The Influence of Women on Holden’s Life
The different people someone meets and converses with in life are important because they allow that person to understand mankind’s differences. The voice of J.D. Salinger is pivotal in his novel the Catcher in the Rye because he illustrates the many obstacles that can come up in a teenager’s life. Holden Caulfield’s life is deeply affected by Sally Hayes’s rapacious and shallow character, Phoebe Caulfield’s good will and Jane Gallagher’s forlorn attempt for love.
J.D Salinger points out that not everyone is phony and moronic as Holden labels others by his immature judgements. Sally Hayes is a pretty, seventeen year old girl, who wants to enjoy her teenage years eating ice cream, seeing matinees, and showing off her butt in a little, tight skirt. As Holden speaks to Sally about the different cliques and phonies in school, suddenly he gets an idea, “How would you like to get the Hell out of here?” (171). Although Sally Hayes is an extremely shallow character, she thinks rationally about Holden’s bizarre idea of leaving town. Holden does not recognize the big picture; they are both practically children and he does not have any assurance of finding a decent job or sustaining a living. Holden does not realize that the world has many flaws because everyone is human, and that his common sense is not practical or reasonable to agree with. As Holden does not get what he wants, he ends up hurting Sally’s feelings by telling her, “You give me a royal pain in the ass, if you want to know the truth” (173). Holden’s egotistic and impudent attitude towards Sally hurts her feelings, and makes her realize that Holden has just gone too far out of his mind. Salinger’s voice is not only seen through Sally, bu...
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...ch to him because he really likes her. Holden has a low self-esteem and never goes to meet Jane. When Holden remembers her incident with her stepfather the “booze hound”, he gets emotional and empathetic towards her. Holden’s inability to reach out to Jane is a representation of his weakness. He lacks the confidence and courage to talk to her because of the troubling issues he already has. J.D Salinger shows that Jane Gallagher plays an important role in Holden’s life, even though she is rarely mentioned.
The women that interact with Holden influence him in positive and negatives ways. J.D Salinger illustrates that Phoebe, Jane, and Sally all changed Holden’s life in many ways. Overall, Holden does not recognize that life is full of discrepancy and flaws. The aura of depression that revolves around Holden’s life indicates that he has many problems yet to solve.
Vin Diesel once said, “It's insecurity that is always chasing you and standing in the way of your dreams.” In The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden struggles with insecurity and accepting his personality and intellect. We get glimpses of these very traits Holden is insecure about through his observations of certain people he looks up to, namely his brother Allie and his old friend Mr. Antolini. It can’t be a coincidence that the people he admires happen to have certain ideal traits on which Holden expresses self-doubt. Salinger uses the description of characters that Holden holds in high regard to represent key traits that Holden is insecure about within himself.
Holden struggles to make connections with other people, and usually resorts to calling them phonies whenever they upset him. He finds natural human flaws in people and runs away from connection immediately. His date with Sally shows this. Near the end of the date, Holden tells Sally about his plans to run away from life. When Sally gives him practical advice, Holden is quick to escape connection by calling her “a pain”. Sally’s advice would definitely guide Holden in a more realistic direction, but that is not what he wants to hear. Conflict always arises in his mind even if there is little in reality. His struggles with finding connection also make him too apprehensive to call his old friend Jane. Holden likes to think of Jane as a pure and perfect girl that he can
“All I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told you about. [….] Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody” (Salinger 277). Holden Caulfield comes in contact with many females throughout the novel. Some of them are for better, and some cause him to be more depressed. Holden is currently in a mental institution. He is telling a psychoanalyst everything that has happened to him a few weeks before last Christmas. In J.D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye the author demonstrates how two characters can help Holden hold his sanity or can make his whole world fall apart through the use of Sally and Phoebe to show that relationships can be difficult and confusing or the exact opposite.
Jane Gallagher has a lot of influence on Holden. For example he states, “…You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.” In this scene, Holden shows how Holden feels when he gets around Jane. Holden says that he feels good and happy when around Jane. Another scene where Jane demonstrates her influence over Holden, is when he states, “…Then I’d crawl back to my room and call up Jane and have her come over and bandage up my guts. I pictured her holding a cigarette for me to smoke while I was…” Here, Holden imagines Jane coming over to help him, which reveals that Holden feels secure and protected by her. It also shows how Holden feels about Jane, the girl of his dreams, who he feels in love with. Jane clearly has much influence over Holden.
School shootings alarm everybody, even those who are not immediately affected. They spark national and global news as well as debate. They make parents reluctant to send their kids off to class. In any case, they additionally prompt speculations about the individuals who perpetrate these horrendous and saddening crimes. Causing generalizations and myths about the causes for such terrible acts. Most suppositions about the culprits aren't correct and a number of the warning signs go unnoticed.
Holden is a pessimistic, remote, and miserable character and he expresses this attitude through dialogue, tone, and diction. Throughout the book he has remained to be a liar, a failure, a loner, and lastly, a suicidal guy who feels like he has no purpose in life. Perhaps Salinger expressed his perceptions and emotions of his teen years in this book and it was a form of conveying his deep inner feelings of his childhood. Readers can see this clearly shown in The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger.
Holden attacks various weaknesses in the 50's society. He criticizes nearly everything that he observes, and refuses to pull punches. Often Holden uses his brilliant talent of observation to discover the true motives behind the people he calls "phony." Through his observations the reader can interpret Salinger's view of the 1950's culture. Holden's perceptions of paranoia, conformity, and the consumer culture convey Salinger's views.
At first glance, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye simply tells the story of Holden Caulfield, who is often characterized as annoying and whiny by the people around him. The anti-hero frequently speaks on impulse, making quick and often inaccurate observations of others. Holden’s immature and overly critical attitude turns off those he encounters, who are displeased with how callow he is. However, what these characters fail to understand is that there is actually a sort of sophistication behind Holden’s reasoning. In fact, throughout the novel, Holden disguises his maturity through outward displays of childishness.
Holden is the main character of the book. He is a complicated boy how seems to get thrown out of boarding schools left and right. He is constantly thinking about depressive thoughts of his past, like times he was with his brother, who is dead. His thoughts of his brother bring serious rage for some reason. In one instance he tells about the day after his brothers death, and Holden was filled with such anger and loneliness, he punched through all the glass doors in his garage. This required him to go to the hospital, and unfortunately his stay at the hospital forced him to miss his brothers funeral. He also keeps thinking about his old girl friend Jane. Holden is reminded of past times with her, where her father upset her, and Holden was the only one there to console her. So with that in mind, he thinks he still may have a place with her, and Holden believes that all his happiness will rest with her. Holden is just a guy who is searching for something to get him out of his depression, but he has no idea what it is, and above all how to get it.
The protagonist, Holden Caulfield, interacts with many people throughout J.D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, but probably none have as much impact on him as certain members of his immediate family. The ways Holden acts around or reacts to the various members of his family give the reader a direct view of Holden's philosophy surrounding each member.
Over the years, members of the literary community have critiqued just about every author they could get their pen on. One of the most popular novels to be critiqued has been J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. In favorable critiques, Holden Caulfield is a good guy stuck in a bad world. He is trying to make the best of his life, though ultimately losing that battle. Whereas he aims at stability and truth, the adult world cannot survive without suspense and lies. It is a testament to his innocence and decent spirit that Holden would place the safety of children as a goal in his lifetime. This serves to only re-iterate the fact that Holden is a sympathetic character, a person of high moral values who is too weak to pick himself up from a difficult situation.
J.D Salinger questions the behavior of young men by making Holden refuse the usual things that society would say he should.It is very apparent that Holden cannot relate to the men around him. The characters in the novel that show the typical characteristics of men of the period. With Stradlater, Holden’s roommate, being the typical handsome teenage guy that takes girls in his to fool around with. Salinger uses this character to further show that Holden is not like the guys his age, perhaps proving that Holden does not have the same sexual drive as the guys around
The Catcher In The Rye, by J.D. Salinger, portrays many different ideas in an everyday society. These ideas and thoughts are expressed through the protagonist in the novel, Holden Morrissey. Holden views many things in society as fake or “phony” at an idealistic point-of-view. This contributes to many conflicts and biased thoughts throughout the novel.
School shootings have been a crime for quite some time, in the past three years they have unfortunately become a more common issue. On April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, a school shooting occurred (“Columbine”). This shooting was done by two teens who attended Columbine. The teens’ reasoning behind committing such crime is due to the fact that they were bullied by students of Columbine High School. This was a very tragic event for Columbine High School. With 13 people killed and 20 wounded, it left a mark on the community. After the two teens went about this shooting, they committed suicide. School shootings are a very serious matter, and for years following shootings like Columbine, the atmosphere of the school, as well as the community, is damaged. The Columbine High School shooting is labeled the worst shooting in United States History (“Columbine”). Schools never fully mend from tragic events like school shootings; however, there is more prevention that can be done to reduce the chances of school shootings happening.
Holden's nervous impulse to protect women seems to have sprung up in his psyche from a very young age. After his brother, Allie, started to experience more severe symptoms of leukemia, Holden notes that his mother seemed "nervous as hell." His own mother's emotional problems (Lombardi) transfer to Holden on a very deep, psychological level because he feels partially responsible for his brother's fate in the first place. Seeing his mother in such a distraught state makes him feel even guiltier. The unintended consequence of this is that Holden grows up with a constant fear that he is going to hurt any woman that he grows close to. This manifests itself many times during his time in New York, with one of the earliest examples being his meeting with Sunny in the hotel room. Holden protects her innocence, but not for any particularly noble reason. He hangs her dress back up and insists that he just wants to talk, but Holden did not do this in an attempt to be some paragon of righteousness. Holden, on a deep, psychological lev...