Catcher In The Rye Dialectical Journal

His sister going around the carrousel, shows the way Holden wants to see life. He wants to see it as a cycle,a cycle that never stops. But he sees it as a line. You start off as a kid, and you grow up. And it makes him happy seeing Phoebe go in a circle. It gives him reassurance that she won't grow up, but we all know that she

In the book Holden succeeds in making us think that the world is crazy. Shortly after Holden leaves Pencey Prep, he checks in to the Edmont Hotel in Manhattan which was "full of perverts and morons. There were screwballs all over the place." His situation only worsens from this point on as the more he looks around this world, the more depressing life seems.

In chapter 21 Holden returns home two days early because he wants to say his goodbyes to Phoebe, when arriving at his family's apartment he walks over to Phoebe’s room and sees that she is not there, he then goes to D.B’s room to find her sleeping. Before deciding to wake up Phoebe, Holden sits in D.B’s room and looks at his brother’s desk and says “You ought to see her doing her homework or something at that crazy desk. It’s almost as big as the bed. You can hardly see her when she’s doing her homework. That’s the kind of stuff she likes, though” (Salinger 175-176). Phoebe is a smart, strong and a confident young woman. Phoebe redefines stereotypes by being intelligent which is one of the traits that Holden admires throughout the course of the novel. Phoebe embodies such a conception of perfection by being intelligent that she becomes an ideal for Holden as he thinks highly of

When adolescents like Holden cannot find an “adolescence zone” in the real world, they would conjure one in imagination. A pivotal moment of the novel is in the midsection, which resonates with the meaning of the novels title. When his sister Phoebe asks what would make him happy, Holden describes to her an imagined picture, which is worth quoting at length:

His loneliness makes him feel depressed and willing to die. At his hotel, Holden decides to hire a prostitute: “She didn’t care what the hell my name was, naturally” (105). Normally one would go to a prostitute for sex, but Holden is solely focused on finding company. He is looking for any kind of connection or relationship between him and this stranger, but she is only willing to talk business. He is feeling so deserted that his best prospect for company is a prostitute who does not even care about him. He knows prostitutes are considered among the worst of people, and they are also illegal. However, Holden loses perspective in terms of the way he sees himself in comparison to others. Now thinking that he is now on the same level as prostitutes in society. Holden grasps onto relationships with people like prostitutes (and later taxi drivers) because no one is there for him like Allie was. It is almost as if Holden is trying to recreate his relationship with Allie. Although he can not find anyone nearly as special or satisfying, so therefore he reverts towards ending his life. He describes the lobby of the hotel that he is staying at as empty and full of dead cigars, leaving him feeling lonely and frustrated as he says: “I was feeling sort of lousy. Depressed and all. I almost wished I was dead” (101). When his emotions start to

After about three days of drifting, Holden gets very excited fantasizing about how he will go out west and start life anew. However, before he leaves, he must say goodbye to Phoebe. This shows how Holden prioritizes Phoebe over himself, valuing her innocence. Holden writes a note telling Phoebe to meet him at the museum because he is planning to run away. Then Phoebe arrives at the museum with a suitcase and begs to run away with him. Holden responds harshly that she cannot go with him and she begins to cry. Then after a few moments Holden says, “I’m not going away anywhere. I changed my mind. So stop crying and shut up” (Salinger 207). Presumably he told Phoebe that he would not leave to make her stop crying, but he notes that Phoebe was

This story is told in the first person point of view. The author chose the story to be first person to build a connection with the reader, and to tell stories from their own perspective, since they are more reliable than being told by someone else. First person also allows the reader to create a relationship with the protagonist and get to to know the character by the choices he made and the life experiences he had.

In J.D. Salinger’s exciting novel, Catcher In The Rye. The physical Journey from Pencey to New York for Holden played a major central role. The whole Novel is partly based of his journey. Holden learned many things from his courageous adventure; he was involved in some pretty insane situations, and learned more about himself.

Stories always differ in how characters develop change. Characters usually change from their first encounter to their last. In The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D Salinger, the main character does not experience change. Throughout the book, the main character, Holden Caulfield, simply is just a young adult strict about change. He is still his narcissistic-self, believing everyone is phony except himself, also focusing on the wrong aspects of life.

in this part of the story holden seems very at peace it feels as if holden and Phoebe traded places, he became responsible all of a sudden. As they pass the carousel holden has a memory of Allie and D.B and how they used to take Phoebe to the park and how she loved carousel. As Phoebe gets on Holden get’s this sense of relief and for a second you can almost feel it too, he assures her that he won’t run anymore that he is done and will go home. i think this a very important part of the story because he just stops. He stops running and lying and cheating for a short while he is just honest and sincere. when Phoebe takes holden's red hunting hat and places it on her head it almost feels like Holden is giving her all his immaturity and childish like ways along with his adventure. (“I felt so damn happy all of a sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling. I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth.” pg.

Phoebe from the start had acted like an adult towards Holden because she knew exactly why Holden was here due to his failure of his class at Pencey Prep. Phoebe had tried to converse with Holden like what all parents would have done and didn’t want to hear any excuses from Holden because she knew that Holden had a vast potential of becoming something huge one day, but he had let his opportunities fade away due to his emotions were affected by Allie's death. However, in hindsight, we get a feeling that Holden had assured that his goal was to save children from being falsely entrapped into the adult world where the children were going to face these unexpected consequences, which he first showed the consequences to Phoebe. Holden showed his desire to accomplish his goal by "taking out his hunting hat out of his coat pocket and gave it to [Phoebe]. She liked those kind of crazy hats.

Once he finally gets the courage to see her, he soon plans to run away having a sense of defeat from seeing the “Fuck You” written on the walls of her school. Holden sees that and realizes that he can’t stop Phoebe from growing up and takes the easy route of running away. However, when Phoebe says she wants to come with him, Holden’s character has a turning point. Instead of walking away he tells Phoebe that he’ll stay at home with her, which I believe is something his character would have never done earlier in the novel. I took this point as Holden finally growing up and caring for others, rather than making everything about him. He later attempts to bring innocence back into his sister but taking her to the museum as well as letting her ride carousel. The carousel scene is heavily symbolic to the story because Holden finally gets what he wanted during the whole novel; to preserve innocence. Phoebe is having a great time going around on the carousel as he is wearing his red hunting hat that acts of protection to him. I find this to be a perfect ending to “The Loss of Innocence’ theme that J.D Salinger

Holden, at the point he is at in his life, is a wanderer. Holden does not go to school or really have any long term things to do and is just wandering through New York City,

He does not go all the way because he feels that she does not know what she has gotten into and he thinks that she is too young to know that prostitution is wrong. However, she says she is “Old enough to know better” and yet he still does not want to have sex with her (85). Holden also gets much more depressed when she comes in the room, which is also a sign that he feels bad for Sunny.

On the other hand, Holden lies to Phoebe in order to protect her; he has to continue masquerading fear that he would be exposing his true nature and thus making himself vulnerable. Phoebe is a calming influence that brings out Holden’s sensitive nature. Holden attempts to assure the reader that Phoebe understands him best, so their meeting is highly important and emotionally charged. Phoebe, really offers the contrast to Holden in terms of his immaturity and unrealistic beliefs and attempts to give him the advice that would end the free fall he experienced at that moment. Phoebe’’s advice is the only possible solution to help Holden, but his incessent denial creates the platform for an argument with Phoebe, where she tells Holden he does not