Colin Wright once said, “Our varied beliefs and backgrounds are icing. Our shared humanity is cake.” What Wright means by “varied beliefs and backgrounds”, is that every person is the same, the icing just talks of the beliefs and backgrounds of a person, their ethnicity, race, and how they were raised, it just depends. The icing can be different, for people, it’s by the variation of the person, or the layers of who they are and their personality. Wright mentions shared humanity, and what he means by this, is the traits that every person, no matter their variation, share. Whether the person is Christian or Atheist, both have the shared humanity traits inside. However, the origins of what makes humans human remain the same. These traits …show more content…
This novel shows the traits choice and morality, a choice seen in this book is Phoebe being angry at Holden for getting kicked out of school and for not letting her come with him to the “West” during their conversation and walk in the park, when they come across a carousel, “‘Do you want to go for a ride on it?’ I said. I knew she probably did. When she was a tiny little kid, and Allie and D.B. and I used to go to the park with her, she was mad about the carrousel. You couldn’t get her off the thing.” (Salinger 210). The choice Holden made, was to think about his decisions and how he handled things lately. All the thoughts he had, all the things he wanted to do, and all the things he did. He watches Phoebe on the carrousel, and contemplates his choices, and with that, his choice to go west slowly dissipated. He loved his family, and didn’t want to leave them. He chose to stay, maybe from fear of losing Phoebe, and he looks at himself instead of running. The choice to run away impacts holden very hard, but hurts Phoebe even worse. She doesn’t want Holden to leave, and when she couldn’t get him to stay at first, she decides she wants to go with him. He wouldn’t let her, and she trails after him for a while until they come across the carrousel. They talk, and this spurs Holden to stop thinking only for himself. It would frustrate most people with Holden saying he was going to run away west, thinking that it was juvenile or dumb, possibly they would connect to this from a personal experience of running away. Holden would not need this choice, he just wants it. He could have done many things, like talking to
The relationship between Holden and Phoebe forms a major theme that the novel aims to deliver. The fact that he is having this conversation with Phoebe, a child who is anything but simple and innocent, reveals the oversimplification of his worldview. Holden himself realizes this to a degree when he acknowledges that his idea is “crazy”, yet he cannot come up with anything more pragmatic; he has trouble seeing the world in any other way. His “catcher in the rye” fantasy reflects his innocence, his belief in pure, uncorrupted youth, and his desire to protect that spirit. On the other hand, it represents his extreme disconnection from reality and his naïve view of the world. Phoebe exposes to Holden a living embodiment of childhood. And it is a scene with her where she exposes to Holden the illogical nature of his supervisory actions, indicating that his desire to preserve her innocence will only halt her own inevitable development. Phoebe is the Greek word for “protector of children” (Bloom 2009, p185). Within the novel she is Holden’s protector. She comforts him, provides him with financial security, and protects him from getting in trouble with their mother. Reiff describes this reversal of roles between Holden and Phoebe as “Now, instead of saving the world by protecting the children, Holden wants to reject the world and shut himself off from evil by becoming a ‘deaf-mute’ in the West. It is Phoebe who rescues him from this total withdrawal” (Reiff 2008, p71). Phoebe forces Holden to view her as a human—living and progressing— rather than as a forever preserved child, and it is this humanization that causes Holden to accept her eventual progression into
During the first encounter, Holden meets with Phoebe in her room, back in his family’s apartment, and Phoebe tells Holden to name something he’d “like to be” (172) for career choice. Holden responds, “I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be” (173). His description of what that means, is he would stand in a field of rye, on the edge of a cliff, and wait for children to come running towards him. Then, before they could run off the cliff, he would catch them and replace them safely back into the field. His vision of the children falling off the cliff is quite literal, but their fall actually symbolizes what Holden see’s as an impending death to all children - becoming an adult. And thus, through this moment, we see how Allie’s death has affected him most. He was robbed of his innocence at too young of an age and because this had caused him so much pain, he could not bare to see it happen to anybody else. That, in turn, is what caused him to resist the adult world so thoroughly. At the end of the book, Holden has one final moment with Phoebe, in which his transformation finally happens. When they go to a carrousel that is part of a city fair, Phoebe goes on to ride and Holden watches from a bench. As he sits
Her carefree enjoyment of the ride contrasts with Holden's own struggle with growing up and losing his innocence. He tries to keep Phoebe from ending up like he did and wants to save her from struggles she might face when losing her innocence. He can’t let go of it. In this moment, Holden is reminded how important it is to hold onto the temporary moments of happiness and innocence that will eventually go away as you grow
A Complicated Kindness is an adolescent novel by Miriam Toews, published originally by Knopf Canada in 2004. Inspired by her experience as a Mennonite herself, Toews crafts a story around a teenage girl known informally as Nomi. Nomi experiences the hardships of religious oppression only to let her family give in first. Catcher in the Rye is, too, an adolescent novel written instead by J. D. Salinger. Comparable to A Complicated Kindness, Catcher in the Rye saw some inspiration for the story by Salinger’s experience as an angsty teenager in New York. The resulting tale is of a young man named Holden who abandons schooling and his wealthy home to find a place to belong. These two narratives - more than fifty years apart – have some striking parallels about them. The central theme in both novels is how the benefits to maturity are greatly desired by youth, but the path to
Once he finally gets the courage to see her, he soon plans to run away having a sense of defeat from seeing the “Fuck You” written on the walls of her school. Holden sees that and realizes that he can’t stop Phoebe from growing up and takes the easy route of running away. However, when Phoebe says she wants to come with him, Holden’s character has a turning point. Instead of walking away he tells Phoebe that he’ll stay at home with her, which I believe is something his character would have never done earlier in the novel. I took this point as Holden finally growing up and caring for others, rather than making everything about him. He later attempts to bring innocence back into his sister but taking her to the museum as well as letting her ride carousel. The carousel scene is heavily symbolic to the story because Holden finally gets what he wanted during the whole novel; to preserve innocence. Phoebe is having a great time going around on the carousel as he is wearing his red hunting hat that acts of protection to him. I find this to be a perfect ending to “The Loss of Innocence’ theme that J.D Salinger
IN order to understand our world today, it is essential for us to recognise the contextual factors that influence the individual’s who occupy it, as well as the concerns of composers from the past. Through the comparison of the film 'Amelie' by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and the novel 'The Catcher in the Rye' (TCR) by JD Salinger it is proposed that contextual factors such as childhood experiences and the nature of relationships have the ability to shape who we are THROUGH what we value. Both texts explore the necessity of taking risks in order to lead a rich and fulfilling life as well as the importance of an appreciation for the beauty in life, which is too often neglected or clouded by self-pity and preconceptions. The two protagonists, Holden in TCR and Amelie in Amelie, both struggle with creating and maintaining intimate relationships due to circumstantial influences.
“I swear to God I’m crazy. I admit it.” It is very easy to automatically assume that Holden Caulfield is crazy. It’s even a logical assumption since Caulfield himself admits to being crazy twice throughout the course of the book. However, calling Holden Caulfield crazy is almost the same as calling the majority of the human race crazy also. Holden Caulfield is just an adolescent trying to prevent himself from turning into what he despises the most, a phony. Most of Caulfield’s actions and thoughts are the same as of many people, the difference being that Holden acts upon those thoughts and has them down in writing.
J.D Salinger’s 1951 novel “The Catcher in the Rye” and Stephen Chbosky’s 2012 film “The Perks of being a Wallflower” both explore parallel contextual concepts. Both set in America the composers aim to emphasis the dynamic nature of society and the importance of contextual factors determining values. The composers take first person narration to their advantage through protagonists Holden & Charlie to tell two coming-of-age tales about the negative consequences of trauma and society’s perception on individualism. Catcher in the Rye and Perks of Being a Wallflower both reflect how societal values and context influence an individual's personality.
The novel Catcher in the Rye is a way for its author, J. D. Salinger, to discuss the imperfections of human society. Through Holden’s seemingly meaningless ramblings, the reader can glean a commentary on the faults of human nature, and the uneven balance of good and evil in human society. Salinger shows this through Holden and Phoebe, with Holden representing the evil and Phoebe representing the good.
The Catcher in the Rye is a novel by J.D. Salinger. It is narrated by Holden Caulfield, a cynical teenager who recently got expelled from his fourth school. Though Holden is the narrator and main character of the story, the focus of Salinger’s tale is not on Caulfield, but of the world in which we live. The Catcher in the Rye is an insatiable account of the realities we face daily seen through the eyes of a bright young man whose visions of the world are painfully truthful, if not a bit jaded. Salinger’s book is a must-read because its relatable symbolism draws on the reader’s emotions and can easily keep the attention of anyone.
Considered one of the best novels of the 20th century, The Catcher in the Rye has affected readers around the globe since its publication in 1951. Its contemporary critics, however, gave the novel mixed reviews. Compared to the ideals of 1950s America, Holden Caulfield, the emotionally immature, extremely judgmental, teen-aged main character of “Catcher,” embodies the antithesis. Holden was an affront to the new social order, which demanded conformity and propagated the “father knows best” mentality. Americans, however, despite the postwar economic boom, remained suspicious of authority. In idyllic suburban neighborhoods across the country, while families huddled around their new television screens, people discussed their neighbors’ movements, made distrustful even of their closest friends by the “Red Scare”. The American Dream seemed like a golden ring just out of reach, leaving people feeling like they were going around in circles without a clear destination or purpose. With his sense of nostalgia for better times, his bleak perspective of the future, and his contradictory nature, Holden speaks directly to this sense of confusion at the world that Americans felt during the 1950s.
After having been challenged on his previous ways of thinking on his journey alone, Holden begins the gradual process of obtaining self knowledge, maturity, and identity as the values of society are accepted by the protagonist. For that reason, as he watches Phoebe on the carousel ride, he observes that:
The book, The Catcher in the Rye has many themes in it such as, phoniness, lies, abandonment, but I think the acceptance and belonging is the most prominent theme in this book. This book shows what it's like to live as a insecure unaccepted person. The main theme in The Catcher in the Rye is acceptance and belonging , as evidence by Holden's parents never accepting him, Holden never feeling like he belonged to anyone or thing because he was so different, and Holden never accepting himself.
Many people today are in need of friends to talk to. Some people may be in a tough situation with no one to talk to and various individuals are lucky enough to have someone to communicate with and help them with their situation. Sometimes all one needs to be happy is a friend to go to when they're in need of help, which could be difficult to find. Throughout the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, the protagonist Holden Caulfield seeks for companionship because of his great feelings of loneliness.
The self-narration of Holden’s life is what gives the reader an insight into the way he thinks and feels. It helps you understand why Holden is the way he is. Without this explanation from him, you wouldn’t empathise with him, or like him very much at all. It’s the little stories he tells, like the story about Allies baseball mitt, “…Allie had this left-handed fielders mitt… he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink.” (Salinger, 1945-6, p.33) or about how he knows Jane Gallagher, “You were never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were” (Salinger, 1945-6, p.72) that make you see the softer side to him.