...Caulfield's “Catcher in the Rye” Fantasy Growing up, we have all experienced a particular desire to achieve something; an ambitious state of mind that gives us meaning to life. Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, has a primary ambition - to become the Catcher in the Rye – the protector of the young and innocent, as stated in his conversation with Phoebe (Salinger, 191). Completely imaginary and a hopeless fantasy, this passage underscores what is prevalent throughout the novel - the issue of Holden's black and white perspective on the dark, phony world of adulthood juxtaposed with the light, innocent, world of childhood. The important passage contributes to Holden's clinical depression as a result of his beloved brother's death, therefore his cynical view of adulthood, and his anxiety about growing up, resulting in the overall angst and alienation palpable throughout the novel, leading to his eventual catharsis. Holden's imagery of “catching” children playing in a field of rye before they fall off a cliff is unrealistic, misheard from a little boy, and it serves merely as an escape route from what he fears most about adulthood – the change and overwhelming complexity. Holden wants everything to be easily understandable and eternally fixed, similar to the Eskimos and Indians in the museum. Opposed to acknowledging that adulthood scares and mystifies him, Holden instead invents a fantasy – that childhood is an idyllic field of rye, while adulthood...
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...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 or threatened...
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...Catcher in the Rye: FLE In J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield expresses his love of innocence as he sees it in others, in numerous ways. He demonstrates this through the way he talks about others and the way he acts around them. We learn that Holden lost his own innocence at an early age after his “perverty” (193) encounter with Mr. Antolini. Because of this, he cherishes, and wants to protect innocence in others. This is really a reflection of his desire to be innocent himself. Allie is a paragon of innocence to Holden. I know he’s dead! Don’t you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can’t I? Just because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop liking them, for God’s sake–especially if they were a thousand times nicer than the people you know that’re alive and all (171). Innocence is lost in adulthood. Since Allie never becomes an adult, he is for Holden the epitome of innocence, consequently, Holden’s love for him is very deep. Holden’s memories of Allie will always be of an innocent Allie. Holden says that he will not stop liking Allie just because he is dead. The other people he talks about are the adults that Holden sees around him. He does not like any of them because they are phony, and have lost their innocence. Mr. Spencer is one person in the book who definitely has lost his innocence, but Holden does not dislike him. Although Holden says he likes Mr. Spencer, he does imply that Mr. Spencer is a phony. There are other...
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...The Catcher in the Rye: A Struggle to Preserve Innocence Adolescence is a crossroads for many, there is the natural gravitation toward adulthood as that is the next logical step in life, or for others, like Holden Caufield, it is means never growing up. William Faulkner once said ‘The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.’ This applies to Holden at his core. He is a teenager struggling to balance his need for preserving childhood innocence and his desire to become an adult. In contrast to all adults whom Holden sees as riddled with flaws and phoniness, he sees children as pure, gentle, innocent, and perfect – frozen in time. His need to become the protector of the innocent or the “catcher in the rye” is deeply rooted in the traumatic loss of his younger brother Allie, along with his own fears of changing and growing up. This is what drives him to protect Phoebe and Jane as he might feel that if he can protect two people he loves from the thing he fears most, he can also protect himself. Holden was traumatized by the death of his brother Allie, sensitizing him to the reality of unjust death and suffering. His family’s impersonal approach to Holden’s expression of grief may have been an important contributing factor in the way he deals with figures of threatened innocence. Jane’s interactions with Holden occur a summer apart from the death of his brother. Holden states that ‘She was the only one, outside [his] Kanal2 family, that [he]...
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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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...Analysis of The Catcher in The Rye Through a Psychoanalytic Lens Mental health is an important aspect of one’s wellbeing that may be significantly impacted by a traumatic experience. The author J.D. Salinger illustrates this idea in his novel The Catcher in the Rye, which focuses on the life of the depressed protagonist, Holden Caulfield. Holden experiences the death of his young brother Allie and struggles with transitioning from his innocent childhood to his materialistic adulthood. This transition eventually influences his mental state of mind, which is evident by his lack of motivation in school, and results in him suffering from loneliness, frustration and alienation. The psychoanalytic lens discusses an individual's actions based on their conscious and unconscious mind. The Catcher in the Rye can be better analyzed through the psychoanalytic lens rather the existential lens, and this is exemplified by Holden’s desire to avoid inevitable change, his resultant isolation and his battle between his conscious and unconscious mind. Holden has a fear of change and desire to avoid...
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...THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. SALINGER I. Content of the Book Holden Caulfield is a very weird and interesting young man who likes to do things on impulse or because as he said 'he got such a bang out of it'. He has a brother, D.B. who is a writer in Hollywood, a little sister named Phoebe and another brother Allie, who has already died before the story even began. In the beginning of the story Holden narrates that he'll be leaving his school, Pencey Prep (a school full of Phonies from Holden’s point of view), because he flunked out in the four out of five subjects he was taking, the only subject he didn't fail was English. Holden tells the readers that he had come back to Agerstown, Pennsylvania though he was traveling with his team for a fencing contest, he lost all of the foils in a New York Subway, and so the match was cancelled instead. Holden even mentioned that on the way home his mates treated him to silence and he found this very amusing. Though there was a football game going on, Holden didn't go down and watch it, instead he went to visit his old history teacher, Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer is a very old man who wants to help Caulfield in his studies (since Holden has also been expelled in a few other schools as well) and at some point Mr. Spencer even read out Holden's examination paper and the little note that Holden had written in the end saying that if Mr. Spencer would like to flunk him then he'd be all right with it, Holden explained to the readers that the...
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...One of the most common mentally ill conditions is depression. The state of depression has lots of effects on a person’s thoughts, behaviour and feelings. Depression is where a person feels very sad and very down. Depression is mostly caused by losing a loved one or being put down by lots of people. The author of The Catcher and The Rye shows lots of points leading towards Holdens depression. Holden lost his brother allie and that is what really brought holden down. Holden’s teacher Mr. Antolini Tries to point holden in the right and tell him that the path he is taking is wrong. He tells holden that seeing life as corrupt is no good and brings bad relationships with evrything. Mr. Antolini attempts to help Holden to prevent his “great fall” as he states,“the...
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...The Catcher in the Rye, a novel written by J.D Salinger, is about a sixteen-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield who is troubled and misunderstood. He is critical and skeptical about the world he lives in, and only respects his deceased brother, Allie, and his younger sister, Phoebe, because of their innocence. Phoebe isn't “phony” like everybody else is to Holden, and because of this he truly admires and trusts her with his inner thoughts. In a way, Holden and Phoebe are each other's heroes without even knowing it. Holden yearns to live in a world that is genuine, and it's clear that Holden is fighting a psychological battle within himself, which makes depression and conflict major themes throughout this novel. Salinger's novel is extremely controversial because of the teenage angst displayed and the language used by Holden, but it is an accurate look inside the mind of someone who feels alienated. The literary critic, Michicku Kakutani, mentions that Salinger gave Holden “a voice that enabled him to channel an alienated 16-year-old's thoughts and anxieties and frustrations, a voice that skeptically appraised the world and denounced its phonies and hypocrites and bores.” Holden fails out of school and goes to New York where he interacts with people, but he thinks they are all phony, so he spends a lot of time feeling like a failure. Past events that occurred in Holden's life definitely make him judgmental, such as when his former English teacher, Mr. Antonlini, pats him on...
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...“The Catcher in the Rye” is written by J.D Salinger which focuses on the reality of life through the eyes of a teenager who sees the world as a painful existence. The novel is written from the perspective of Holden who has been expelled from his fourth school. After a fight with his roommate, Holden leaves early to explore New York City alone. Holden battles with the reality of adulthood that has turn a different turn on his life. We get to this stage where we fear to grow up and see what will be coming for us next in the future. Salinger’s novel clearly displays the experience of being isolated from multiple activities which can lead to the theme of alienation, the creation of the character (Holden) and also the symbolism which can be unnoticed. Salinger tries to convey a message with his writing to also displaying human connection is a must. The theme of “The Catcher in the Rye” is alienation which connects to Holden (the protagonist)...
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...Catcher in the Rye – closed analysis With close reference to pages 183-186 analyse Salinger’s use of language and structure, exploring Holden’s contradictory view of the word Holden is an adolescent struggling against the unfair, sometimes cruel nature of the adult world and sees the hypocrisy and attempts to flee it. Salinger uses Holden’s character to express his views on the 1950’s America and gives us as readers an insight through the first person narrative to the average American boy’s life. Throughout the novel we are able to identify that Holden holds many critical views on the society around him which results in his inability to connect to it. He expresses this insecurity by criticising the flaws that he finds, for example, the unfair class system. At the beginning of the extract when Holden is talking to the two children, he tells them “you should” learn about how Egyptians bury the dead, yet this is a clear contradiction to what Holden himself is like as he doesn’t care about his own education, yet is advising others. Here I believe that Holden is being what he calls ‘phony’ and in this circumstance phony refers to the false pretences and the way he acts like someone he isn’t. However, though Holden uses the word ‘phony’ repeatedly throughout the novel, it doesn’t always mean the same thing. It’s what he uses for describing the superficiality, hypocrisy, pretension, and shallowness that he encounters in the world around him and it stands as an emblem of everything...
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...The Catcher in the Rye Hannah Genich Mr. Buzminski ENG 3U March 7, 2015 J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye demonstrated a typical Bildungsroman novel, showing that maturing is inevitable and ones life will go on. Holden Caulfield’s experiences allow his character to undergo permanent change that altered his perspectives on life. Salinger illustrated a Bildungsroman with emotional loss, life lessons learnt from encounters, and acceptance of ethics in society. Holden’s role as a developing character in Salinger’s novel demonstrated the elements used in a Bildungsroman. The first phase of a Bildungsroman involves an emotional loss, a period of awkwardness and typically ends with moral the growth of the protagonist. The emotional loss Holden experienced was the loss of his younger brother, Allie, who passed away from leukemia five years before the beginning of the novel. This event altered Holden’s psychological behavior. Holden still grieved from the passing of Allie and regretted the time he told Allie to leave him and Bobby alone. Holden reenacted that particular moment and tried to change the past: “Okay. Go home and get your bike and meet me in front of Bobby's house” (Salinger 99). Holden tried to comfort his depression by attempting to change the past through communication with his deceased brother. Due to Holden’s ongoing struggle to deal with this loss of Allie, he demonstrated traits of awkwardness in the form of cynicism. Holden’s mental state...
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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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...Values Through Sympathy Empathy and sympathy are the feelings that make us human, the feelings that can reveal our true values. Holden Caulfield, from J.D. Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye, seems like the type of guy that wouldn’t be able to feel sympathy. He has many faults, like depression, excessive lying, suicidal thoughts, and more, that could interfere with compassion. He also tends to cover up his emotions to not convey any true feelings. However, this is not the case. There are many instances of Holden showing compassion and pity which show his foremost value, which is his longing for a better society. Through Holden’s instances of sympathy for Ackley, Sunny the prostitute, and the nuns, J.D. Salinger symbolizes Holden’s true desire of a harmonious, non-corrupt society. Holden’s commiseration for Ackley...
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