Analysis Of Salinger 's ' The Catcher 's The Rye '

In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger tells a story of a young boy, Holden, who never quite understood his stance on life. Throughout the novel, Holden struggles to adapt to the inevitable transition into adulthood, often worrying more about others than himself. In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger uses connotative diction, repetition, and specific diction to convey Holden’s struggle of accepting life changes that led him to becoming mentally unstable.            To start off, Salinger illustrates Holden’s nature by using connotative diction.

Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye has been into continuous dispute and controversy since its publication in 1951. Some critics think that Salinger 's narrative of the human plight is engrossing and enlightening, yet incredibly depressing. The leading character, Holden Caulfield, serves as the basis for critical discussion due to his psychological conflict. Salinger 's portrayal of Holden, which encloses incidents of dejection, nervous breakdown, impulsive spending, sexual exploration, and other wandering behavior, have all assist to the controversial nature of the novel. Yet the novel is praised by its piercing advocates, who argue that it is a critical look at the problems facing American youth during the 1950 's.

During the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, author J.D. Salinger brings Holden’s pessimistic, antisocial personality to life through what he says, how he says it, and through the characters he meets. Salinger bases Holden’s expressions off of the culture of the 1950’s, his own personal dialect, and the everyday occurrences of Holden’s life in mind. J.D. Salinger manipulates the diction, uses syntax to criticize others, and controls the character interaction and dialogue in order to create the protagonist, Holden Caulfield.

For example, in chapter 10, when Holden is staying at a New York City hotel, he goes to the Lavender Room and encounters three girls, Bernice, whom he is attracted to, Marty, and Laverne. A rare moment in the story as Holden steps up to interact with the opposite gender, asking them for a dance and a good time. To Holden’s misfortune, the girls don’t seem interested in him as they find his actions amusing. Phoniness is also present when Marty says she saw Gary Cooper, a movie star, in efforts to lie and impress others based off something that never happened. Holden thinks that the girls are coarse and rude, as they are looking out for celebrities instead of engaging in conversation. Holden is offended by their ‘phoniness’ and finds them pathetic. Although Holden has such a low opinion of these girls, he continues to seek for their company, in the end, dancing with the three of them. This example shows the extent to which others excluding Holden can truly be phony and not usually just exaggerated by Holden. But Holden, himself, also shows phony traits, that gives the reader a hypocritical, but true form of himself. Holden is able to

J.D. Salinger, the author of The Catcher in the Rye, uses the behaviour of protagonist Holden Caulfield to shape his personality in the way he alienates himself from the rest of the world. Holden alienates himself from the society he lives in, his relationships with others and also the relationship he has with himself. Holden struggles to cope with the fact that eventually he will have to grow up and so will everyone around him. Holden see’s the world not being perfect as a huge problem that he alone has to fix because everyone else is too much of a ‘phony’ to do it. The novel explores Holden’s weekend after he got kicked out of his fourth school, Pency Prep, and the struggles he faces with alienating himself.

In the novel “The Catcher in The Rye” Salinger, the author, uses Holden’s interactions to both criticize society as well as reveal Holden’s symptoms of his psychological problems. In the novel, Salinger presents how unsympathetic people can be towards each other especially if you are like Holden, an emotionally scarred male teenager dealing with past trauma. Salinger also shows us that due to those unsympathetic behaviors and the trauma that comes with dead family members.

Many novels cannot be fully understood and appreciated if only read for face value, and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is no exception. The abundant use of symbolism in Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is of such significance that it “proclaims itself in the very title of the novel” (Trowbridge par. 1). If the symbolism in this novel is studied closely, there should be no astonishment in learning that The Catcher in the Rye took approximately ten years to write and was originally twice its present length. J.D. Salinger uses copious amounts

“Don’t tell people what you are thinking, or you will miss them terribly when you are away” (Salinger 214) says Holden Caulfeild as he warns the world. Salingers novel pinpoints the many fears and phobias of growing up from an immature, pessimistic, “everybody’s a goddam phony” perspective that makes it relate-able to young transitioning teenagers. Salinger's Caulfeild is afraid of growing up and the unknown prospects of entering the adult world after experiencing a life changing event. Holden, clinging to his innocence, most importantly learns how the Phony adult world not only treats people like HC poorly, but it kills them.

In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist Holden Caulfield has peculiar behavioral tendencies. The author’s cynical narration presents the story of an emotionally damaged teenager whose cynicism and personal oddities prevent him from conforming to a post-World War II society full of phonies to whom he cannot relate. It becomes increasingly evident that Holden, far from being pragmatic, has clouded judgement as he rides an emotional rollercoaster of mood fluctuations. Thus, it is clear that his wide array of personal flaws including his cynical, depressive, and unreasonable attitudes and thoughts are rooted in underlying emotional problems. Holden Caulfield has extensive psychological problems that are revealed through his depressive

In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger uses literary elements such as tone, figurative language, and theme to create the overall effect of a teenager’s cynical and conflicted approach to dealing with the concept of adulthood. Salinger writes about Holden Caulfield, a sixteen year old boy, and his venture through New York City after he is expelled from his preparatory school due to academic failure. During his time in the city, emotional and mental problems surface, and his desperate want for companionship exposes his inability to connect with others.

Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye are two novels in which characters reflect on their attitudes and experiences as a source of emotional growth and maturity. Salinger and Toews show the importance of this reflection through the evolution of their characters’ – Holden Caulfield and Nomi Nickel – similar attitudes towards their schools, communities, and lives. Though Nomi and Holden both do poorly in school for various reasons, Nomi overcomes her obstacles by working to identify the source of them. Both characters also resent their communities because of the hypocrisy found within them. However, Nomi manages to find good within the East Village through self-reflection, while Holden completely

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.

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.

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.

Phony is defined as a fake or an ingenuine person, this word was used most often by no other than Holden Caulfield, the most recognizable teenager in American literature. To truly understand who Holden Caulfield is, we must take a trip back in time to the 50s. The 1950s was a decade of prosperity and conformity, life in the 50s was simply peaceful. However, in the summer of 1951, J.D Salinger published a book entitled “The Catcher in the Rye”, the main protagonist of the novel, Holden Caulfield, described the 1950s as a disgusting and phony era. Holden himself is depicted as a teenager disillusioned by the adult world. Holden finds the hypocrisy of the adult world to be almost intolerable, with this mindset, he alienates himself from the society and he soon realized that he wants to become a “catcher in the rye”, which is to be a guardian of children, protecting them from the ugliness of adulthood and the process of maturity. The fuel that drove Holden to become who he is today was that of his childhood sibling loss, after the tragedy, Holden became desperate and infuriated. Almost 70 years later, Holden Caulfield still resonates in American culture, this leaves reviews questioning, why was the novel so meaningful and popular? Salinger’s universal idea of alienation and phoniness gave rise to the novel, never has anyone seen such a controversial book, but no one realized that Salinger’s message is pointed toward the faults of the American society.