Character Analysis : The Catcher In The Rye

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.

In Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the main character, Holden, had many opportunities to learn life lessons but every time his faulty thinking caused him to focus on the problem and not the solution. Whenever Holden looks at situations he negatively overgeneralizes them with a bad attitude rather than learning from it.

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

“I swear to God I’m a madman” (149) Holden Caulfield says, revealing the wicked nature of J.D Salinger’s 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye. The book follows 16 year old Holden Caulfield in his days spent alone on the streets of New York City after getting kicked out of prep school. During this time Holden goes on an alcoholic rampage, fueled by hate and filled with anger towards anything he sees as phony. The book has been the cause of major controversy since its release, with schools across the country banning it from the realms of teaching for decades. Now, it is read in many high school literature classes because of its alleged similarity to the way teenagers think. The Catcher in the Rye should not be taught to young, impressionable teenagers in public schools because of its rampant profanity, glorification of alcohol and tobacco use, and narration by a mentally ill, generally horrible person.

In the Catcher in the Rye Holden always complains about phonies and fakers. But little did he know that he was becoming one by the way he acts. Pretending he is okay and that he doesn’t care when it's the opposite. “What I did. I started talking sort of out loud, to Allie. I do that sometimes when I get very depressed”(salinger 110). This quote reveals how Holden has no one to talk to than Allie. It's sad how Holden only trusts his brother which is no longer with him. With that, it explains his action and everything he does is okay for him and when he starts to remember he breaks down and becomes weak, to the point where he thinks of suicide.”Ironically, when depressed people have made a decision to do something drastic, such as killing themselves”(Everyday health web).In the book their is a part where Holden comes up with the solution of dying to all his problems.He has been depressed with everything but has no one to blame but himself. Which in this quote, it explain Holden's reasoning to think about suicide and mad men madness.

Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in the novel A Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger, faces isolation due to the neglect of his parents, his fear of becoming an adult, and his desire for stability. Holden’s family dynamic was destroyed ever since Allie died of Leukemia. Holden’s mother could no longer deal with her grief, and fell into serious depression which caused her to

What we discover are Holden’s tumultuous desires to throw himself into adulthood, and his equally unstable reactions to his subsequent denial of entry. Coupled with, his obvious obsession with the innocence of childhood, the severity of his internal conflict becomes increasingly more clear. “The most glaring indicator of Holden’s current transition is his acting against emotion. It is very clear that Holden is lonely. Yet every time he reaches out for companionship he quickly switches to using rude and self-destructive behavior to isolate himself again.”

Holden faces many challenges throughout his life such as getting in fights and he try’s to stop the world from losing its purity . These challenges stem from his immaturity and his opposition to growing up and they are magnified in the one weekend of his life that the readers get to see. Holden is very stubborn character, he takes a very long time to mature but eventually at the end of the book he has an epiphany by watching Phoebe on the carousel. Holden realizes that instead protecting Phoebe from falling off the carousel he realizes he has to let her fall and maybe get hurt.

In J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, chapter 25, page 260, Holden discovers text written on the bathroom walls of his younger sister, Phoebe’s elementary school. The text reads “F*ck you”. Holden was very upset in this particular scene in such a way that the reader might ask “why?”. His anger is expressed explicitly with him cursing on the person who wrote this and he vowed that he would love to kill whoever did this if he ever caught them. Although this scene doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, it is one of the most important scenes in the book leading to a much larger significance. In the novel, there are actually two scenes where the words “f*ck you” are expressed. Firstly, on the bathroom walls of Phoebe’s school and once again on the walls of the museum that Holden frequently visits. J.D Salinger allows his readers to emphasize with Holden’s disdain for profanity by showing his emotional turmoil, contempt of phoniness and his overall protectiveness of his sister, Phoebe.

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.

Holden’s actions clearly indicate his desire to change, and the turmoil he experiences as he attempts to improve his situation; he refuses to accept his suffering, and attempts to seek other human interaction to try and redeem himself. Achieving some form of meaningful human connection offers Holden his salvation, and Holden’s seemingly aimless wanderings are really an attempt to find some form of reality and trueness amidst the degenerate age he lives in.

In the beginning of the novel, Holden meets his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, who gives him advice. When Holden brushes off Mr. Spencer’s advice for him, Mr. Spencer says

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

For the novel “The Catcher in the Rye”, I decided to write about Robert Ackley and Ward Stradlater. I decided to write about them because they seem to have plenty of character in the novel and they also were very well-spoken of. Ackley had some anger towards Ward Stradlater due to his superior attitude. I personally believe it was just because Stradlater was popular and self-centered while Ackley was someone who had too much negativity holding inside within himself. Every time Ackley would barge into Holden and Stradlater’s dorm, he’d double check to see if Stradlater was around. If he wasn’t, he’d walk in, but if he was, he wouldn’t attempt to do so.

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel written in 1951 by author J.D. Salinger and is classified as a bildungsroman. The story portrays the story of a sixteen year old boy, Holden, who tends to endlessly criticize the world and people around him but never reflects on himself or his own character. While most bildungsroman characters show progress and growth throughout the story, Holden does not. He is rather unorthodox, or irregular from what you’d look for in a bildungsroman character. Which makes sense as Holden tries with so much effort to not be “boring” or “phony” like everyone else. His nihilistic view on the world shows to be a reflection of his own loneliness and possible depression. This in turn leads to the actual question as to whether or not our protagonist ever has his bildungsroman moment.