Comparing Dreams in Catcher in the Rye, Night, and Their Eyes Were Watching God

The whole book is set as a flashback of Holden's past year. When he starts narrating the story, he mentions that he got "pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy". This says that Holden has had a tough year, with a breakdown, he is in some kind of place where he's taking it easy. His previous diction/word choice gives us hints that he might actually be in a mental hospital(words like madman). He describes the place as 'crumby' and also says that his brother, D.B., visits him every weekend. And, at the very end of the book, last chapter (26), Holden says, "...this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I'm going to apply myself when I go back to school next September." 'Psychoanalysis' is, according to FreeDictionary, " The method of

Elie goes through phases throughout the novel. The novel begins with Elie in a spiritual view of life. Elie learns every day with Moishe the Beadle regarding the laws and rules of Judaism and the allegorical understanding of life. He teaches Elie about God and his almightiness. Elie spiritually delves into spiritual religion until one day Hungarian police arrest Moishe. Elie weeps for his tutor leaving him until months later when Moishe returns, “ Together we would read, over and over again the same page of the Zohar.” (5) As he returns, he loses his mind and he is not the same tutor Elie enjoys learning with. Over time in the camps Elie begins to deny God and not believe in him. There are many like him that feel that if God

Holden is unable to accept realities of life because of his negative personality. He claims that many people are phony and that they try to do things to make them look better than they are. Holden also thinks of many things as depressing. “It was really nice sightseeing, if you know what I mean. In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them” (p. 123). Holden always finds a down side to a situation. He fails to recognize the good sides of life, and this prevents him from seeing advantages in adulthood that are not present in his life.

He's having a conversation with his sister and she asks him what he plans to do with his life and he respond with "I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all." this quote here shows a lot about how holden feels about childhood and that he will play the role as the protecter of their inocence.

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel by J.D. Salinger. It is narrated by Holden Caulfield, a cynical teenager who recently got expelled from his fourth school. Though Holden is the narrator and main character of the story, the focus of Salinger’s tale is not on Caulfield, but of the world in which we live. The Catcher in the Rye is an insatiable account of the realities we face daily seen through the eyes of a bright young man whose visions of the world are painfully truthful, if not a bit jaded. Salinger’s book is a must-read because its relatable symbolism draws on the reader’s emotions and can easily keep the attention of anyone.

Like for Ackley his “friend” at Pencey. Ackley as annoying as he was he made Holden feel better about himself both as a catcher in the rye and self esteem wise. Holden’s first act of being a catcher in the rye was later on in the book with Phoebe. Phoebe was this prized possession to him as I believed Ally once was. Holden was normal around Phoebe. Phoebe was the light behind the clouds in Holden sheltered depressing world. Holden was the catcher in the rye for Phoebe. He felt an urge to keep her innocence ,like in the scene in the museum when the word fuck was written on the walls he was upset because he didn't want Phoebe to come and see the word that he hated. I think Phoebe made Holden realize his issues. He returned home to fix himself for her, so he could her catcher in the rye more like he was unable to be the one for Ally. He saw a kind hearted, intelligent, innocence in both Ally and Phoebe which is the whole turning point in his book. Ally the old and Phoebe the

The relationship between Holden and Phoebe forms a major theme that the novel aims to deliver. The fact that he is having this conversation with Phoebe, a child who is anything but simple and innocent, reveals the oversimplification of his worldview. Holden himself realizes this to a degree when he acknowledges that his idea is “crazy”, yet he cannot come up with anything more pragmatic; he has trouble seeing the world in any other way. His “catcher in the rye” fantasy reflects his innocence, his belief in pure, uncorrupted youth, and his desire to protect that spirit. On the other hand, it represents his extreme disconnection from reality and his naïve view of the world. Phoebe exposes to Holden a living embodiment of childhood. And it is a scene with her where she exposes to Holden the illogical nature of his supervisory actions, indicating that his desire to preserve her innocence will only halt her own inevitable development. Phoebe is the Greek word for “protector of children” (Bloom 2009, p185). Within the novel she is Holden’s protector. She comforts him, provides him with financial security, and protects him from getting in trouble with their mother. Reiff describes this reversal of roles between Holden and Phoebe as “Now, instead of saving the world by protecting the children, Holden wants to reject the world and shut himself off from evil by becoming a ‘deaf-mute’ in the West. It is Phoebe who rescues him from this total withdrawal” (Reiff 2008, p71). Phoebe forces Holden to view her as a human—living and progressing— rather than as a forever preserved child, and it is this humanization that causes Holden to accept her eventual progression into

Throughout Night Elie undergoes hardships like many today. “I didn’t know that this was the moment in time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever.” His family was

The first event that occurred causing Elie to become more skeptical, was when the Germans established the ghettos in Sighet. They were able to live in their own house with the exception of their other relatives, which was in the first ghetto; but then the Jews got forced to move and live in another ghetto. Consequently, he lost all of their possessions and a bit of their freedom. Elie started to slowly lose his faith slowly, life for him was still good regardless of the germans using the Jews as slaves for the things they needed to get done. “Little by little life returned to normal”. This quote explains there were times where Elie got false hope about living situations and life would get better, that this currently was just a nightmare and only a nightmare;

Holden seems to struggle with depression. In many places throughout the novel, Holden describes to us his deep sadness. A lot of times his depression is unpredictable and triggered by tense situations. In one situation while he was explaining his feelings about the Elkton Hills headmaster’s phony and rather boring conversations with well-built and

            Holden lacks the essential ability to motivate himself, which he needs to survive in the 'real' world.  He continues to be kicked out of every

I believe that Holden Caulfield is mentally disturbed and shows many signs of it throughout the novel. Problems in Holden’s life that have led him to this rest home are the death of his brother Allie, his multiple failures throughout his academic career, and his distress about moving on in life. Holden deals with

Death is a concept to which Holden is no stranger. He speaks lovingly of his brother, Allie, who died of leukemia. "He was terrifically intelligent....But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody....He used to laugh so hard at something he thought of at the dinner table that he just about fell off his chair" (38).

Holden recognizes and perceives to be alienated from the adult world thus causing himself to believe he is depressed. Holden believes he is depressed from viewing the adult world and thinking that it is phony. He believes that the world is phony, superficial, hypocritical, and shallow. He views this world everyday and realizes that one day he will have to step into it, but every time he thinks about the world surrounding him it causes him to become depressed. Holden becomes depressed because he desires to remain a child were innocence is preserved and not drastically taken away. In Holden?s scenario, he feels that his innocence was taken away by witnessing the suicide of his close friend and the death of dear brother. Holden sees the world that he has to become a part of and desires more to not be a part of it. This hatred of stepping into the adult world causes Holden believe he is depressed and

Almost anyone who reads the novel The Catcher in The Rye is waiting for Holden to have a huge mental breakdown, and that’s what occurred in the short story. This story is set about 5 years into the future, with the reader having no idea what actually happened to Holden. Perhaps as a result of Holden’s medication, Holden starts to hallucinate as he is in the hospital. His subconscious mind starts to reiterate the things of his past, especially his traumatizing experiences during his teen years. Intermixing one of the better symbols of his adolescence, Sally, along with some of the terrifying realizations of self-doubt, phoniness, chaos, and superficiality in the world, Holden creates a hallucination that encompasses many parallels, symbolisms, and hints in which the reader has an intuition that Sally might not be Sally after all.