An Analysis of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye

Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D Salinger is a classic novel that is not only controversial but contains relatable characters such as Holden Caulfield. Holden is a 16 year old boy who has gone through so much pain and hurt throughout his life that he has given up in school and during the novel you start to see that he has given up at life itself as well. Holden struggles with depression, unhealthy drinking habits and with failing out of school. These three struggles are very relatable to teenagers these days. In the following paragraphs I will show you the connection between teenagers these days and Holden and the the similarities that make him such a relatable character. Holden is an ideal and universal representation of teenagers.

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. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield’s story represents a coming of age for all young adults.

J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye features a complex narrative surrounding a troubled young student, Holden Caulfield. Difficulties he faces throughout the story force Holden to confront his fears of adulthood and maturation and the responsibilities therein through the difficulties he faces throughout the story. Academic controversy surrounds whether Holden learns from these confrontations and adjust accordingly, maturing throughout the story. While initially this seems rather subjective, a thorough analysis of Holden’s actions throughout the story as well as of the symbolism injected by Salinger makes it quite clear that Holden does undergo a significant maturity arc as the story progresses. Holden’s social development and maturation

Holden would dress in atypical clothes and would flunk out of all his classes in hopes to get the attention he lacked from his parents. His desperation for attention ultimately causes him to be seen as an outsider, and isolates him from his community. He tells his professor, Mr. Spencer, that he feels as if he is “trapped on the other side of life” and how he is trying to fit into a world where he doesn’t belong in. In my opinion, Holden’s alienation is also caused by his fear of becoming an adult. However, instead of admitting to his fear, Holden denounces it by stating adulthood is phony and fake. In the novel, he portrays childhood as a time of innocence, learning, and happiness; while adult hood is denoted as a dark, phony, and unhappy time. He constantly is criticizing adults of being “phony”, when in reality he is the phony one. Holden uses phoniness to represent all of the bad things in the world and uses it as a reason to isolate himself from the world to deal with his loneliness. Holden also isolates himself due to his craving for stability. Holden’s life had been constantly changing; changing boarding schools,

Everybody at some point has to grow up. everybody will, sooner or later, have to adopt the responsibility that comes with adulthood. Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, is experiencing major growth throughout the book. This is evident through Characterization, Holden’s thoughts and realizations, and Plot events throughout the story. Throughout the book, Holden gives the impression to be reluctant and resistant to grow up and be an adult. He favors the companionship of more mature and intelligently developed children like Phoebe, his younger sister over most adults or older people, like Sally Hayes, Old Spencer and so on. Holden also consistently calls many adults “phony” as he is not fond of their fraudulent actions. Despite Holden’s resistance of adulthood, he still does undergoes many changes in his actions that shows he is maturing and becoming an adult, as well as becoming part of and accustomed too many parts of adult life.

Written in 1951, J.D. Salinger’s, The Catcher in the Rye continues to be a popular book amongst Americans. Although The Catcher in the Rye has been banned in many public school settings in the United States it continues to stay atop some of the greatest books of all time lists. Whether people are in their teens or in their fifties they find themselves drawn to Holden Caulfield. At some point in their life they could relate to a sense of alienation, caused by money and wealth. Humans are wired to be jealous and want what others have. Holden Caulfield has the opposite problem, he has money and wealth which he inherited from his hard working parents. However, he himself is not motivated to work hard, graduate prep school and earn his own wealth. Instead he despises hard working students at the many prep schools he drops out of. Holden also has a big number of family complications. An area to explore is how wealth can contribute to feelings of alienation and despair. Holden Caulfield has a complex relationship with money, not wanting to associate from it, but benefiting from it. A further look into the 1950’s may give an insight into the troubled mind of Holden Caulfield.

Holden Caulfield plays a timeless character in the sense that his way of life is common for the American teenager, in his time as well as now. Today parents dread the terrible and confusing adolescent years of their child's life. In J.D. Salinger's book, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is in this terrible and confusing point of his life. At this point in his life, as well as in modern teenager's lives, a transition occurs, from child to adult. Holden takes this change particularly rough and develops a typical mentality that prevents him from allowing himself to see or understand his purpose in life.

In the novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the protagonist Holden Caulifield views the world as an evil corrupt place where there is no peace. Holden has a phony phobia that restricts him from becoming a fully matured adult. In Holden's attempted journey in becoming a fully matured adult, he encounters many scenarios involving friendship, personal opinions, and his love of children. His journey is an unpleasant and difficult one with many lessons learned along the way; including the realization that he is powerless to change the world.

In J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, a young man named Holden Caulfield is on the edge of adulthood. He is a bright kid but struggles with many mental diseases mainly because of the passing of his brother Allie. This has caused him to not focus on school and has got him kicked out of many schools. He did not have many friends and he did not like many people. He thought of everyone as phony. Holden does not want to confront adulthood in fear of losing his childhood because of the fear of change, conformity to the phony world and the passing of his younger brother Allie.

A way Holden that separated himself from was by insulting adults and never making friends with teens because he viewed innocence as sacred. Throughout the book, he struggles with the idea of growing up because he views an adult’s world as cruel and fake. Holden fights against time because of his view of the adult world and fear of death. The death of Allie and his classmate showed him that he too will disappear one day and everything will change. In order to reject growing up, Holden surrounds himself with people who embody innocence, such as Phoebe and Jane Gallagher. His goal in life is to protect the innocence of children by being “the catcher in the rye” because his innocence was taken away at a young age and no one protected him due to the death of Allie. Although Holden’s innocence was taken from him, he continually searches for it by epitomizing childish behavior such as obsessing over where the ducks go in the winter. The day after Allie died, Holden broke every window in his garbage and his hand in doing his, this act is representative of his innocence also breaking and not being able to ever be fully fixed. Holden also witnessed the suicide of his classmate which provoke his already damaged emotional state. The viewing of these two deaths made Holden realize that innocent children and he couldn’t figure out why.

It would surprise most people who know me to discover that I was able to find inner peace by reading a book that inspired criminals to commit murder. A book that left me desperately wishing that the author was a good friend of mine, someone that I could call up on a whim just to talk to. This book is none other than Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye has been pronounced a literary classic for its atypical portrayal of adolescence, to effectively convey the protagonist’s alienation and confusion. The introduction of The Catcher in the Rye is underpinned by disorder and confusion through a stream-of-consciousness narration, which digresses from one subject to another. Consequently, Holden’s multitudinous thoughts and feelings appear to lack a cohesive pattern. Additionally, Holden’s prevalent ascription of other students as “phony” (Salinger, p.3) alludes to his alienation and isolation as a form of self-protection; he rejects those he does not understand. Furthermore, the vocabulary encapsulates typical adolescence dialect of the 1940s, and resultantly, alienates contemporary reader. This is typified through Holden’s use of colloquial speech, in particular, his exclamation “that killed me” (Salinger, p.42) to express his amusement. Therefore, the introduction of Holden’s disjointed monologue in The Catcher in the Rye foreshadows Salinger’s unique interpretation of adolescence.

In the novel the Catcher in the Rye, author J.D. Salinger writes about the life of a 17 year old boy who drastically differs from the rest of the teenager population because of his alternate point of view on life. This non-typical teenager with the name of Holden Caulfield has a negative perspective on everything he and others do, and does not attempt to find the light in certain situations. While teenagers may not attempt to find the best in a certain outcome, they tend to have a positive outlook on specific things in their life. Holden appears to only switch between 3 emotions throughout the book, and never gives anything his all, or consideration. As a result of this, he does not act like a typical teenager would. However, Holden does have a limited amount of traits that classify him as a typical teenager: his need for connections to others and learning to be independent on his own. He also has distinct traits that isolate him from the others, making him out to be this negative, apathetic character. A typical teenager is someone who conforms to what others are doing, but Salinger creates Holden to be a non-typical teenager who sees everything differently and executes what has to be done in his own unique way.

Holden begins to think that the world is evil and fake because of the death of his little brother and because Holden always gets expelled from many different schools. When Holden remembers his childhood field trips to the Museum of Natural History, he finds comfort in the fact that nothing in the museum has changed. ("The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move") (pg.121). This quote makes it obvious that Holden is afraid of becoming different, by growing up into an adult. Holden reminds himself of his youth because he wants to remember how simple things were. There were no phonies, no classes to attend, and barely any responsibilities to maintain. This shows that Holden is trying to protect what little innocence he has left by hanging onto his youth. ("Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway.") (pg.122). The museum is able to offer Holden a "pause in time" where he could return to his