions in his life, which eventually cause him to be put in rehab. Holden would struggle with the same issues if
The “Catcher in the Rye” written by J.D Salinger, narrates on the main character Holden Caulfield, a hostile and negative person, who suffers from severe depression. Teenage years are, without argument, the most confusing and difficult years of a person’s life as they prepare to go into adulthood. A wave of anxiety filled teenage year’s leads to an anxiety filled adulthood, following with a variety of prescription drugs and therapy sessions along with way. Throughout the “Catcher in the Rye” novel