Protecting The Innocence By F. D. Salinger

Salinger’s upbringing and military experience provided the inspiration for his writing career. Salinger was born in New York, but later moved to and grew up in the fashionable areas of Urban Manhattan (Peacock, 130). ”JD Salinger” says “Salinger graduated from Valleyforge in 1936, but his high school experience there would haunt him, becoming the foundation

In The Catcher in The Rye, by J.D, the main character, Holden, can be seen as a troubled teenager growing up in a less than perfect society. Throughout the novel Holden struggles with the fact that many young and innocent kids will grow up and see the world from a different perspective. He naturally becomes worried for all future generations who will one day grow, as he did, and loose their innocence. The fixation of youth and innocence can be seen in the title of the book, as well as throughout the novel.

In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden’s outlook in life is either the innocence of childhood or the cruelty of adulthood. He believes that the innocence of childhood is very valuable and it should be protected from

From the very beginning of the novel, Holden is seen to be moody, cynical and not the typical protagonist of a coming of age novel. He believes that the adult world is full of phonies and has a certain misconception which results in him alienating himself from society as he struggles through the rocky passage from childhood to adulthood. His angry and disenchanted view of the world does not stop us from sympathising and even relating with him through the story.

The reader often searches for a glimpse of himself in the characters he is reading about, and this is especially true with the adolescent readers of The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. The author paints a picture of a conflicted youth by emphasizing his idiosyncrasies, and although Caulfield’s traits may seem exaggerated and alien at times, he is a character who is relatable to American youth today. Holden Caulfield has a strong sense of civic duty that is overshadowed only by his suicidal tendencies, is exceedingly sensitive to the evil in the world and prone to angst, yet empathetic to the emotional upheaval other children will experience when entering adulthood.

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 Caulfield, the main protagonist of the book is a young, emotional, and a damaged person. He faces difficulty with the death of his brother, his family being disappointed about his work in school, and not only his innocence, but the innocence of his sister, Pheobe. Holden doesn’t like to acknowledge, but we know many people in his life care about his well being and his success and happiness. The issue Holden is dealing with is prevalent throughout the entire book leading up until the end, and that is his innocence. He can’t accept growing up and is scared of reality. This is crucial for the book, not just to captivate the reader with relatable narration and emotions, but for the forward movement of the story and plot.

Holden is molded by the world around him, the experiences with death highlight the corrupt world of adults while his memories entrap him and delays his inevitable growing up. Holden’s Therapeutic landscapes are ruined by the evils of the adulthood and lead him to characterise the world as guilty and repressive. “That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose.”

​Holden considers himself an outcast in comparison to those around him. Maturing at a young age, he struggles to find his purpose in the world and refuses to accept the beginning of adulthood. Still grieving from the death of his younger brother, Allie, Holden believes that his childhood was taken away from him tragically and unfairly. This mindset doesn’t allow him to grow

J.D. Salinger was an American author well known for his best seller The Catcher in the Rye, a considerably influential novel that portrayed the feelings of alienation that were experienced by adolescents in North America after World War II ("J.D. Salinger Biography"). Salinger’s work appeared in many magazines, including a series of short stories which inspired many new authors ("J.D. Salinger Biography"). His inspiration for Pencey Prep boarding school in The Catcher in the Rye stemmed from his own difficult education at a military school (Feeney). Salinger went through an emotional series of events after being drafted into the army during World War II, and it is evident that his story is very reflective of his own negative views of the

Jerome David Salinger, the youngest of two children, was born on January 1, 1919, in New York City to Sol and Miriam Salinger (Biography.com Editors). With his father being Jewish and his mother being born of Scottish descent, his mixed heritage was modeled in many of his books. At an early age, after attending various public schools in Manhattan, Salinger enrolled in the exclusive prep school McBurney (Encyclopedia of World Biography Editors). Salinger had a difficult time transitioning into the rigorous academics and soon flunked out. In 1934, his parents sent him away to Valley Forge Military Academy, which later became an inspiration for the character Pencey Prep in his novel The Catcher in the Rye (PBS). Here, Salinger’s love for writing flourished. He maintained average grades and participated in many extracurricular activities, but he soon found enjoyment in writing fiction (Encyclopedia of World Biography Editors). During his senior year, Salinger

Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye has been pronounced a literary classic for its atypical portrayal of adolescence, to effectively convey the protagonist’s alienation and confusion. The introduction of The Catcher in the Rye is underpinned by disorder and confusion through a stream-of-consciousness narration, which digresses from one subject to another. Consequently, Holden’s multitudinous thoughts and feelings appear to lack a cohesive pattern. Additionally, Holden’s prevalent ascription of other students as “phony” (Salinger, p.3) alludes to his alienation and isolation as a form of self-protection; he rejects those he does not understand. Furthermore, the vocabulary encapsulates typical adolescence dialect of the 1940s, and resultantly, alienates contemporary reader. This is typified through Holden’s use of colloquial speech, in particular, his exclamation “that killed me” (Salinger, p.42) to express his amusement. Therefore, the introduction of Holden’s disjointed monologue in The Catcher in the Rye foreshadows Salinger’s unique interpretation of adolescence.

     J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye has captured the spirit of adolescence, dramatizing Holden Caulfield's vulgar language and melodramatic reactions. Written as the autobiographical account of a fictional teenage prep school student named Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye deals with material that is socially scandalous for the time (Gwynn, 1958). As an emotional, intelligent, and sensitive young man, Holden puts his inner world to the test through the sexual mores of his peers and elders, the teachings of his education, and his own emerging sense of self. Throughout the years, the language of the story has startled readers. Salinger's control of Holden's easy,

J. D. Salinger became one of the most popular and known American authors in America today. Up to this day students from all over the country have read and purchased the novel “The Catcher in the Rye” which was a novel that was not so long ago controversial due to vulgar language, sexual references, and unacceptable behavior; parents were concerned that J. D. Salinger’s novel was going to influence their children. Salinger was one of many authors that stood out more from a group of authors that wrote simply about society. Salinger on the other hand criticised the society by using the word “phony” most of the time. The word phony meant fake, false, and fraudulent and by the 1950’s the word became used more and more frequently. Some of Salinger’s famous pieces of work like Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey, The Catcher in the Rye , and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction presented themes such as love,war, death, and the reminiscing of something. The themes widely connected to J. D. Salinger by reason of his personal experiences and character traits . The success of J. D. Salinger was reached by personally experiencing the drafting to war and actively writing about his surroundings.

Jerome David Salinger, one of the most influential authors to arise after World War II, was born on January 1, 1919 in New York City. Little is known about his early life except for his education. He attended schools on the upper west side of Manhattan, which would later be the setting of his most famous novel, The Catcher in the Rye. After flunking out of several prep schools, including McBurney’s, his parents sent him to Valley Forge Military Academy. At Valley Forge he maintained average grades and was involved in several clubs and organizations, many of which had to deal with dramatics. Also, during his senior year, he edited the Academy yearbook. He did briefly attend multiple colleges, one of which was Columbia