The Catcher In The Rye By J. D. Salinger

Teenage years are difficult. Time tells this story of struggle again and again. The Catcher in the Rye is a classic novel showing the struggles a teenager goes through while transitioning into adulthood. The main character, Holden Caulfield, is a judgmental and temperamental boy who struggles to see the positivity in life. Throughout the story, Holden searches to find himself, as he feels forced to grow up. He holds onto aspects of his childhood and isolates himself so much that it is even harder for him to transition. J.D. Salinger uses the red hunting hat, the museum and cigarettes as important symbols in the story to convey the themes of transitioning from childhood to adulthood, loneliness, and isolation.

In The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, the main character and narrator Holden Caulfeild walks many different paths of life. He jumps around different aspects of his life throughout the book, showing the reader many different sides to himself. This theme is presented through the author’s technique in crafting the characterization and symbolism. J.D. Salinger develops a puzzle of a personality for Holden throughout the book, to show the complexity and multitude of sides to Holden’s character.

It is often said that the people one surrounds themselves with can reflect things about themselves, such as their beliefs and ideals. One’s friends and acquaintances can reveal subconscious attractions to people that fulfill their ideals or agree with the things they say, but these relationships can also help one discover their personal philosophies by reinforcing opposing views. Indeed, in J.D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye, the way Holden reacts to and interacts with secondary characters reveal his established philosophies and the values he holds most dear to him.

Holden Caulfield is a character who has been through rejection and wishes to protect others innocence. He is a teen boy who is the main character in Catcher in The Rye by J.D.Salinger. He has an older brother named DB, a younger sister named Phoebe, and a younger, deceased, brother named Allie. Holden retells his story on him, trying to be the catcher in the rye. Holden has been kicked out of different colleges. He has been rejected by different girls. Holden goes through his life story. He talks about being kicked out of Pencey, his friend Jane, his “acquaintance” Stradlater, and how, when, and where Allie died. Society is to blame for Holden Caulfield's decline in mental stability. Society does not help Holden. Instead, they ignore his

Holden and Phoebe share an unbreakable bond that plays a crucial role throughout the novel. Holden and Phoebe have similar qualities because they are siblings, but the way they approach life and interact with people is very different. The Catcher in the Rye takes place in the mid-1900s in New York City. The novel begins with Holden getting kicked out of Pencey Prep Academy. He is not ready to face his family and disappoint them once again, but he is also looking forward to go home because he loves being around his little sister Phoebe. She is the one person that he can truly talk to and she is the most important person in his life. Phoebe also adores her older brother. She accepts him for who he is, flaws and all. Holden and Phoebe are similar and different in their physical appearance, character traits, and the ways they contribute to the novel.

“You'll have to jump.' 'I'll jump.' 'Jump!' Major Danby cried. Yossarian jumped. Nately's whore was hiding just outside the door. The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off” (Heller 350). Yossarian ends his dialogue in a cheery and fun way because he is finally going to be free from the oppression of the US military. This also shows his increased morals, because in the beginning, he would have just killed the girl for trying to kill him. He also uses arrangement to show America at the time like, “ Heller's satirical masterpiece tells us something about the madness of America” (Pilger, John). This shows how the novel portrays the insanity of the war at this time and how these people need help or to get out. The main part of the novel is just the insane adventures Yossarian goes on throughout his horrifying experience.

In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is a very complex and interesting person to take into consideration and psychoanalyze. His various traits make him a different person from the rest of the phonies in the world. Holden says, “All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn't.” What Holden doesn’t realize is that he is a phony as well. This is ironic because he says you don’t know if you are a phony, but he is. Salinger’s life is reflected in the book, there are many similarities to his life and Holden’s. Holden is a perfect example of Freud’s

Anyone who has lost a beloved relative to cancer or other illnesses can understand how difficult it is to return to a normal living routine and move on with their lives without the relative. In J.D. Salinger’s novel, Holden Caulfield has to deal with the loss of his younger brother to leukemia. A few years after his younger brother, Allie, passed away, Holden finds himself being kicked out of yet another boarding school, this one being Pencey Prep in Pennsylvania. Holden decides to leave school three days before he is supposed to go home and catches a train back home to New York. In those three days, Holden thinks about his late brother a lot, attempts to speak to people in his own cryptic way with confusing questions, speaks to his younger sister, Phoebe, in the dead of night, and works his way towards an emotional breakdown, all while ignoring his own needs to keep himself well. Sleeping and eating a precious few times, Holden makes himself sick and delirious in a short 72 hours. In Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye, one can tell by analyzing the novel that Salinger uses the red hunting hat and the museum to show that dealing with the death of a loved one can be overwhelming for young people who don’t know how to cope properly.

When a family member passes away it causes hardship, not only immediate, but also in the long term. In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The main character, Holden Caulfield, experiences the loss of his brother. He is distanced from his family and friends emotionally, and at boarding school, is separated physically. Out of fear, he begins to shield himself from the world around him. Because of the death of Allie, Holden pushes away any new relationships that could lead to him getting hurt and clings onto those he already had.

“I swear to God I’m crazy. I admit it.” It is very easy to automatically assume that Holden Caulfield is crazy. It’s even a logical assumption since Caulfield himself admits to being crazy twice throughout the course of the book. However, calling Holden Caulfield crazy is almost the same as calling the majority of the human race crazy also. Holden Caulfield is just an adolescent trying to prevent himself from turning into what he despises the most, a phony. Most of Caulfield’s actions and thoughts are the same as of many people, the difference being that Holden acts upon those thoughts and has them down in writing.

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D Salinger, consists of many minor characters. There are more than about sixty characters in the novel in which only three of them are major characters (Holden, Allie, and Phoebe) and the rest minor. Many of these characters are just mentioned with no lasting impact on either the novel itself or Holden. Salinger uses minor characters in the Catcher in the Rye to tell the readers about Holden and his views about the world.

Considered one of the best novels of the 20th century, The Catcher in the Rye has affected readers around the globe since its publication in 1951. Its contemporary critics, however, gave the novel mixed reviews. Compared to the ideals of 1950s America, Holden Caulfield, the emotionally immature, extremely judgmental, teen-aged main character of “Catcher,” embodies the antithesis. Holden was an affront to the new social order, which demanded conformity and propagated the “father knows best” mentality. Americans, however, despite the postwar economic boom, remained suspicious of authority. In idyllic suburban neighborhoods across the country, while families huddled around their new television screens, people discussed their neighbors’ movements, made distrustful even of their closest friends by the “Red Scare”. The American Dream seemed like a golden ring just out of reach, leaving people feeling like they were going around in circles without a clear destination or purpose. With his sense of nostalgia for better times, his bleak perspective of the future, and his contradictory nature, Holden speaks directly to this sense of confusion at the world that Americans felt during the 1950s.

The author from The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger utilizes motifs loneliness and depression to show how Holden a teenager from the book explains the struggles he had during the great depression. J.D. Salinger uses the motifs of loneliness and depression to illustrate the theme that when people feel lonely they try to connect with people to get rid of it.

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of

Do you think that the “catcher in the rye” is still relevant to teens nowadays? “I dont give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age.Sometimes I act a lot older than I am -I really do- but people never notice it. People never notice anything.” In the novel “The Catcher in the Rye” written by JD Salinger the main character Holden Caulfield feels isolated and also has a lot of trouble interacting with people such as adults and even teens that are his age due to the terrible death of one of his brothers that was caused by leukemia. We believe that the “catcher in the rye” is still relevant to teens nowadays because lots of teens suffer of many things such as family loss, bullying, and depression that would cause suicidal thoughts. Last but not least, Holden also had the problem of not wanting to become an adult he just wanted to stay as a teen forever which also affected him on not being able to really interact with adults.