Analysis of Characters and Themes in The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger was born in 1919 to a wealthy Manhattan family. He grew up in the same social conditions as Holden Caulfield does in The Catcher in the Rye. The last thing Salinger cared about was being a successful student because he was very lazy, without care for his responsibilities and tasks. Salinger flunked out of many prep schools, and his parents sent him to a military academy named Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1936 (Lundquist 7-10). Many critics believe that he modeled Pencey Prep, the school that Holden attended, after Valley Forge. Two weeks after J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye was published, it became an instant hit. The story about the life of a disoriented sixteen year old boy had people going crazy. The book remains popular today and has been over the years because of its brash style and its anti-establishment attitudes ("The Catcher in the Rye" 116). It was The Catcher in the Rye’s vulgar style that made parents all around the country worried about their children reading it. They did not like the language of the main character or his anti social attitudes, so parents around the country protested against The Catcher in the Rye and got most book stores to remove it from the shelves. The book was a terrible role model for teenagers during the 1950s ("The Catcher in the Rye" 116). Many critics believe that The Catcher in the Rye was based off of J.D Salinger 's life and
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.
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
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
In the novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield, our protagonist, makes a mental journey in relation to dealing and coping with the grief accompanied with the death of his brother, and we are able to see how his mental status changes and how he needs guidance from loved ones. In this journey, he learns about how to make connections and that staying close to the people he loves can improve his outlook on life and overall mood. During the book, he isolated himself from others and always found the negative in everything, which did put him in a very grim place. In fact, he even becomes clinically depressed, as we can clearly see from our point of view. He soon learns that being with his younger sister Phoebe almost brought
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.
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.
Ackley is a minor character in the novel “the Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger. One of Ackley’s main attributes is his rudeness because “He was exactly the kind of a guy that wouldn’t get out of your light when you asked him to,” (Salinger, 21). He (Ackley) is also nosy; “He always picked up your stuff and looked at it,” (Salinger, 20). A few other attributes of Ackley’s are his unhygienic persona that has “… a lot of pimples. Not just on his forehead… but all over his whole face. And not only that, he had a terrible personality,” (Salinger, 19). Ultimately Ackley deeply despised Stradlater and “was always keeping tabs on Stradlater…even though he hated Stradlater’s guts,” (Salinger, 23).
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.
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.
Depression can come at many different times in your life and in many different ways. Dictionary.com defines clinical depression as: A depression so severe as to be considered abnormal, either because of no obvious environmental causes, or because the reaction to unfortunate life circumstances is more intense or prolonged than would generally be expected (Random House). Throughout the novel, “The Catcher in the Rye,” the reader is inside the head of the troubled and depressed main character and narrator, Holden Caulfield. We, as the readers are able to see every thought that Holden has throughout the novel. Many of Holden’s thoughts scream depression. Holden is an ideal example of how someone with clinical depression would behave, how he
“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.
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.
"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of
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.