Catcher In The Rye Research Paper

In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger makes social commentary upon humanity’s desire to achieve intimacy and connection within the postmodern world through the experiences of Holden Caulfield. One such way he achieves this is through the development of Caulfield’s relationships—both sexual and familial. As well, Salinger explores Holden’s search for purity through the development of his personal philosophy and his discussion of those he finds to be fake. The ultimate evidence of Salinger’s critique of the postmodern world is Holden’s diction and the structure of the novel, both of which show the general postmodern philosophy. Salinger’s exploration of the postmodern mind begins through the examination of a grief-stricken teenager’s search

Holden tries to find intimacy in a sexual relationship through his interactions with Jane Gallagher, a relationship he would come to idealize for reasons he is unable to see for himself. Holden continually comes back to the moment when he “showed Allie’s baseball mitt” (Salinger 76) to her, something he had never shown to anyone else because of how vulnerable he felt about his loss. Though this interaction may certainly seem intimate to the reader, this relationship goes little beyond Holden finding closure for “Allie’s death” (Miller 132) and only a minuscule amount at most. Holden’s relationship with Sally foils his relationship with Jane, containing nothing but failure and falsehoods. Holden finds nothing pure or familial within his relationship with Sally, as he constantly points to her obsession with material possessions and her devotion to keeping a façade of societal normality. Such societal normality reaches its most dissatisfactory when Holden observes that Sally’s desire to go ice skating was not because she wanted to engage in the activity but because “she wanted to see herself in one of those little skirts” (Salinger 143). If Jane is Holden’s ideal in a relationship, Sally represents what Holden believes to be wrong in the