Catcher In The Rye Analysis

In “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D Salinger, Holden Caulfield, a 16-year-old boy who has recently expelled from school, had lost his younger brother to Leukemia and witnessed the suicide of one of his peers, struggles in his journey of coming of age. He isn’t fond of the idea of having to mature and be exposed to responsibilities and problems of the real world. As a result, he tries to preserve the innocence of his younger sister, Phoebe. One way in which he aims to accomplish this goal is through a Little Shirley Beans record which he buys in hopes of giving it to Phoebe. Salinger utilizes the symbol of the broken record to develop Holden’s loss of innocence and deteriorating character.

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel written by J.D. Salinger that occurs around the 1950s. The story’s protagonist and narrator is Holden Caulfield, a seventeen year old white male, who journeys to various places as he mourns over the death of his little brother, Allie. As a white male in a capitalist society, he has tremendous amounts of privileges that allow him to get. However, as the novel progresses, Holden describes his society as a place where honored human qualities are suppressed and capitalist ideals are embraced. Throughout the novel, we see that capitalism, “the social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned”, destroys the overall society for Holden and his generation (Rand).

Two novels the first is The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger and The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien both published 4 decades away from each other. One is a Historical Fiction and on is Realistic fiction coming-of-age that is going to show how the both novel is gonna differentiate in this essay. The Catcher in The Rye compared to The Things They Carried have different method on how to tackle the characters and objects with going on a different phase

Holden does not give a definitive reason as to why or what makes a person a phony, as most people he knows or encounters is in one way or another a phony. When talking about Ernie, the piano player, he says that is a phony for acting like he was humble and pretending like he cared about the audience, when really he was a big shot and he knew it. Also, when Holden bumps into his brothers old flame, he calls her a phony for saying how nice it was to see him, because he knew that she didn’t care about him, and only cared about D.B., his older brother. Then when calling up Sally, his old friend, she asks who it was on the phone, when

crossing the street and calling his former friend, Jane, creates Holden to be an unrestful teen searching for the ability to accept one day he will disappear and be in Allie’s place. Furthermore, the fear of another loss results from his fear of disappearing. Just as Allie disappears from Holden’s life his life becomes a frantic worry of another travesty. Holden's world consists of fear and depression because of the possibility “people will not mourn him long, no longer than they mourned Allie, and life in the phony world will go on without him. Like Allie he will lie in the cemetery exposed to the elements” (Miller 69). Holden’s anguish emanates from the loss of himself in the world and the world’s reaction to it rather than the loss of another

Was there a time in your life where you felt closed minded or got scared of losing? Or feared of becoming a person you don’t want to be, someone different when you get older? Well I think most of us were there once in our life which is what Holden Caulfield is going through from the book of Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger. Holden Caulfield is a seventeen year old male who lives In New York City, but was also in a Prep school called Pencey which later he was expelled because of academic failure. In this book Holden is lonely, lost and innocent like a child, this is shown through his interest in the ducks, his fear of growing up and his distant relationship with his parents.

Gaydosik said, “Alienation is a negative consequence of individualism, particularly when individualism is combined with a skeptical attitude toward the existence of universal truth or the purposefulness of human life.”. Holden is a boy with psychological issues, that is true, but its cause is something different. Holden has been influenced by his upbringings and how he was raised is what makes him today. Nurture not nature. He may stay static and continue his antics such as flirting with women, but he has an internal turmoil that changes his views. Being a boy ostracized by friends and family, his only resort is alienation, but that takes a big toll on anyone’s mental health and he knows that he will have to grow up.

If there was a way to personify the limbo between childhood and adulthood, J.D. Salinger does it with his main character Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. Is he a boy, or is he a man? Holden represents the struggle in understanding that the complexity of adulthood can balance with the love and acceptance introduced in childhood. By combining Holden’s nostalgic obsession with the Museum of Natural History and his crude compulsion to continuously lie, Salinger proves how uncomfortable he is with growing up. It’s these tendencies that demonstrate the classic transition that is young adulthood in a bildungsroman such as The Catcher in the Rye.

Death is not easy to deal with; the path to recovering from such a tragedy is long and confusing. When one loses someone to death, one tries to hold on to the memories they may have with these people and to cling to what little they have left of them. The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger is a fictional book, about Holden, a teenage boy from NYC in the mid-1900’s who is trying to deal with the death of his younger brother. Throughout this book, Holden deals with the loss of his brother and attempts to move on from the past.

Today’s teens can still relate to the story of, “the catcher in the rye”, by J.D. Salinger by a great deal. Many teens have the same tendencies and habits and beliefs like Holden does. The story pulls in the reader, with the intent to put you in the shoes of Holden Caulfield, a teen that goes through trouble in his life trying to figure out what it is that makes life impure, and along with his dream protecting children’s innocence from the cruelty of the dark adult world. I believe that this story is still relevant to the average teen. This story involve obstacles that teens face and have to bypass to get to the other side to learn from their mistakes and what they want as they enter into the adult world.

Accomplishment is measured in a variety of ways. It can be achieved through a game won, a skill mastered, or a lesson learned; it involves any sort of success, and it results in growth. In The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, Holden embodies an anxious, confused teenager who can’t figure out what his future will hold – usually stories like this involve some sort of growth, and result in a coming of age. Ironically, Holden’s only purpose is to resist maturity; throughout the book he grows and changes minimally, as a result of little to no success. Stuck in the middle of innocence and maturity, he is not able to apply himself to accomplish anything. In The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger employs stagnant symbols and the “Comin’ Thro’ the

In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is an outspoken, opinionated adolescent boy trying to determine his path in the world. Although Caulfield is portrayed as someone who stands out and does not quite fit in amongst his peers, he bears similar characteristics to many teenagers, from his time period of the 1940s up until modern day. Many of these connections can be linked through an excerpt of ”Hurt 2.0: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers”, by Chap Clark. Clark presents a multitude of arguments as to why so many teenagers are filled with angst and distance themselves from others, many of these arguments stemming from poor relationships with adults, particularly their parents. When reading The Catcher in the Rye, it is evident that Holden has a very defective relationship with his parents, thus providing some logic into why he chooses to act the way he does. Based on evidence gathered from both pieces of text, it is likely that Holden has never experienced any type of affection from his parents or any other authority figure in his lifetime. Therefore, he is uncertain on how to respond when he receives or witnesses love and affection, but at the same time, he is so desperately seeking to make that type of a connection with someone.

In Salinger’s catcher in the rye this boy Holden Caulfield struggles trying to find himself in this world we call earth. As a fellow teenager I feel like all boys can relate to finding themselves or trying to come into their own self.

In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger explores a teenage boy 's struggle with adolescence after the death of his brother. The story is told from the perspective of Holden Caulfield, who discusses his recent past from a psychiatric hospital. Throughout the novel, Salinger explores how Caulfield copes with the grief of his brother Allie 's death, and how he projects his emotions to the outside world and on everyone else around him. Specially, Caulfield manages his emotions by alienating himself from the world. Salinger also explores how he responds to the painful reality of growing up, and despises the transition from childhood to adulthood. He wishes to address the "phonies of the adult world"(Salinger 18), so that children will not have

The Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D. Salinger set in 1950s New York City, deals greatly with maturity and youth. Especially, with regard to teenage struggles in Holden Caulfield, and the effects of the environment on him. Phoebe and Sally Hayes, the two most mentioned girls in the novel, differ greatly from each other in what they represent and in how they influenced Holden Caulfield.