Holden Caulfield Hero

Teenagers lives their life differently. However, when the time of being a adolescent arrives, they all have the same confusion and mindsets. J. D. Salinger’s novel, “The Catcher in the Rye”, is about a seventeen year old boy named Holden Caulfield, who lives his life with complexes and problems of his owns. Holden lives his life according to his favor and commit unreasonable actions. Holden has a difficult time trying to understand what being a teenager is. Holden Caulfield is a typical teenager because he expresses the problems of being a teenager.

The Catcher in the Rye is one of J. D. Salinger's world-famous books about the disgruntled youth. Holden Caulfield is the main character and he is a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Navigating his way through the challenges of growing up, Holden separates the “phony” aspects of society, and the “phonies” themselves. Some of these “phony” people in his life are the headmaster whose friendliness depends on the wealth of the parents, and his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection. This book deals with the complex issues of identity, belonging, connection, and alienation. Holden senses these feelings most of the time and is guilty about many things in

J.D. Salinger, the author of The Catcher in the Rye, uses the behaviour of protagonist Holden Caulfield to shape his personality in the way he alienates himself from the rest of the world. Holden alienates himself from the society he lives in, his relationships with others and also the relationship he has with himself. Holden struggles to cope with the fact that eventually he will have to grow up and so will everyone around him. Holden see’s the world not being perfect as a huge problem that he alone has to fix because everyone else is too much of a ‘phony’ to do it. The novel explores Holden’s weekend after he got kicked out of his fourth school, Pency Prep, and the struggles he faces with alienating himself.

The Catcher in the Rye was about Holden, who admires in children attributes that he struggles to find in adults to talk to him and he is undergoing treatment in a mental hospital. Holden Caulfield,who is 16 year old teenager went to three schools, but fails four of his five subjects only passed English he also struggles with the fact that everyone has to grow up. In the novel, Holden tells the reader through a few days of his life, in which he flaunts his hostile environments. Throughout the book,

In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye, Holden Caulfield, a seventeen-year-old boy, transitions from childhood to adulthood. The death of Holden’s little brother signifies the beginning his loss of innocence and growth of maturity. As he enters adulthood, Holden views society differently from his peers by characterizing most of his peers and adults he meets as “phonies.” Thus, Holden takes the impossible challenge of preserving the innocence in children because he wants to prevent children from experiencing the corruption in society. The Catcher In The Rye embodies Holden’s struggle to preserve the innocence of children and reveals the inevitability of and the necessity of encountering the harsh realities of life.

Holden’s little brother, Allie, had died and Holden is still not over his death. “I get very depressed, I keep saying to him, Holden says, “Okay. Go home and get your bike and meet me in front of Bobby’s house. Hurry up.” (Salinger, 99). There is many moments where Holden thinks of Allie, and even talks to him. Whenever Holden thinks about Allie he gets very upset and doesn’t want to do anything.

When Holden was younger, his brother died of Leukemia. Even though Holden was older than his brother, he idolized him because he was a sensitive, intelligent, and lovely kid. However there is a deeper meaning to the adulation. Holden venerated Allie because he was young and innocent, furthermore, he was not perverted by the world of sex and adults. The allegory of Allie is critical to the novel because it gradually becomes clear that Allie’s demise was one of the most distressing experiences of Holden’s life and plays a key role in his current

Holden never going to Allie’s funeral gives us insight into why Holden is still holding onto Allie. After Allie’s death, Holden still went through experiences that caused his BPD, neglect and separation. During the time following Allie’s death, Holden’s family was in great grieving, making Holden feel isolated and not getting the attention he needed to fully grow mentally as a child (“National Allegiance on Mental Health”). Holden also expresses twice, that his mother is still grieving over Allie’s death by stating his mother, “still isn’t over my brother Allie yet” (Salinger 155). Holden is also never close to anyone. He meets with his family a limited amount of time throughout the year, and is kicked out of schools, giving him no permanent guidance in his life. Holden constantly describes his expulsion as, getting “the ax” (107). He shows a continuous changing in guardians, because of his attachment to both Mr. Spencer and Mr. Antolini, both old school teachers from schools he flunked out of. He also dealt with the separation from D.B. his other brother, who moved to Hollywood, Holden seems to be very inspired by him throughout the novel, but is mad that he left (1).

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye presents a look into the mind of Holden Caulfield, a popular literary icon numerous teenagers have rightfully found themselves relating to at some point. While the familiar emotions of Holden were welcoming for me, his anecdotes and witty remarks proved entertaining as well. The story chronicles Holden’s exploration through New York post-expulsion, with his point of view influenced by his growing alienation with the world. He represents that growing sense of unease at growing up and facing a reality that is not always pretty, and, in his case, a need to save children from having to face that reality. I personally admired the fact that he was not just an angry teenager in the world as stereotypes suggest.

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody" (Salinger 214). Much of the story Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger consists of Holden Caulfield’s social interactions with others and his adventure home after being expelled from what seems like just another school amongst many in his history. It goes without saying that JD Salinger has made a classic hit novel through the integration of an eccentric main character and an unconventional plot. Although the plot is abnormal, the oddity translates into something noteworthy as the book still retains the noteworthy qualities of any other award winning book.

Because Allie dies at such a young age, Holden believes that Allie has not yet been corrupted by the harsh realities of the world; he believes that Allie retains his innocence, and therefore takes these idealized views as sources of comfort. Subsequently, Holden’s idealization of Allie is something that Holden desperately holds

Throughout the course of human history one fact has not changed and that is all people are different and face challenges and troubles. Literature is an easy way to share and better comprehend one’s problems. In J.D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is a 16 year old boy who is struggling with the change from being a child to being an adult and confronting the unavoidable loss of one’s innocence. Holden is a unique character and his problem is a major theme throughout the story represented through multiple characters, his actions, and even a song and an object.

Tragi-comedy happened to be the most dominant mode of postwar writing and it can be linked to the anti-hero in late 1940s and 1950s fiction. Anti-heroes emerged in quick succession in various guises following the trend of European picaresque tradition of rougish anti-heroes and part from the discomfort with rising middle-class expectations of the decade. The list includes Holden Caulfield in J.D Salinger’s Catcher in the rye (1951), Ralph Ellison and his eponymous Invisible Man (1952), Hazel Motes in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood (1952) and Cross Damon in Richard Wright’s The Outsider (1956); Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1947) and Humbert Humbert in Vladimor Nabokov’s Lolitha (1958). The trend continued in 1960s fiction

Holden’s relationship and feelings towards Allie show that he values innocence. Holden’s roommate, Stradlater, asks him to write a descriptive excerpt for English; Holden writes about his brother, Allie, who died from

J.D. Salinger’s 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, revolves around a teenage boy named Holden Caulifield who’s an icon for teenage rebellion. Holden starts his story about the Pencey Preschool in Pennsylvania, where he's notified as an expelled student. The adult world is driving him crazy, the only person he can relate to is his sister Phoebe. From his point of view, everything looks phony.