The Year My Voice Broke: Character Analysis

Holden's constantly telling that he is different from everyone else, who he defines as "phonies", wearing his hunting cap to make him standout in society, and inability to make a social contact with a Jane Gallagher, who he constantly brings up, are just a few lucid examples of his self-alienation of society. Holden feels and uses this alienation to protect himself from the harshness of society is this constant defense mechanism eventually leads to his

Holden is unable to accept realities of life because of his negative personality. He claims that many people are phony and that they try to do things to make them look better than they are. Holden also thinks of many things as depressing. “It was really nice sightseeing, if you know what I mean. In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them” (p. 123). Holden always finds a down side to a situation. He fails to recognize the good sides of life, and this prevents him from seeing advantages in adulthood that are not present in his life.

Throughout the novel, Holden attempts to find the true from of himself as he struggles with the social interactions around him. Due to the struggle and confusion that arouses from it,

Holden has all of these traits. In the novel, nearly every time Holden gets depressed, he turns to alcohol. At Ernie’s night club he got served alcohol even though he was a minor. He even got drunk at the Wicker Bar. He used alcohol to escape the sadness in his life, which many killers were known to do as well. Holden also grew up lonely. He lost motivation to do well in school, which got him kicked out of Quincy High, losing his friends. His brother is also dead which may contribute to his feeling of loneliness. Holden always fantasizes about saving all the children from growing up, being their ‘Catcher in the Rye’. If somebody were to get in the way of his fantasy, he might have killed them. Holden is also socially awkward, loving children but hating adults, calling them ‘phonies’. He only has a few friends throughout the novel. He gets very angry with his friends, like when Stradlater goes out with Holden’s ex-girlfriend, Jane, whom he still has feelings for. This made him leave Quincy three days early while he travelled to Manhattan. “I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by.” said Holden (Page 4). Finally, Holden has some sexually stressful moments in the novel, like when he hired a hooker to come upstairs into his room. He wanted to do it, but when she got into the room, he

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.

            Holden is quite skilled at citing exactly what is wrong with other people.  However he never acknowledges his own faults.  He was sure the entire world was out of step with him.  As Alan Stewart explains, ?Holden seemed to divide the world into two groups.  He was in one group, along with a few other people such as his little sister, Phoebe, and

The tone or attitude in which Holden speaks is based on sarcasm and rudeness which shapes him as a character. He uses sarcasm throughout the book such as on page 71. He says, “I told her, ‘you’re really lucky. You know that?’ She was a real moron. But what a dancer” (71). Here, Holden is being very sarcastic and rude with this girl which forms Holden into his character. His tone towards the world and to the people in it is just careless because he doesn’t care about being nice to anyone. He continues to act this way, even to people that matter, such as on page 13, he says, “You mean about my flunking out of Pencey and all? ‘ I said. I sort of wished he’d cover up his bumpy chest. It wasn’t such a beautiful view” (13). Mr. Spencer is one of Holden’s teachers at Pencey and he doesn’t appreciate that at all. When Mr. Spencer is being sincere towards him, all Holden can think about is the fact that Mr. Spencer’s chest is “bumpy”. This truly defines Holden as a character and what kind of person he is; a sarcastic and cynical individual, all shown through his tone of voice.

Holden Caulfield is rude. He’s arrogant. Not arrogant in the way that he thinks he’s better than everyone else, but more so that he thinks everyone else is worse than him. He is not what you’d call a typical protagonist in the fact that he is a complete and utter asshole. Usually, novels written primarily for young adult readers revolve around the idea of the “Hero’s Journey,” where the main character is some sort of broken, yet incredibly likeable character that you can’t help but root for. Holden, on the other hand, is cynical, self-centered, reserved, and obnoxious. Yet, somehow, no matter how terrible of a person he comes off as, you can’t help but feel bad for the guy.

     Although Holden is extremely cynical and struggles with relationships, he is not all bad. Inside he is moral and generous. He was very charitable when he gave a considerable donation of twenty dollars to the nuns. Holden has a strange way of loving people.

Holden is deathly afraid of conforming, growing up, and having to assimilate into the phony adult world. As a result he comes off as hypocritical as he is the most prominent phony in the novel. He constantly lies, refuses to connect with others and overlooks his own pain, letting it deeply impact his life. Holden is a compulsive liar; he does not have one honest conversation with anyone except his sister and Jane for the duration of the novel. When he is on the train with Mrs. Morrow, for instance, he claims his name is Rudolf Schmidt and preaches about what an amazing guy her son is, even though he is “the biggest bastard that ever went to Pencey, in the whole crumby history of the school.” (61) This shows that Holden falls victim to the same social conventions as everyone else. He says exactly what Mrs. Morrow wants to hear, despite the fact that he

In the bildungsroman Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger employs the struggle of individuality, inevitable maturation, and the childhood corruption of adulthood to reveal Holden’s alienation from society.

Although there are essentially two Holdens, there are still traits that remain the same. Throughout the story, Holden feels the need to explain and justify himself, as though people don’t believe him. Holden tells the story

The way Holden cant fit into the society around has drove him to hate it, instead of him coming to realize this he just judges other people on the fakeness and dishonesty. Holden even thinks that his own school is hypocritical because they don’t really follow there own motto which is “molds boys into upright, respected members of society", in his eyes the guys in his school don’t change from when they get there it even molds some into crooks and criminals. He also

Being different is difficult, especially when you’re a teenager. It’s not easy being singled out and feeling like the bad apple. Standing apart from others can be hard and takes courage. Society does not appreciate misfits, especially trouble makers who don’t make any effort to succeed. There is nothing wrong with being different and standing up for what you believe in but Holden goes about it in an arrogant way. It’s as if he sets himself apart from his peers on purpose because he does not want to be phony, just like them. Holden sees a major part of the people in his life as phony, which he tries to isolate himself from, this in turn makes him quite antisocial in every aspect of his life.

Holden tries to make sense of his individuality but, draws away from the society that he is stuck in. At an important football game at Pencey, his school, Holden explains, “I remember around three o'clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell up on top of Thomsen Hill. You could see the whole field from there, and you could see the two teams bashing each other all over the place. You could hear them all yelling”(2). From the very beginning, Holden shows that he rather be isolated. This would be a great time for Holden to connect with people but instead, he wants to go off and do is own thing. His individuality can be looked at as a way of protection. At the end of the book, Holden suggests the reader, “Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody” (214). He is