Similarities And Differences Between Holden And Catcher In The Rye

Huckleberry Finn from ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ and Holden Caulfield from ‘The Catcher in the Rye,’ are two very different characters. However, they both have a considerable similarity of creating different identities because they both want to escape who they really are. The novels are both in the bildungsroman genre, so talks about how the boys grow up and come to terms with the world they live in, however much they don’t want to be there. The boys both talk in first person, so we always know how they are feeling, even if their actions are different to the emotions they are trying to escape from. At certain points in both novels both characters want to escape themselves, either to cover up a secret or mistake they 've made, or simply

Huck believes the tales that Tom Sawyer tells him and the ones he reads in school. School was a luxury for children such as Huck, because many adults hadn 't had the same opportunity; this gives Huck the advantage of being able to understand the stories. Tom Sawyer believes his gang has to follow the exact story for them to imagine it 's true. When they question him he says ‘"Because it ain 't in the story books." ' Although they are having an education, the nonstandard 'ain 't ' shows that the education they are receiving isn 't very advanced. Huck likes to believe these stories so goes a long with the 'story books ' so he has an escape, by living a version of someone else 's fictional life for a while. Huck needs to hear the stories because he cannot invent a believable identity all by himself, he needs the input of a fictional character so he can work around that. For Holden, he says he is very against the movies because the actors are all 'phonies, ' but there are many points in the novel where he is drawn to them, either by going to see them, or pretending he is in them himself, making him the biggest phony and dichotomy of all. This is ironic because by saying he hates the phonies; he is implying that he also hates himself. This could lead to him inventing the identities to try and escape his hatred. If Holden becomes someone new, he would have no reason to hate himself for being a phony because he is no longer himself. For example, he says ‘I pictured myself coming out of the goddam bathroom.’ The adverb 'goddam ' suggests that he is trying to resist the movies and imagining these situations, but he is still drawn to them because they appeal to him more than his own life which he is struggling with because he constantly tells us he is depressed. The difference between the two characters is that Holden doesn 't need a source of