... However, there are others who may yearn to be someone who doesn’t have a high paying job or a high ranking position. Holden Caulfield and Chris McCandless seek a unique future; one involving days filled with wonder and tranquility, one away from the hustle and bustle of society, one away the greed that consumes most people. The Catcher in the Rye tells the story of Holden Caulfield, who is a teenage boy that ventures to New York City after being expelled from private school. On the other hand, Into the Wild recounts the adventures...
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...Holden Caulfield: Protector of Innocence The novel The Catcher in the Rye is a coming of age tale of a teenager’s journey into a mental breakdown. The main character, Holden Caulfield, sees the world as an extremely phony, cynical place that he wishes to escape from. As a result of this, he forms the idea that the only way to be free of the hypocrisy and cynicism of society is to maintain one’s childlike immaturity and innocence. Because of this idea, throughout the novel, Holden is trying desperately to hold on the shreds of innocence that he has left, all while trying to protect the innocence of those around him as well. Two minor characters mentioned in the novel that Holden tries to protect, Sunny and Phoebe, both display to the reader signs of developing maturity. Holden’s interactions with both Sunny and Phoebe provide prime examples of how even though Holden tries desperately to protect their innocence, growing up cannot be prevented. One of Holden’s most prominent traits throughout the novel is that he is has this urgent need to protect the people around him from losing their innocence like he did when his brother passed. Even though he constantly drinks, smokes, and curses, Holden’s main goal throughout the text is to make sure that innocence is maintained as long as possible before a person grows up and matures. “He struggles to preserve his own tenuous hold on youthful innocence-or as he sometimes puts it, ‘niceness’-and despairs when he finds that innocence lost...
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...Asian Social Science May, 2009 An Analysis of the Adolescent Problems in The Catcher in the Rye Lingdi Chen Dept. of Foreign Languages, Dezhou University Daxue xi Road, Dezhou 253023, China E-mail: chld1973@126.com Abstract The Catcher in the Rye was written by famous American writer J.D.Salinger. This paper mainly analyzes the adolescent problems Holden Caulfield confronts on the journey from childhood to adulthood. These adolescent problems include Holden’s protection of innocence, his disgust for the phoniness of the adult world, and his alienation from society. This paper concludes that these adolescent problems produce great impact on him. Holden behaves almost erratically and impulsively and has negative attitudes towards almost everything and everyone he meets. Keywords: Adolescent problems, Innocence, Phoniness, Alienation 1. Introduction The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger’s masterpiece, tells the painful story of a high-school boy growing up in the world of decadent New York. Young Holden Caulfield is expelled from school because of his poor academic performance. He is afraid to meet his parents earlier than they should expect him, so he decides to stay in a New York City hotel. There he meets pimps, prostitutes and “queers.” Soon he becomes aware that the world of adults is a “phony” one. After his meeting with a friend, Holden sneaks back home to see his kid sister Phoebe. She is a loving kid, but her talk about their father “killing” him sickens...
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...In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, J.D Salinger portrays a lost and confused teenager named Holden Caulfield; who is trying to find his place in life after getting kicked out of school. After going to New York to escape his annoying peers; he meets a series of people in the city that helps him find his goal in life. His dream was to be the Catcher in the Rye and preserve childhood innocence, but this dream was later destroyed with the realization that children must lose their innocence in order to grow up. Throughout the book Salinger uses an array of items that symbolize Holden’s position and thoughts on the world. One of the significant objects mentioned by Salinger is money. In J.D Salinger’s the Catcher in the Rye money is significant because it symbolizes the unfairness in society. In the novel money is constantly spent and earned with both a greedy and sympathetic mindset. To begin with, money is often earned and given to people with the worst morality. One of Pencey’s alumni Ossenburger is an extremely rich and powerful man, yet according to Holden Ossenburger is wealthy because of bad morale and trickery. “…you could get members of your family members for about five bucks apiece…” “He probably just shoves them in sacks and dumps them in the river anyway.” (22) This is an example of the negative examples of society. The family of the deceased are trusting Ossemburger with a beloved member of their family. Yet, Ossenburger betrays their trust by dumping the dead into...
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...Catcher in the Rye is a coming of age story that tells the tale of Holden Caulfield, a troubled young man who throughout the novel, is presented with various symbols. The symbols are clearly made evident by Holden’s (J.D. Salinger's) constant repetition of their importance. The symbols are so important and their symbolism is directly related to the major themes of the novel. Three symbols seemed to have a higher president over the others, those are the central park ducks, the museum of natural history and Holden's brother Allie himself. These are very important objects that carry a higher meaning with them.Allie, Holden’s younger brother who died several years before the events of Catcher in the Rye, was a key symbol throughout the story. When Holden remembers incidents from his past involving Allie, his attitude changes, such as when he writes the composition about Allie’s baseball glove or when Holden brakes his hand from punching all of the windows after Allie died. He feels that Allie was one of the few people who were not phony in a world full of phonies. More importantly, Allie represents the innocence and childhood that Holden strives to find throughout his journey. In Holden’s opinion, Allie represents the purity that Holden looks for in the world. Holden admits that he admires Allie more than he admires Jesus, and even prays to Allie at one point, rather then the latter. Allie is Holden’s role model, whom he judges the rest of the world according to. When Allie dies,...
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...Rita Acosta Advanced U.S. Literature B 26 January 2015 Krueger Catcher Essay In The Catcher In The Rye By J.D. Sallinger, a young Holden Caufield is refusing to grow up. There are many symbols of his youth throughout the book, such as his curiosity about ducks. "I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away. (pg. 13)" Holden Caufield is a 17 year old boy who deals with the issue of growing up. Holden is at his time in age where he is forced to grow up, even though he doesn't want to. Holden has been trying to protect his innocence for quite some time, as he does not like the idea of growing up. Holden’s misunderstanding of the ducks is one example of his innocence. Knowing where ducks go during the winter is a simple fact that young children learn as they grow up. We do not know for sure how much Holden knows about the ducks, but we can conclude that this little fact, which is common knowledge, shows how Holden is protecting his innocence. Holden is trying to prevent himself from growing up by protecting himself from simple childhood facts. ""Hey, listen," I said. "You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little...
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...There are various problems teenagers struggle with that some adults have all but forgotten. Such as the struggle of keeping grades up, getting along with parents, the constant fear of never properly fitting in, or the fear of being alone forever, sometimes even the loss of someone close to oneself. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye is considered as the voice to communicate teenage hardships for over 50 years. The Catcher in the Rye has been looked at by over five decades as the ultimate example of a teenage voice for pain and suffering, through the unique use of symbols found throughout the book. A symbol that Salinger uses throughout the entirety of the novel is The Museum of Natural History. Main character Holden Caulfield remembers...
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...The Metamorphosis of Holden in Sallinger's Catcher in the Rye In J.D. Sallinger's Catcher in the Rye, is based on the sullen life of Holden Caulfield, a 16-year-old teen-ager is trying to find his sense of direction. Holden, a growing adult, cannot accept the responsibilities of an adult. Eventually realizing that there is no way to avoid the adult life, he can only but accept this alternative lifestyle. What Holden describes the adult world as a sinful, corrupted life, he avoids it for three important reasons: His hatred towards phonies and liars, unable to accept adult responsibilities, and thirdly to enshrine his childhood youth. Holden uses the word phony to identify everything in the world that he rejects or encounters with. People are too talkative, too quiet, or dissimilar. Holden, himself, believes he is this perfect person, but no one believes that he is. This is why Holden believes he is surrounded by "phoniness." For example, Ossenburger of Pencey Prep, emphasizes that "he talked to Jesus all the time, even when he was driving his car." Holden thinks this is a load of crap and asserts, "'that killed me. I just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs" (17). Holden sees why he would pray to Jesus, only to send him some more dead bodies to get more business. Not only do phonies bug Holden, but liars and crooks. Another example is Sunny and Maurice, the elevator boy. Maurice offers Holden...
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...The Hero’s Journey Imagine what it would be like to be a hero on a grand quest, what if I told you many of the stages of a hero’s journey are a part of every teenagers life. This is a very important view, as it focuses on the understanding of the life and journey of a teenager. This point of view will allow for three different stories to all be explained by the same general idea. There is the story of growing maturity of Holden in Catcher in the Rye, king Odysseus’ heroic journey home, and the tale of the mighty Gorgon slayer, Perseus. 1. Herald comes and greets a fool who will soon become a hero In the Odyssey Athena, the goddess of wisdom, is Odysseus’ mentor and guide. Athena disguises herself as many different people trying to make things go right for Odysseus on his way home. Since Odysseus is Athena’s favorite mortal, she even gets him out of many troubles that the Gods put him through. Athena did everything she could to see Odysseus succeed because she knew he was capable of amazing feats. Both mentors knew that their students could do amazing things, but it is the student that must do the work. In Catcher in the Rye, Mr. Spencer in the beginning is like Athena, even though Mr. Spencer was not the one to go to...
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...went mad and lost everything. On the other hand, the novel, The Catcher in the Rye is about a boy named Holden Caufield. He does not care about school at all and got kicked out. He ended up running away from school early because of a quarrel between him and his roommate name Stradlater about a girl that he had feelings for. He then lived on the streets and met new and old friends until the day that he is supposed to return home. But there were problems and he went to sneak home early to visit his little sister Phoebe. Throughout the story, he tries to fit in but instead feels alienated and alone. Despite the differences in settings and story lines, both of these characters are similar to each other in many ways. Despite the differences in the time periods, King Lear and The Catcher of the Rye both display similar qualities which include their poor decisions, experienced major downfalls and lost of their psychological sanity. Both King Lear and The Catcher of the Rye illustrate their own terms of insanity which compliments the two as the major theme. In chapter 25 of The Catcher of the Rye, each time Holden crosses a street, he felt like he would disappear, therefore every time he reached a curb, he would called to Allie, his dead brother, begging to let him make it to the other side. “Every time I’d get to the end of a block I’d make believe I was talking to my brother Allie.” As quoted, this exhibits Holden’s psychological insanity whereas it was perceived to be as if he...
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...In the novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, I believe Holden suffers from several psychological mood disorders, because of this, Holden’s decisions and thoughts affect himself, and everyone around him. He seems to think that all adults around him are considered phonies, and he continues to push them away to protect himself. Holden is deemed to be an outsider to everyone else; Salinger captures the whole story of an undeveloped teenager living in the big scary world. Because of his perception of the world, Holden uses isolation as a way to protect himself. We will cover the possibility of separation being a mental disorder, how Holden would rather spend his life solitary and how characters in other stories deal with isolation, and how Holden discerns the world around him. Throughout the story, Holden seems to have a negative perspective of the world around him. This is caused by a mood disorder such as Post-traumatic stress disorder or Borderline personality disorder. At the beginning of the novel, Holden experiences a traumatic event of the loss of his brother Allie. In the story Catcher in the Rye, Holden struggles to cope with Allie’s death. I was only thirteen, and they were going to have...
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...4141- 4141--- Cherished and Cursed:Towarda Social History of The Catcher in the Rye STEPHEN J. WHITFIELD THE plot is brief:in 1949 or perhaps 1950, over the course of three days during the Christmas season, a sixteen-yearold takes a picaresque journey to his New YorkCity home from the third private school to expel him. The narratorrecounts his experiences and opinions from a sanitarium in California. A heavy smoker, Holden Caulfield claims to be already six feet, two inches tall and to have wisps of grey hair; and he wonders what happens to the ducks when the ponds freeze in winter. The novel was published on 16 July 1951, sold for $3.00, and was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Within two weeks, it had been reprinted five times, the next month three more times-though by the third edition the jacket photographof the author had quietly disappeared. His book stayed on the bestseller list for thirty weeks, though never above fourth place.' Costing 75?, the Bantam paperback edition appeared in 1964. By 1981, when the same edition went for $2.50, sales still held steady, between twenty and thirty thousand copies per month, about a quarter of a million copies annually. In paperback the novel sold over three million copies between 1953 and 1964, climbed even higher by the 1980s, and continues to attract about as many buyers as it did in 1951. The durabilityof The author appreciates the invitationof Professors Marc Lee Raphaeland Robert A. Gross to present an early version...
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...One cannot hold onto innocence forever, the longer he or she holds onto it, the more they can lose sight of themselves. In The Cather in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield struggles with accepting his loss of innocence which leads towards his downfall. Holden is a struggling 16 year-old boy, trying to find his place in this world, clinging onto his innocence in urgent desperation. Over the span of three days, the novel follows Holden where he eventually accepts his loss of innocence, but not without going through many struggles along the way first. Through Salinger’s use of symbols, the reader is able to clearly identify Holden’s reluctance toward becoming an adult and surrendering his innocence. Throughout The Catcher in the Rye, the author uses the Museum of Natural History, the erasing of profanity and the carousel to reveal that a person cannot avoid his or her loss of innocence. Holden visits his childhood spot, Museum of Natural History, symbolizing a world in which nothing has to change. While reflecting on his memories from the museum he realizes that the reason he loved it so much was because he could count on everything staying the same, “the best thing though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move…the only thing that would be different is you” (Salinger 121). Just like the thought of preserving innocence, Holden revels in the thought of everything staying exactly the same, forever. However, Holden knows he has...
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...Дневник читателя READER’S JOURNAL Ernest Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea (1952). Joseph Heller. Catch-22 (1961). Tennessee Williams. A Streetcar Named Desire (1959). Iris Murdoch. The Black Prince (1973). Jerome David Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Michael Ondaatje. The English Patient (1992). Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 (1953). Ken Kesey. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962). Edward Albee. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962). Arthur Miller. Death of a Salesman (1949). ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Ernest Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea (1952). ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- FULL TITLE · The Old Man and the Sea ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- AUTHOR · Ernest Hemingway ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- TYPE OF WORK · Novella ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- GENRE · Parable; tragedy ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- LANGUAGE · English ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN · 1951, Cuba ------------------------------------------------- ...
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...Specimen Papers and Mark Schemes for English Literature For first AS Examination in 2009 For first A2 Examination in 2010 Subject Code: 5110 Contents Specimen Papers Assessment Unit AS 2 Assessment Unit A2 1 Resource Booklet Assessment Unit A2 2 1 3 9 15 25 Mark Schemes Assessment Unit AS 2 Assessment Unit A2 1 Assessment Unit A2 2 29 31 61 95 Subject Code QAN QAN 5110 500/2493/0 500/2421/8 A CCEA Publication © 2007 Further copies of this publication may be downloaded from www.ccea.org.uk Specimen Papers 1 2 ADVANCED SUBSIDIARY (AS) General Certificate of Education 2009 English Literature Assessment Unit AS 2 assessing The Study of Poetry Written after 1800 and the Study of Prose 1800-1945 SPECIMEN PAPER TIME 2 hours INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES Write your Centre number and Candidate Number on the Answer Booklet provided. Answer two questions. Answer one question from Section A and one question from Section B. Section A is open book. INFORMATION FOR CANDIDATES The total mark for this paper is 120. All questions carry equal marks, ie 60 marks for each question. Quality of written communication will be assessed in all questions. 3 Section A: The Study of Poetry Written after 1800 Answer one question on your chosen pairing of poets. Heaney: Opened Ground Montague: New Selected Poems 1 John Montague and Seamus Heaney both write about the Irish past. Compare and contrast the two poets’...
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