Revealing Caulfield Essay

While Holden undergoes hardships and fears of the adult world, his heroic characteristics slowly reveal. Holden often thinks everyone is phony because of his loneliness in life. During the conversation with Mr. Spencer, Holden asserts “Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side…Nothing. No game”(Salinger 8). From the beginning of the story Holden commented on the game of life, testifying his true feelings of isolation and unfortunate contradicting his identity as the son of an intellectual lawyer, having access to a favorable education, and immense wealth. In addition, Holden also encounters a rough relationship with both men and woman, as seen in the text, Holden got in a fight with his amorous and arrogant roommate Stradlater, then another conflict with the deal of the prostitute Sunny. However, the death of Holden’s beloved brother Allie clearly framed an abhorrent impact on him. As evidence from the book where Holden portrayed his behavior after realizing the death of Allie, “I slept in the garage that night he died…just for the hell of it.”(Salinger 39). The effect was undoubtedly painful and fearful, that led Holden into a depressive break down state, and it may have altered Holden’s concept of getting along with others.

Consequently, on multiple occasions Holden contemplates suicide. For example, after he gets wrongfully attacked by Sunny’s pimp, Maurice, he says that he would not mind ending his life. He states that the only reason he rejected the idea is because he remembers James Castle’s suicide. Holden does not want people staring at his corpse. Another time he desires committing suicide when he talks after he talked about his brother D.B.’s experience with going to war. Holden thinks, “I’m sort of glad that they’ve got the atomic bomb invented. If there is ever another war, I’m going to sit right the hell on top of it. I’ll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will” (156). This quote is saying that Holden wants to kill himself in an extremely dramatic and graphic way. In the past few days Holden’s emotions have been abused and he has

Holden is affectionate towards his sister and other children in his attempt to save them from adulthood. When Phoebe puts on the red hunting hat on Holden, J.D Salinger emphasizes Holden’s affection towards his sister: “Then what she did—it damn near killed me—she reached in my coat pocket and took out my red hunting hat and put it on my head” (212). Holden must really care for his sister since it “damn near killed him”. This is the closest that Holden has gotten to truly expressing his feelings. When Holden asks a girl in the park where Phoebe would be,

One main thing Holden is interested in and he makes this clear would be sex. He harassed Luce constantly about questions to do with sex, and was aroused by the sexual behavior displayed at Edmont Hotel. Another example of how Holden gets guilty easily and feels nervous would be when he was alone with a prostitute and got flustered with her sitting on his lap. Holden was quick to

The narrator and protagonist, Holden, in J.D Salinger’s the Catcher in the Rye, flunks out of school and finds himself walking carelessly around New York city. At 17-years-old, Holden is stuck in the middle of his transition from childhood to adulthood. His use of the word “pervert” exposes his underlying fears of expressing sexuality and trying to simplify what it means to be imtimate. Through these symbols we see an important transition from desiring childhood to having a realization only an adult could have

His loneliness makes him feel depressed and willing to die. At his hotel, Holden decides to hire a prostitute: “She didn’t care what the hell my name was, naturally” (105). Normally one would go to a prostitute for sex, but Holden is solely focused on finding company. He is looking for any kind of connection or relationship between him and this stranger, but she is only willing to talk business. He is feeling so deserted that his best prospect for company is a prostitute who does not even care about him. He knows prostitutes are considered among the worst of people, and they are also illegal. However, Holden loses perspective in terms of the way he sees himself in comparison to others. Now thinking that he is now on the same level as prostitutes in society. Holden grasps onto relationships with people like prostitutes (and later taxi drivers) because no one is there for him like Allie was. It is almost as if Holden is trying to recreate his relationship with Allie. Although he can not find anyone nearly as special or satisfying, so therefore he reverts towards ending his life. He describes the lobby of the hotel that he is staying at as empty and full of dead cigars, leaving him feeling lonely and frustrated as he says: “I was feeling sort of lousy. Depressed and all. I almost wished I was dead” (101). When his emotions start to

This is what Holden referred to when he said he didn’t even think. In spite of Holden’s initial actions to seek some sort of human contact, once Sunny (the prostitute) arrived, he once again begins to distance himself. He lied to her about his age, name, and why he didn’t think he should sleep with her (he was recovering from surgery). This is one of the ways that Holden isolates himself time and time again. Another example is when he ran into his former classmates mother and he lied about his name and told her that he was out of school early because he needed brain surgery to remove a tumour. These lies that Holden tells others are his way of interacting with others while still isolating his true self for protection.

Holden’s date with Sally Hayes exhibited his difficulty at cooperating with others. At first he gives us a dire impression of Sally, “I wasn’t too crazy about her, but I’d known her for years.” (p. 105) Later, he wants to marry Sally and says he is in love with her. The biggest mystery of all when it comes to women is with Jane Gallagher. Constantly mentioning Jane, Holden recalls playing checkers with her before he got sent to boarding school. When his roommate, Stradlater, has a date with Jane, Holden asks him a peculiar question, “Did you ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row?” (p. 42) Holden, jealous of Stradlater’s date with Jane, longs to see Jane but never has the courage to call her. Interactions with other people especially women perplex and overwhelm Holden. He therefore resorts to isolation, illustrating a characteristic of his mental state.

In chapter thirteen, Holden admits his cowardice and “yellowness” after staging an imaginary showdown with the thief who stole his gloves at Pencey. Holden believes that if he was more assertive, then maybe he would have gotten a girl already. Juxtaposed to Holden, Maurice holds all the strength and assertiveness that Holden wishes for. Maurice strikes fear into Holden and is Sunny’s boss. Sunny on the other hand is a much worse off version of Holden. Holden describes her as close to his age and notices her nervousness. Contrary to her name, Sunny works a night job and comments that she spends the day sleeping. Holden tries to buy a conversation from her, but Sunny is impersonal and insists on just doing her job. While Holden still retains a sense of innocent morality, Sunny is already infused with the seediness of her lifestyle. Their interactions show that though both aren’t living the goodlife, at least Holden isn’t as far gone as

There is another lesson Holden had to learn. He needed to learn how to be satisfied with his company. He was always looking for someone to call or someone to talk to. When he finally did have some company, he did nothing but criticize them. For example, Sally Hayes went out with Holden, and throughout the entire time he complained and criticized her. He

     This is shown when Holden meets Sunny, a prostitute at a hotel. He pays her, but sends her back without having sex with her. He feels depressed and sorry for her. The next morning Holden has a date with an old girlfriend, Sally Hayes.

Holden also has several redeeming qualities that keep him from being the rouge that many censors and critics wanted to label him in the fifties. As mentioned previously, Holden feels deeply for others and spends much of his time trying to understand them. For example, he admits to being a virgin and attributes this to the concern he has for the girls he is with; "he feels he would be taking advantage of their weakness if he had relations with them. " (Lettis, 6) "They tell me to stop, so I stop. I always wish I hadn't, after I take them home, but I take them home anyway." (Salinger, 121) He is also brutally honest, a quality children possess and adults seem to lose as they age. Holden dislikes things he

Another female that takes part in Holden's life is Sally Hayes. She is a beautiful but shallow girl that Holden has dated in the past. To Holden's standards, Sally is another "phony" person but her beauty makes Holden put his standards aside for the moment. The unusual thing is that Holden made it clear that he disliked the girl, yet he said that the minute he saw her, he felt like marrying her. On their date together, he tells her that he loved her even though it was a lie, and yet he meant it when he said it. In return, Sally tells Holden that she loved him as well. After exchanging their false feelings for each other, Holden tries to explain what is happening in his life, but she is incapable of understanding his problems.

However, he admits that while the couple’s actions are “crumby” (Salinger 81) and crude, he is still aroused and “wouldn’t mind” (Salinger 81) doing it, especially to a girl he is attracted to. While Holden wants to preserve his innocence by not thinking about sex at all, he agrees that he is a “sex maniac” (Salinger 81), and is a fiend about losing his virginity. Holden even goes as far as to make rules for himself. On page 82, he recounts, “I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass. I broke it, though, the same week I made it-the same night, as a matter of fact” (Salinger). He is slowly losing his innocence, and while he hates to admit it, Holden’s constant thoughts about sexuality is a sign of adulthood. To him, one should only have sex with someone they truly love. Holden is almost proud of himself for having such a morally correct view of sex. This is why he is so riled when he discovers that Stradlater had sex with Jane Gallagher. Holden realized that Jane barely knew Stradlater and felt that he, if anyone, should be dating Jane. His increasing thoughts on sexuality and loss of a conventional or shielded view of sex show that his loss of innocence is apparent.

“She was the only one, outside my family, that I ever showed Allie’s baseball mitt to, with all the poems written on it…I told her quite a lot about him” (101). Holden felt a rare connection and trust towards Jane. He remembers good memories with her to help ease the pain of losing her. Consequently, his pain catches up to him when Stradlater and Jane go on a date. “’If you didn’t go to New York, where’d ya go with her?’ I asked him, after a little while. I could hardly keep my voice from shaking all over the place. Boy was I getting nervous. I just had a feeling something had gone funny” (55). All the pain Holden has kept within seems to burst out. He starts to feel nervous and jealous and this contributes to his negative attitude. We see here that Holden truly cares for Jane and this hints that he has feelings for her. He is in a lot of pain due to losing his close friendship with Jane. Holden feels repentant yet reminiscent of the memories he once had with Jane.