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Childhood to adolescence to adulthood in the catcher in the rye
Childhood to adolescence to adulthood in the catcher in the rye
Theme coming of age in the catcher in the rye
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In the novel The Catcher In the Rye by JD Salinger, Holden expands the limbo in the middle of youth and adulthood for as long as he can. As a young fellow, he needs to begin rationally setting himself up to end up a grown-up. He is in highschool and he needs to begin settling on a few choices for himself. There is proof of both youth and adulthood moves made by Holden. In any case, Holden secures the limbo in the middle of youth and adulthood by regarding and attempting to secure the honesty of kids, and esteeming that purity over the phoniness of grown-ups… , while as yet acting imposter himself and doing "strong things" that just a grown-up would do, for example, reviling, drinking at bars and calling prostitutes. A youth part of Holden
Holden does experience a rite of passage that transforms him into an adult in this novel. In the beginning of the story, he believes all adults are phonies, and he himself is scared of growing up. However, after he goes to the museum, he realizes that he is strong enough to survive as an adult: “I mean I could’ve killed myself when I hit the floor, but all I did was land on my side. It was a funny thing, though. I felt better after I passed out. I really did” (Salinger 206). The fall that Holden experience is imperative to his transformation into an adult because he realizes how important life really is to him. Once Holden accepts adulthood, he discovers that most people are not truly phonies, and that he will be able to figure out life in his own way.
In the modern world, everyone must make the transition, no matter how scary or daunting it may be, into adulthood at some point in their lives. Most individuals are gradually exposed to more mature concepts, and over time, they begin to accept that they can no longer posses the blissful ignorance that they once had as a child. Others, however, are violently thrown from their otherwise pure and uncorrupted adolescent lives through a traumatic event that hurls them into adulthood before they are ready. The novel The Catcher on the Rye written by J.D. Salinger, explores the struggle children face to adapt to adult society through the main character Holden Caulfield, a teen that lost his innocence, and is still attempting to cope with the fact that everyone grows up.
phonies and all he hates. By being in the stage where he is, he manages to avoid change, control his world with his own hands, yet. creates a paradox between what he is, and what he wants to be. Possibly the main reason why Holden doesn’t want to become an adult. is his perception of ”phoniness” and hypocrisy surrounding adult.
In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the main character, Holden, cannot accept that he must move out of childhood and into adulthood. One of Holden’s most important major problems is his lack of maturity. Holden also has a negative perspective of life that makes things seem worse than they really are. In addition to Holden’s problems he is unable to accept the death of his brother at a young age. Holden’s immaturity, negative mentality, and inability to face reality hold him back from moving into adulthood.
It takes many experiences in order for an immature child to become a responsible, well-rounded adult. In J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger’s main character Holden Caulfield matures throughout the course of the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Holden is a juvenile young man. However, through his experiences, Holden is able to learn, and is finally able to become somewhat mature by the end of the novel.
There is one universal truth that will exist through out all of time and space that affects all that live to experience it. That truth is known as grief. We all experience grief, and for Holden Caulfield, grief is a major aspect of his life, the force that drives him to do everything he does in the novel, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. There are seven stages to this emotion known as grief: denial, depression, anger, bargaining, guilt, reconstruction, and finally, acceptance. There are many parts in the novel that could have influenced Holden’s grief, but the main one that most people who read the novel have figured it out was the death of his little brother Allie. The root to Holden’s grief lies with his brother which cause Holden’s to act and change the way he does in the novel.
Aristotle once said, “Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing.” This “condition,” as Aristotle says, is adolescence. Adolescence is much like jumping in a lake. One must walk out to the dock and once he or she is at the end, one cannot turn back. If one is to turn back they will be ridiculed as a coward, like a child. The water is ice cold, a freezing ice bath, so one does not want to jump in, but he or she can’t turn back for fear of jeer from friends. Therefore one is in a dilemma of confusion and tension between “chickening out” and braving the polar water of the lake. The land is childhood, safe and comfortable, but gone forever; and the artic water is unknown, unpleasant, and threatening like adulthood. Just like the awkward stage of being in between jumping in and abandonment, adolescence contains the strains and tension between childhood and adulthood. In the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the main character Holden Caulfield, experiences these tensions of adolescence. Holden’s quandary is he is deadlocked in adolescence, unable to go return to childhood but unwilling to progress forward to adulthood. Because Holden is consumed with the impossible task of preserving the innocence of childhood, so he delays the inevitability of becoming an adult. This leaves Holden stranded on the dock, stuck in adolescence; the center of Holden’s problems.
The transition from a teen to an adult is one of the major steps in life. This major transition can be really scary. Some people are so scared of becoming an adult, that they try to keep their inner child alive. One person in the book The Catcher in the Rye is Holden Caulfield, Holden is the main character in the novel written by J.D. Salinger. A prominent theme in his novel, The Catcher in the Rye is the painfulness of growing up. As this theme is going on through the novel, Salinger weaves in symbols that Holden happens to use and talk about throughout the novel.
Holden Caulfield is a sixteen-year-old who explores New York City after he is expelled from his prep school (Salinger). He cannot return back home because he is afraid of his parents’ response and takes no responsibility for his actions whatsoever. Holden hates the adult world, where he calls all adults “phonies.” In his world, one can’t go back to childhood, but one can’t grow up because that will make one a phony (Bloom, The Catcher in the Rye 124). Holden is stuck in between a world, where he doesn’t want to remain a child or grow up into the adult he is expected to become. According to Chen, Holden fears the “complexity, unpredictability, conflict, and change” of the adult world. He occasionally acts like an adult, when he hires a prostitute (Salinger 119), checks into a hotel room (Salinger 79), and takes care of his sister, Phoebe. As a result of Holden’s immense fear of growing up, he tends to partake in childish tendencies, such as wearing a bright red hunting hat. These actions are his way of isolating and protecting himself. Holden is stuck in his own little world. These actions are very immature; Holden does not accept the adult world for what it is. He needs human contact, care, and love, but he has built a barrier, preventing himself from these interactions (Chen). He also acts like a child by acting out “pretend” scenarios even when no one is
James Bryan notes that Holden is “is poised between two worlds, one he cannot return to and one he fears to enter”. In the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden embodies the limbo between childhood and adulthood by trying to maintain both “worlds”. For example throughout the novel Holden behaves like an adult but still behaves like a child and tries to preserve his innocence and the innocence of children. He also embodies both worlds by often contradicting himself, which shows the limbo of both worlds.
In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden’s outlook in life is either the innocence of childhood or the cruelty of adulthood. He believes that the innocence of childhood is very valuable and it should be protected from the cruelty and phoniness of the adult world. Therefore Holden has a desire and is compelled to protect a child’s innocence at all costs. This is revealed when Holden tells Phoebe that he wants to be the catcher in the rye. Holden says to Phoebe, “What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they’re ru...
J.D Salinger in the Catcher in the Rye said “The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one”. This quote means a mature man wants to help others while an immature man is all about himself. Holden is self-centered person . He is an immature boy ,who doesn't like change and kept stating that mature people are phonies.
We see during the novel that Holden wants to be able to protect innocence in the world, however by the end of the story he lets go of that desire. This is a point of growth for Holden. He finds that it is impossible and unnecessary to keep all the innocence in the world. While with Phoebe Holden says, “I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye...I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff...That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye” (173). In this moment Holden wants to be able to preserve all the youth and innocence in the world. He doesn’t accept that kids have to grow and change and that they can’t stay innocent forever. Later on in the story when Holden is with Phoebe at a carousel again he thinks, “The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the golden ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it’s bad if you say anything to them.” At the end of the novel Holden realizes and comes to terms with the fact that kids grow and lose their innocence. He moves from his want to be the “catcher in the rye” to...
The novel ‘Catcher in the Rye,’ written by J.D. Salinger portrays the struggle with maturity, and is perceived through the main character, Holden Caulfield. J.D. Salinger's fictional novel, published in 1951, is a coming-of-age story read by many adolescents but has been originally intended for an adult audience who would be able to relate to Holden’s idea that the adult world contains a certain insincerity attached to it. ‘Catcher in the Rye’ presents the distressing idea that despite the amount of action taken to evade or ignore it, maturity is inevitable.
J. D. Salinger’s novel, Catcher in the Rye explores the ambiguity of the adult world Holden must eventually learn to accept. Throughout the novel, Holden resists the society grownups represent, coloring his childlike dreams with innocence and naivety. He only wants to protect those he loves, but he cannot do it the way he desires. As he watches Phoebe on the carousel, he begins to understand certain aspects of truth. He writes: