preview

Holden Caulfield Maturity

Decent Essays

The character Holden, in the Catcher In The Rye, is emotionally and mentally unstable. He tries to escape reality by living in his own fantasy world. He has difficulty coping with the problems in his adult world and retreats to his childhood memories. He has unrealistic dreams and adventures. He isolates himself into his own depressed and miserable world. There are moments where he experiences joy and pleasure but this is only temporary. Even though Holden is suffering from depression, he evolves at the end of the novel. Although Holden struggles with the reality of growing up and coping with the problems in his life, he learns that life is full of good and bad and he can’t escape life’s difficult times. At the end of the novel when Holden …show more content…

In the beginning he tries to escape everything in his life. He runs away from his parents, gets expelled from schools, categorizes everyone as phony and isolates himself from the world. Instead of dealing with his problems he escapes to his idealistic childhood memories. He lives in great pain and depression. He becomes so lonely that he takes risks to visit his sister Phoebe. As he was leaving he says, “For one thing, I didn’t give much of a damn any more if they caught me. I really didn’t. I figured if they caught me, they caught me. I almost wished they did, in a way.” (Pg. 233-234) This portrays that Holden is tired of running away and wants to be loved and taken care of. Holden desperately needs support at a time like this when he is so mentally unstable and needs to be in an environment with his family. This shows a slight change in Holden because before he wanted nothing to do with his parents. Later in the book Holden plans to run away somewhere out west. He says,” … I decided I’d go away. I decided I’d never go home again and I’d never go away to another school again… I thought what I’d do was, id pretend I was one of those deaf mutes. That way I wouldn’t have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody… and then I’d be through with having conversations for the rest of my life.” (Pg. 257-258) Later when Holden tells Phoebe about his plan she became very angry because

Get Access