Holden Caulfield Character Analysis

The irony of Holden detesting phoniness and adulthood is that he acts so much like an adult with his curiosity and experience with alcohol and sex that he misses his own opposition. Holden hates the responsibility, morality, and accountability of being an adult and embraces childhood. This contradicts everything that he desires and to want to take part in. This causes his own corruption and enables a failure to relate to himself.

J.D Salinger expresses Holden growing up in a vivid image where people can see the clear view of Holden rising upward to be an adult. Throughout the book, Holden ostracizes himself in the society and makes him lonely. The readers can visualize Holden maturing when he realizes that not everybody is his enemy. For instance, when Holden leaves his teacher’s house in fear because the teacher was petting his head; he wondered “if just maybe [he] was wrong about thinking [the teacher] was making a flitty pass at [him]” (194). When he starts wondering if it was his own fault, it exemplifies that Holden is deeply thinking about his acts toward other people. His thinking can also relate to the last sentence “don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” (202). The last sentence is an example of Holden setting his importance on the people around him. But with all the obstacles that he goes through, he realizes that people that are involved in his life are an important factor of his life, and regrets having a live social life. This realization is an example of coming of age because we can truly see Holden’s thinking of what he thinks of a good life is which involves people around him.

Holden is very immature and cannot act his age for anything. In the beginning of the story, Holden was very immature and self-centered and he often did very immature things, but he wanted to be an adult. This is very contradicting considering that he is very immature. In the novel, Holden states, “Boy! I said. I also say Boy! quite a lot. Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I'm about thirteen.” (Salinger 16). This shows how Holden is very immature and needs to start acting his age and this could be dangerous to society. This is why he needs to stay inside the mental facility. In the mental facility, he will be safe and he will not cause any harm to anyone or to himself

In the beginning of the chapters, Salinger makes Holden seem relatable to other teens. “I could feel a terrific lecture coming on. I didn't mind the idea so much, but I didn't feel like being lectured to and smell Vicks Nose Drops and look at old Spencer in his pajamas and bathrobe all at the same time.” (Chapter 2) Many young teenagers can relate to this quotation, since not many people find it amusing listening to an elderly lecture. Later on in the book, his childish personality begins to show more and more as the plot moves. At some points, he would like to connect to the adult world and at other points, he rewinds to the idea of every adult being “phony” or insincere people. One example of this is when Holden meets with Sally Hayes on a date. At first, Holden seemed to believe he is in love with her at first, but he came to the state of annoyance and exasperation when he couldn't connect to the adult world Sally was living in when he asked her to move out of state with her. Holden imagines himself as the “catcher in the rye.” He conceptualizes a field of rye perched high on top of a mountain cliff, full of

Adolescence, this is a time where you figure out who you truly are. This soul searching leads to self realization. Holden Caulfield from The Catcher In The Rye by J. D. Salinger, has trouble accepting himself. Throughout his days he would put on a cap just to be someone else. It is his get away place, a place of isolation. A way for him to seclude from the world and become someone he isn’t. This is relatable to numerous teens. Though Holden could be described using numerous adjectives, Holden's character can be perfectly described as ignorant, a liar, and a slacker. He is ignorant because he does not learn from his mistakes. He is a compulsive liar. Finally, he is a slacker because he avoids work. Holden is just like countless people out there who do not apply themselves. You see, Holden could be smart. He could be successful. He just doesn’t have the motivation or ambition to do so.

Since he knows so many "phonies" he may feel that by joining the adult world, one must submit to a certain degree of "phoniness", and he already has. Holden shows the characteristics of a pathological liar, " `May I ask your name, dear [Mrs. Morrow]?' `Rudolf Schmidt,' I told her... Then I started shooting the old crap around a little bit... `your nose is bleeding, dear,'...`I got hit with a snowball...One of those very icy ones.'. Clearly, the way "phonies" lie rubs off on Holden. Since Holden shows signs of a "phony", and he hates "phonies", he in a sense, hates himself. Holden knows he has lost his own innocence; now he realizes he possesses the ability to protect the innocence of other children. While narrating The Catcher in the Rye, Holden persistently uses the word "phony" to describe many adults. This entails that people lose their innocence when entering the adult realm.

Holden does not want to be forced to grow up, but instead tries to act more mature than he actually is. During Holden’s time and still today “teenagers [find] themselves stranded between adult things and childish pleasures.”(Schuessler) For Holden, this feeling of being stuck between childhood and adulthood created anxiety within him. Thus from this anxiety he feels he must act mature, but although trying to act mature he still believes he acts younger that he is. No one around Holden can understand him and the issues he is having with growing up, which makes it even more difficult for Holden himself to understand, so instead of trying to understand he runs away to New York. Holden engages in risky behavior because he believes it makes him mature. All teens engages in risky behavior and “some risk-taking among adolescents is evidence that they are trying out more adultlike roles” (Cloud) In Holden’s case he was not acting more adultlike. He was trying to act more mature, but he did not want to be an adult. Participating in risky behavior because he believed it made him mature is demonstrates how truly immature Holden was. Holden is confused about who he is and makes many immature decisions because he believes that they are mature decisions and he does not care how they affect his future. Some readers can argue that because of Holden’s awareness of the fact that he

In the beginning of the novel Holden says that whenever he tries to act mature it went unnoticed, this could be a reason as to why he acts young for his age. In the beginning of his encounter with his age dysphoria he states, “…because i act very young for my age sometimes… Sometimes I act a lot older that I am — I really do — but people never notice it. People never notice anything” (Salinger 13). A motif that is constantly brought up throughout the book is that of the Central Park lake and what happens to the fish and birds once winter comes. He knows that the lake freezes over, therefore trapping the fish underneath an cold layer of ice separating them from the rest of the world around them. Holden could be seen as one of the fishes in the lake as he says that his parents are in high society and most likely have very good jobs which also means that Holden must have had a very uneventful childhood where his parents were almost never a part of the equation. His parents created a cold and isolated environment which causes him to want to get all the focus on himself now that he knows he can and feed off of that attention he never received in his childhood. This makes him act in many different ways whether it be with mood swings, from happy to agitated, or simply acting like a child to get other’s

Holden hates adults showing his immaturity to the audience correlating to his view of wanting to be, “the catcher in the rye” and save the youth. As a result of Holden’s actions he is seen as being very immature because he is upset with adults, who are “phony” in his eyes. These adults have not caused Holden any harm, exposing immaturity and rational judgement. Which is shown in The Fallen Idol: The Immature World of Holden Caulfield by Peter J. Seng, “Sensitive and perceptive as Holden is, he is still an adolescent and so an immature judge of an adult life.”(Seng, 205) Seng describes to the audience that although Holden is “Sensitive and perceptive” he is still very immature in the way that he does not filter his actions when talking to adults. Thus, showing the readers the aggression he has towards them because he feels that they prevent him from knowing the

It is very clear that Holden is immature. One of the most obvious times that this is shown is when Holden is talking with Luce. Luce says, “ Same old Caulfield. When are you gonna grow up?” (Salinger 144).

The protagonist and narrator, Holden Caulfield, in JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye faces many problems including immaturity and disengagement. Throughout the novel, Holden shows various signs of immaturity and acts younger than he actually is (9). Whether it was from clear recognition from other characters, or his own acknowledgement, Holden Caulfield is childish. In chapter four, Holden was tap-dancing to distract his roommate, Stradlater and was trying to annoy Stradlater, and amuse himself “I got bored sitting on that washbowl after a while, so I backed up a few feet and started doing this tap dance, just for the hell of it. I was just amusing myself.” (29). Some may perceive his immaturity as a good quality, or just a part of his

Holden thinks that being a man means drinking alcohol. Holden believes in this action because once people grow up they lose their innocences, but gain the privilege in doing things (like drinking alcohol). In the book The Catcher In The Rye it states that Holden tries to order “Scotch and soda”, but the waiter denies the order because he is underage(69). Holden doesn’t care if he is young, but he does if it prevents him from doing things he wants to do. As people grow, they stop believing in things that they used to believe, they also can’t do things that they used to do when they were younger, therefore they start to lose their innocences.

The general public and people that don't know Holden Caulfield perceive him to be a youth at heart, but also a consistent and chronic liar. Holden appears to be youthful and childish to people that are meeting Holden for the first time. However with his youthful appearance, he makes a habit of being a chronic liar. One example of his chronic lying is his encounter with the prostitute, Sunny. When he meets her, he immediately lies to her by telling her that he is Jim Steele and is twenty-two years old: "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jim Steele, I said. … "How old are you, anyways?" "Me? Twenty-two." It was a funny thing to say. It sounded like a real kid" (Salinger 94). This incident shows both his immaturity and his habit of lying. First, his immaturity is shown when he seems like a child by saying he is actually twenty-two. Secondly, his habit of lying is seen explicitly when he immediately begins lying to the prostitute by stating his name as Jim

Throughout the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, adolescents were expected to seek extremely particular paths in life, as a great deal of a teenager’s life would have already been outlined by society. Due to these stringent circumstances, many teens would purposely distance themselves from cultural norms, silently and actively rebelling by evading the traditional ways life while concurrently devising their own. In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger utilizes symbolism to characterize Holden as a childish teenager who struggles to grasp the concept of maturity, despite it being a necessity. However, this is quite ironic on several levels. Most notably, he revels in many impure actions during his journey (e.g. drinking and hiring prostitutes),

Change is an essential component in the continued success of the human race and thus important in the development of society. As such, society expects people to constantly change and adapt. Readers typically expect to see the development of characters throughout novels, or other pieces of literature. In the novel, “The Catcher in the Rye”, J. D. Salinger deviates from the normal progression followed by most novels by characterizing the protagonist as an individual undergoing temperamental changes and uncertainty throughout the novel. This novel is known to have attracted criticism from numerous reviewers from all time periods, who tend to make the argument that the novel 's main protagonist, Holden Caulfield, does not develop at all throughout the course of the book. However, this is not the case as Holden grows and develops through the book, recognizing specific ideals from the environment that is around him and responding to them. These reactions towards change are seen through Holden 's discovery of himself, relationships with other characters and the actions that he decides to take in given circumstances throughout the book.