...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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...Madrigal Professor Hendricks English Composition 2 1 December 2014 Bibliography Salinger, J.D. “The Catcher in the Rye” Little, Brown and Company. Boston: 1945. This source is the actual book The Catcher in the Rye which was written by J.D. Salinger. He writes of a boy, Holden Caulfield, the narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is a troubled teenager who switches between having a pompous attitude and feeling as if he is superior to others and then being aware of being alienated from his peers, to beginning to protect his innocence and that of other people. He begins to isolate himself from others because he doesn’t want to get hurt after losing a little brother, Allie. Other students looked down upon him and that is why he has possibly developed a dislike for other people. At first his isolation is more negative than positive. Holden is kicked out of the third school due to having poor grades. After being kicked out of school, he goes on a journey filled with various incidents that cause him to make grown up decisions. The story is narrated in first-person by Holden from a psychiatric hospital where Holden is for treatment. A quotation I will be using in the book is “I am always saying ‘Glad to've met you’ to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though” (Salinger 87). Madrigal 2 “Catcher in the Rye the Alienation of Holden Caulfield” Humanities 360 Print. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2014. Humanities 360...
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...Hello and good morning/evening, what do you believe makes a relationship, is it love, friendship or is it established when you are born between your parents and siblings? How could this everyday phenomenon, which drives our will to live and excel, be so simple? “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger and “The Dark Knight” directed by Christopher Noland are my chosen examples to explore themes such as hatred, mortality and deceit, which consist of various factors affecting relationships like self-isolation, our psychological health and propaganda. “The Cather in the Rye” explores these themes in a Dark, cynical but somewhat compassionate tone, accompanied with moments of humor. “The Dark Knight” is similar and explores the themes in a dark and disturbing tone, with the addition of action. “The Catcher in the Rye” demonstrates the theme of hatred with Holden’s hate towards the adult world around him, however as a consequence this causes personal, social and mental isolation from the world and an inability to create meaningful relationships. This is the main factor for Holden’s isolation from the world, and is symbolized throughout the novel with Holden’s red hunting hat. The majority of the people he encounters are deemed as ‘phonies’ for Holden as they do not follow with his view of the world, this generalization further prevent him from making relationships and reflects upon his immaturity. The last page of the novel and more importantly the quote, “All I know is I sort...
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...Alexandra Small AP Language & Compositon The Catcher in the Rye and Impulse both have similarities between their narrators and characters. Impulse is a very powerful book with mature subject matters, but even so, it related very well to The Catcher in the Rye. The three characters in Impulse are all admitted into the Aspen Springs psychiatric hospital for all wanting to end their lives with different motives. Holden can relate to the three characters and mostly their lives before the psychiatric hospital. Through quotes, texts, songs and pictures The Catcher in the Rye and Impulse play out and compliment each other through similarities. In slide one, Tony and Holden are compared through their anger and outburst after losing a loved one. Tony, a character in Impulse was dating an older man named Philip. Philip became very sick and passed away. The only way for Tony to feel better was to turn to pills. He was hospitalized for trying to overdose and was put into the psychiatric hospital. Holden goes through a struggle when his brother Allie dies. When Allie died, Holden broke all the windows in his garage and had to be hospitalized. Holden ends up regretting this because he was still hospitalized during Allie’s funeral and couldn’t attend it. While Philip was alive he sent Tony a baseball glove and a ball for his birthday. This compares to The Catcher in the Rye because Allie had a baseball glove and he would write poems in green ink all over the glove...
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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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...his decision to give away the kingdom to his three daughters which marked the beginning of chaotic and uncontrollable consequences. In the middle of the play, Lear 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...
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...The Catcher In the Rye , a novel by J.D. Salinger, took place in New York city during the late 1940s. Holden, the narrator of the novel got kicked out of his 3erd boarding school, Pency which was located in Pennsylvania. This school was, as Holden described it full of phonies and crooks. He did not care for his roommate Stradlater and he was annoyed by Ackley the guy that lived in the room over. He flunked out of every class, but English witch got him thrown out. He decided to go to New York before he went home for Christmas break and, before his parents find out about what had happened. While in New York Holden was extremely depressed, he got a room at a hotel, bought a prostitute that he did not do anything with, drank, smoked, spent a lot money, went on dates,...
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...The Deep Depression of a College Student Depression, a serious medical condition in which a person feels very sad, hopeless, unimportant, and often is unable to live in a normal way. This definition ties into the main character in J.D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye. The Catcher in the Rye is a novel about a teenage boy, Holden Caulfield, who is suffering from a depression problem. Some people believe he is not suffering from the mental illness of depression. While others believe he is suffering from the mental illness of depression. In The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D Salinger, Holden Caulfield is suffering from the mental illness of depression, which began when he lost his younger brother Allie at a young age. The death of Allie began the mental illness of depression for Holden. “I was only thirteen, and they were gonna have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the...
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...Parjit Sigh Dhaliwal Mr. Mannello ENG3U0-I 2015-12-10 Donnie Darko and The Catcher in the Rye Comparative Essay: The Transition into the Adult World When one’s views contrast with those of society’s, a societal phenomenon of alienation occurs. Both, J.D Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye, and director Richard Kelly’s film, Donnie Darko, emphasise this estrangement by contextually presenting protagonists who suggest that teen discordance is universal due to their opposing collective perspectives. The book, The Catcher in the Rye, is about a young-adult’s three-day experience living in New York city after being kicked out of his school. The narrator, Holden Caulfield, recounts his experiences and interactions within those three days through thorough analyzation. The film, Donnie Darko, is about a teen, Donnie Darko, who is supernaturally transported to a tangent universe, guided by a ghost, Frank, in which his actions determine the future of the normal universe. In both the book and the novel, the ironic nature of societal seclusion being self-inflicted shown through the rejection of society by the protagonists themselves, both works are able to reinforce the universality of teen discord. Although there is trust to be found in adults, superficiality is present in the mass majority of the adult society. This phoniness amongst adults is present in both the book and the movie ultimately which contributes to the prevalence of distrust amongst the adolescent protagonists...
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...characters in literature are often misrepresented and undervalued women. Negative attitudes towards women have long been accepted by both men and women and as a result the dominant male group gives women a lower reputation. The Catcher in the Rye, although it’s about an adolescent male who embarks on a journey to transition from childhood to adulthood, his perception of the opposite sex is skewed by the society he lives in. The idea that women are thought of as less often alters males into perceiving women simply as sexual objects. Holden's male perspective in narrating the Catcher in the Rye, portrays female characters as stereotypical women. Reinforcing gender roles set by social standards consequently oppressing and sexualizing the...
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...DEAD POETS SOCIETY & CATCHER IN THE RYE MY FAVORITE LINES FROM THE MOVIE Savor words and language; words and ideas can change the world We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute, we read and write poetry because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion. Poetry, beauty, romance, love -- these are what we stay alive for Let poetry work its magic We didn’t just read poetry, we let it drip from our tongues like honey; spirits soared, women swooned, and gods were created. Language was developed for one endeavor and that is to woo women A man isn’t very tired, he is exhausted; don’t say very sad, say morose We must constantly look at things in a different way When you read, don’t just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think Strive to find your own voice; dare to strike out and find new ground Sometimes the most beautiful poetry can be about simple things – a cat or a flower or rain Poetry can come from anything with the stuff of revelation in it Don’t let your poems be ordinary Say the first thing that pops into your mind even if it’s total gibberish; describe what you see, now give it an action Mr. Keating: I always thought the purpose of education was to teach one to think for himself Mr. Nolan: No John, tradition, discipline, prepare them for college and the rest will take care of itself Will the rest take care of itself? Should teachers be concerned...
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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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...The use of language in J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, is an upper-class boy who has gone from one private school to another, searching for -- something. He expresses his frustrations in language highly characteristic of adolescence; his extremely colloquial speech sounds just like that of teenagers today, even though Salinger's novel was written in the 1950s. But a particularly striking factor of Holden's narration is his frequent use of the words "phony" and "crazy", as well as his ongoing lapse into second person -- "you". These characteristics attain greater significance given Holden's desperate need to actually reach out and communicate with someone, anyone, who just might understand him. The novel takes place in the two days following Holden's dismissal from his latest school, Pencey Prep. Much of this two-day period is spent either making or contemplating a huge number of assignations and phone calls, most of which are never made. Each of these represents an unsatisfied need to reach out, to affirm the validity of his place in the world at that moment and have it confirmed by the response of another person. In almost every case Holden holds back from really touching another person who could make a difference to him. In fact, his very name -- Holden -- may stand for this attitude of "holding", of keeping himself so close to the vest that he is unable to communicate with the people he so desperately...
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...Catcher in the Rye essay After reading “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D Salinger, it is clear that the main character, Holden is a “phony” himself and his negative attitude reveals his psychological problems. In the story, whenever Holden sees a person he doesn’t like that makes themselves out to be something they’re not, he calls them phonies. He strongly dislikes phonies and despises any type of interaction with them. Holden continues this negative attitude towards everything in his life revealing some of his issues and keeping him from growing up. Holden encounters many phonies throughout his travels from boarding school to boarding school. He claims most of his “friends” to be phonies because of their lying but he has yet to realize that the biggest phony amongst them is staring at him in the mirror. On his train ride to New York, after being kicked out of Pencey, Holden meets the mother of one of his acquaintances from Pencey, Ernest Morrow. According to the story, When Mrs. Morrow asks Holden his name, he tells her his name is Rudolf Schmidt. Holden had no reason to lie to her, he just felt the need to. He has never met her before and probably will not see her ever again and still feels like he need to lie to her. As the conversation continues, Mrs. Morrow questions why Holden is leaving for break so early, Holden states “I have to have this operation…I have this tiny tumor on my brain” (58). Instead of explaining to her that he had gotten kicked out of Pencey due to...
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...Both Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and J.D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye are bildungsroman novels about a young character’s growth into adulthood. Written 67 years apart, both novels feature unusual protagonists who are somewhat innocent, naïve and desperate to reject the process of maturity and being ‘sivilized’. Twain focuses on a key moment in American history to ask readers to reassess the definition of “civilisation”, freedom, justice and social responsibility. Published in 1884, the novel relates to the pre-civil war years when the controversy over slavery corrupted America. Twain set his novel in 1860 prior to the abolition of slavery in order to criticise racist attitudes and uses the Mississippi River as the centre point of his novel. It symbolises the route toward freedom and escape for Huck and Jim providing the setting for the growth of both a young boy and a country struggling to understand definitions of freedom, individualism and civilisation. Salinger, however, uses his protagonist Holden to explore the materialistic, conformist society he saw developing after WW2. The first extract I chose is from chapter 22 of Catcher in the Rye where Phoebe accuses Holden of hating everything and everyone. Holden reveals here his fantasy of becoming ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ protecting children from falling into the adult world. This links with chapter 31 of Huckleberry Finn where Huck decides to write a letter to Tom Sawyer to tell Miss Watson where Jim...
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