Holden Caulfield Chapter 1-5

His belief of being superior causes him to view other classmates as “crooks” (pg.6) and “phonies” (pg.17). When sharing stories about his dorm roommates, Holden highlights their negative aspects. During the football game, one of the only other people to stay in the dorm is Ackley, Holden’s neighbour. Although Holden knew “[Ackley] hardly went anywhere” (pg.22) since the other classmates did not like him, he remains annoyed by Ackley’s behaviour and primarily describes his poor hygiene habits such as “never … using [a] handkerchief” (pg.40) to showcase him in a dehumanizing manner. Furthermore, Holden’s jealousy of roommate Stradlater’s relationship with former love interest Jane Gallagher causes the boys to get into a physical brawl. After the fight, Holden receives little to no attention from Ackley and fed up with feeling “sad and lonesome” (pg.58) at school, decides to act upon his frustration. As an outsider, Holden’s is unable to gain acceptance from his peers and find comfort at school, therefore to escape his peer’s negative behaviour towards him, Holden decides to run away from

Holden Caulfield is a tragic hero in his journey to defend all children from becoming adults and saving their youth and innocence, which is simply an impossible task. Arthur Miller describes a tragic hero as one who attempts “to gain his ‘rightful’ position in his society” and in doing so struggles for his dignity. Holden’s downfall happens because his tragic flaw is that he is hypocritical about himself and doesn’t understand himself.

The novel begins at Pencey Preparatory, a private school where Holden studied and has just been expelled from. Holden skips an ongoing football game and instead, goes to the house of Mr. Spencer, his history teacher. Like in every subject other than English, Holden had failed in history. Mr. Spencer, though well-meaning, was not happy about this and read aloud Holden’s answers, which thoroughly annoyed him.

As Eugene McNamara stated in his essay “Holden Caulfield as Novelist”, Holden, of J.D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye, had met with long strand of betrayals since he left Pencey Prep. These disappointments led him through the adult world with increasing feelings of depression and self-doubt, leading, finally to his mental breakdown.

In the hotel lobby, Holden thinks about Jane and their childhood together.Their families had summer homes next to each other. Holden remembers a time where Jane’s alcoholic stepdad asked her for some cigs’ and she began to cry. Holden and Jane used to hold hands, he states that when this happened he was truly happy. Also, Jane was the first person Holden showed Allie baseball glove too. These thoughts depress Holden and he heads out and takes a cab out to a nightclub in Greenwich Village.

Having poor interactions with people can cause a poor attitude. These interactions that Holden has cause him to feel lonely and miserable, as he feels that many people are against him. All throughout his time at Pencey Prep, he felt as if everyone there was rejecting him. When he finds out that Stradlater was planning a date with Jane, Holden’s anxiety raises by a mile. He is afraid that Stradlater would not treat her right. When Stradlater returns, Holden kept pressing him about the date and asking them about what they did. Eventually, this leads to a fistfight between the two boys. Later in the story, Holden encounters a man on the elevator, named Maurice, who offers to send him a prostitute. Holden, figuring it might cheer him up, agrees and was sent a

In chapter one, Holden must deal with the fact that his brother is moving to Hollywood to go write movie scripts. It is revealed that Holden

In the novel “The Catcher in the Rye”, protagonist Holden Caulfield recalls the events that lead up to him being admitted into a rest home. Making no effort to give the reader any back story about his life, he hurdles directly into the start of his journey. He describes sitting atop Thomson hill overlooking the football game currently being played at his school. Holden doesn’t join his fellow peers down at the stadium because he had recently been dismissed from his school, Pencey Prep. Moreover, Holden had newly lost a surplus of fencing supplies, despite being the fencing captain. Consequently, he is filled with shame and dismay and wishes to not be encompassed by his successful classmates. Throughout the novel, Holden tells his adventure

Every Saturday night at Pencey the boys were given steak. Holden believes it is a ploy to trick the parents into thinking the school actually feeds the children well. After dinner Holden convinces Ackely and his friend Mal to go to the movies. Once they realize that Mal and Ackely have already watched the film they head to a burger join and play pinball instead. Once they arrive back at Pencey Ackley sits on Holden bed talking about some girl he had intercourse with a previous summer. Holden believes this to be a lie, bit doesn’t say anything. Eventually Holden gets Ackley to leave by writing Stradlater’s composition. Holdens writes about his late brother Allie’s baseball glove. Allie wrote poems all over the glove so he wouldn’t be bored out

Holden Caulfield’s personality and mannerisms are that of the average teenager. He is sporadically sullen, lonely, misanthropic, confused, horny, angry, and anxious. He struggles with his coming of age like any other sixteen year old boy. He is enthralled by the trappings of adulthood: drinking, smoking, the idea of sex, and physical independence. And yet, his struggles are also so unlike the typical youth. Holden is haunted by trauma from a young age from the death of his younger brother Allie and the suicide of a classmate. He is prone to wild, crazed behavior which he sometimes refers to as “horsing around” as well as bouts of depression, anger, and strange, frenzied euphoria. Naturally these characteristics are frowned upon within the confines of the conservative era of the 1940s, making Holden unlikeable to many, whether they are strangers or friends.

At the beginning of the story, Holden is introduced as an apathetic person. He has failed four out of five of his classes and has received a notice that he is being expelled at Pencey Prep school in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. Holden was scheduled to return home on a Wednesday, so he decided to go and visit Mr. Spencer, his history teacher, to say his goodbye. Mr. Spencer advises Holden to find direction in his life, which got Holden annoyed and dismissed everything Mr.Spencer has said.

Before leaving for New York, Holden stops by his old dorm room. While reading the book, “Out of Africa” one of his comrades, a kid named Ackley disrupts his reading. Holden is disgusted with Ackley’s personal habits and often describes him as being filthy. Moreover, Holden also dislikes Ackley because of his disregard for personal space, and his overall clueless attitude. But Ackley is quick to depart once Holden’s other roommate enters. Stradlater is an absolute contrast to Ackley, he has an attractive appearance but is distant and withdrawn. Holden and Stradlater share a laugh for moment before Stradlater asks Holden to finish his english assignment for him. Holden asks why but is not prepared for Stradlater’s reply. To his dismay, he learns

Holden Caulfield is a delinquent, a misfit, and a dropout, but he is a unique man with a very alienated relationship with society. The Catcher in the Rye is a book written by J.D. Salinger that describes the story of Holden Caulfield. The story begins when Holden is kicked out of Pencey Prep School. Throughout the remainder of the book, Salinger describes Holden’s unusual relationship with the rest of society and its outcome. Through most of the novel, Holden is depicted as a person who is alienated from society for many reasons, such as his belief that he is better than everyone, that everyone else is phony and fake, and that he does not belong with normal society.

However, his dream has never come true throughout the novel. With his idealized view of a world split between “child angels and adult phonies” (Baumbach 266), Holden failed, years ago, to catch Allie from his early death or catch James Castle from his literal fall, just as he fails now to rub off the obscene signs on the school walls. Nice yet naïve, well-intentioned yet poorly-equipped, Holden seeks for “what every dreamer since Quixote has wanted, the impossible” (Dewey 7).

When Holden wraps up his story, he is willing to go back to school, something that he is not very impartial to in the beginning of the story. Holden implies this at the start of the novel when he informs the reader of his poor grades and of his dislike for Pencey Prep. These failing grades show that Holden does not apply himself in school, which ultimately leads to his bitter outlook on life. This is a contributing factor to his ever growing disdain towards Pencey Prep. This is significant because it helps Holden accept the fact that it is necessary for him to see his mistakes in order to find the causes for his failing grades. At the end of the novel, when Holden is in the hospital, he 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… I think I am…” (213). His willingness to return to school and try harder to succeed shows the mental