A Milestone Essay

One main thing Holden is interested in and he makes this clear would be sex. He harassed Luce constantly about questions to do with sex, and was aroused by the sexual behavior displayed at Edmont Hotel. Another example of how Holden gets guilty easily and feels nervous would be when he was alone with a prostitute and got flustered with her sitting on his lap. Holden was quick to

At his age most kids are already sexually active, making them more adult in a way. The reason for this being that they are exposed to many things that younger, and more innocent children are not. With the protection of his virginity comes his innocence. Holden’s innocence is slowly being taken away as the novel goes on. When he goes to New York he is exposed to many things that normal kids are not used to seeing. He sees prostitutes for one thing, people who are the opposite of innocent and clean. Holden also has to be around a lot of phonies who make him realize hat the world isn’t perfect and that people lie and cheat to receive what they want. This is seen with Mr. Ossenburg, who takes advantage of other people while they are mourning their loved ones. He takes their money, which is supposed to go to a grave, but just ends up keeping it and throwing the bodies in a ditch. Holden meets many more phonies, and doesn’t want other children to be exposed to their dishonest nature.

Holden is like most teenagers and physically he desires to explore that side of himself, but mentally he is not ready for sex, because he has not found the right person yet. This is rooted in his obsession with maintaining childhood innocence and his personal moral obligation to not partake in grown up acts whenever possible. Sexuality is another challenge Salinger uses to show a lack of growth, but also a lack of regression in this part of Holden. Holden is a virgin, but he makes it clear that this is entirely by choice, implying that he has had many opportunities to change this fact. "I've had quite a few opportunities to lose my virginity and all, but I've never gotten around to it yet." (92) Holden goes onto say that he always stops because something always goes wrong, or the girl he's with no longer wishes to continue. Later we see Holden struggle with the fact that he has yet to lose his virginity and so he gets a prostitute to come to his room while he is staying in a hotel. At first it seems that he is ready for this kind of intimacy, but not in the way one would expect. Holden acts as if it is an unpleasant experience that doesn’t wish to spend too much time dwelling on and he decides it on a whim. He just wants to get past this: "Anyway, I kept walking around the room, waiting for this prostitute to show up. I kept hoping she'd be good-looking. I didn't care

When he comes back from the bar late at night, he encounters the elevator man and tells him to send a prostitute to his suite, yet he fails in his sexual relationship with her because of his sexual innocence caused by his isolation. When the prostitute arrives, Holden tries to avoid any sexual talk, he then tells her that he does not want to do it, he says, “I’ll pay you and all, but do you mind very much if we don’t do it? […] the trouble was, I just felt more depressed than sexy” (Salinger 96). Holden

Sex is something he gains new understandings about and he learns that it is something natural, but complex and not all it appears to be. For example, Sunny is a prostitute who Holden calls up to his room out of desperation. He’s so lonely that he’s just looking for conversation, but he’s searching in the wrong place. Holden admits earlier on in the novel, “sex is something I really don’t understand too hot” (Salinger 82). Sunny is young and sees her as a person who needs protection, however he expected someone who is a prostitute to be older. From this situation Holden learns that he needs the moment to be right and an emotional connection to have sex, that for him it is not something that can be casual although for others it might be.

He essentially purchased a prostitute. When she arrives he is nervous and says he just had an operation so they should just talk. The prostitute is baffled and seems irritated. The internal conflict here is Holden one, being a virgin and nervous, and two, not wanting to disrespect her as a woman. The syntax here shows that Holden really is trying to be polite, and that he is just a nervous teenageer.

After getting off the train that night in New York, he stands at the phone booth for a few minutes debating who to call. “So I ended up not calling anybody”(59). After going through a list of people who he could potentially call, he ends up not calling anybody because he notices that he has closed himself off from each and everyone of them, except his sister. However, he can’t call his sister since she is younger and asleep by that time. This probably makes Holden to feel even more lonely than he did before, causing him to make a call to a girl he’s never met before, so that he can have an interaction with someone.

Holden checks into the Edmont Hotel in Manhattan, where he hired a young prostitute named Sunny, but didn’t sleep with her. The scene depicts Holden’s struggle of coming to adulthood. Holden thought that by sleeping with a prostitute would make him a man. However, when he was confronted in the burgeoning sexual situation, he yielded. After all he is still just a kid. “The trouble was, I just didn’t want to do it. I felt more depressed than

3. In the beginning of the chapter Holden wanted to be with a girl. He kept trying to get a girl to hang out with him, Holden said “I told him to ask old Valencia if she’d care to join me for a drink” (Salinger 165). This quote shows that Holden wanted to have a drink with a girl. He didn’t just try once, after he tried to be with Valencia, Holden went and called Sally Hayes.

This passage proves that Holden is dissatisfied with the boys at his school, he believes they are fake and he does not social well with them. Although Holden doesn’t want to interact much, when he does end up interacting with people, he usually gets the short end of the stick. For instance he invites Ackley, a boy he meets at Pency Prep, along to the movies, but Ackley won't return the favor by letting Holden sleep in his roommate's bed. ‘“I’m not worried about it. Only, I’d hate like hell if Ely came in all of a sudden and found some guy-”’ (Salinger 49). Another instance is when Holden pays Sunny even though they don’t have sex, and ends up getting scammed. At a young age, Holden lost his younger brother, Allie. This had a huge traumatizing effect on him; Holden felt useless because he was unable to help his brother. Holden turns his emotions into anger; stating that he punched out all the windows in the garage. Another time Holden felt unable to help was when his peer, James Castle, was harassed and bullied, leading to James’s suicide. Holden says, “... and there was old James Castle laying right on the stone steps and all. He was dead, and his teeth, and blood, were all over the place, and nobody would even go near him. He had on this turtleneck sweater I'd lent him”’ (Salinger 170). Holden feels that society had

Most Californians are introduced to the California Mission system in one of two ways: in their early education, or when they first visit a mission. Unfortunately, both methods are prone to simplification or bias in conveying the history of the missions. What this has led to is Californians who are ignorant of the history of the land they walk on. Consequently, visitors to the missions treat them as mere tourist attractions, instead of trying to embrace and understand the complex issues the missions represent.

At a bar, Holden finds these women, describing them and typical “phonies.” He ends up dancing with “the blonde one” and teases her, telling her that a movie star was in the room they were. All of a sudden “[he] was sorry as hell [he’d] kidded her. Some people you shouldn’t kid, even if they deserve it” (Salinger 78). Holden is well aware that he has hurt her. He also not admittingly makes a mental not that you cannot do as you please in this world.

In The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, the tone clearly drives the strategy to be logos. Logos is an exceptional rhetorical strategy as it persuades the reader, not through the use of emotions and feelings, but rather through the use of logic and reasoning. There exists an energy in the style in which Gladwell writes that has the power to persuade the audience to believe what he believes in, the Tipping Point. Gladwell does not only give us his theory on how epidemics spread, but uses logos to connect the world we live in to his theory. The author’s use of logos results in a greater impact of the rhetoric.

However, he admits that while the couple’s actions are “crumby” (Salinger 81) and crude, he is still aroused and “wouldn’t mind” (Salinger 81) doing it, especially to a girl he is attracted to. While Holden wants to preserve his innocence by not thinking about sex at all, he agrees that he is a “sex maniac” (Salinger 81), and is a fiend about losing his virginity. Holden even goes as far as to make rules for himself. On page 82, he recounts, “I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass. I broke it, though, the same week I made it-the same night, as a matter of fact” (Salinger). He is slowly losing his innocence, and while he hates to admit it, Holden’s constant thoughts about sexuality is a sign of adulthood. To him, one should only have sex with someone they truly love. Holden is almost proud of himself for having such a morally correct view of sex. This is why he is so riled when he discovers that Stradlater had sex with Jane Gallagher. Holden realized that Jane barely knew Stradlater and felt that he, if anyone, should be dating Jane. His increasing thoughts on sexuality and loss of a conventional or shielded view of sex show that his loss of innocence is apparent.

Holden thinks children are authentic and in order to stay authentic in a world full of phonies he seeks to preserve his childlike nature. In chapter 13, Holden talks about the concept of his virginity, he says “If you want to know the truth, I’m a virgin. I really am. I’ve had quite a few opportunities to lose my virginity and all, but I never got around to it yet. Something always happens.”(92). Holden admits he’s still a virgin and to many people losing your virginity is a step to adulthood. This is Holden’s way of trying to protect what little he has of his childhood to prevent himself from becoming an adult. That “something always happens”(92) is his own subconscious telling him to stop and to save this moment for someone who he really likes not a prostitute whom he bought. Holden even says earlier ,in the novel, “I don’t like the idea...I think if you don’t really like a girl, you shouldn’t horse around with her at all”(62). The author is trying to show how kids can avoid being an adult in the real world. Although he tries to protect his youth, Holden also likes to pretend his is an adult. He does things like being an avid smoker, constantly wanting to drink, and wanting to hookup with girls. Doing acts like these: ”After a while I sat down in a chair and smoked a couple of cigarettes.”(63), “‘Would any of you girls care to dance?’ I didn’t ask them crudely or anything. Very suave, in fact.”(70), “Boy, I sat at that goddamn bar