Catcher In The Rye: Adulthood Vs Childhood
Shelby
English 11
June 4th’ 2013
“Catcher in the Rye”: Childhood versus Adulthood At a young age, every child is taught that at some point in their lifetime they will become an adult. Some children cannot wait to “grow up”, while others seem to resist it with every fiber of their being. A select few on the other hand are a combination of both, and in this category falls a boy named Holden Caulfield. His immaturity, self-denial, awful habits, and inability to move on from the past make him relatable to any teenager, or any former teenager. Holden is the main character in a famous novel by J.D. Salinger titled, “The Catcher in the Rye”. The baseline of the story is that Holden fails out of a private school and travels to New York …show more content…
Thousands of little kids and nobody’s around- nobody big, I mean- except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t know where they’re going.”(173, Salinger) This quote shows how Holden is facing problems becoming an adult himself so he wants to protect children from becoming adults. The rye field symbolizes innocence whilst the cliff symbolizes falling into adulthood. Holden wants to keep children from growing up, because he knows how corrupt the world is. He does not want the children’s innocence to be tarnished just as his is. His experience throughout the novel is very negative and he does not want the same burden on anyone …show more content…
Holden struggles as he is on a thin line of maturity and immaturity. He wants to swing back from being a child to being an adult which he cannot do. His confusion is so substantial that it leads to depression, lack of judgment, and a false adoration of childhood innocence. He stereotypes the adult world to be corrupt and the child world to be heaven like. He constantly judges other people to push aside his self-demons. His longing to be a child again leads to his ultimate downfall, in which he is admitted to a psychological hospital. Although most novels of this time period go uphill with a positive ending, this book hits rock bottom at the end. It shows a drastic but realistic version of the amount of confusion and self-discovery in teenage hood while becoming an
English 11
June 4th’ 2013
“Catcher in the Rye”: Childhood versus Adulthood At a young age, every child is taught that at some point in their lifetime they will become an adult. Some children cannot wait to “grow up”, while others seem to resist it with every fiber of their being. A select few on the other hand are a combination of both, and in this category falls a boy named Holden Caulfield. His immaturity, self-denial, awful habits, and inability to move on from the past make him relatable to any teenager, or any former teenager. Holden is the main character in a famous novel by J.D. Salinger titled, “The Catcher in the Rye”. The baseline of the story is that Holden fails out of a private school and travels to New York …show more content…
Thousands of little kids and nobody’s around- nobody big, I mean- except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t know where they’re going.”(173, Salinger) This quote shows how Holden is facing problems becoming an adult himself so he wants to protect children from becoming adults. The rye field symbolizes innocence whilst the cliff symbolizes falling into adulthood. Holden wants to keep children from growing up, because he knows how corrupt the world is. He does not want the children’s innocence to be tarnished just as his is. His experience throughout the novel is very negative and he does not want the same burden on anyone …show more content…
Holden struggles as he is on a thin line of maturity and immaturity. He wants to swing back from being a child to being an adult which he cannot do. His confusion is so substantial that it leads to depression, lack of judgment, and a false adoration of childhood innocence. He stereotypes the adult world to be corrupt and the child world to be heaven like. He constantly judges other people to push aside his self-demons. His longing to be a child again leads to his ultimate downfall, in which he is admitted to a psychological hospital. Although most novels of this time period go uphill with a positive ending, this book hits rock bottom at the end. It shows a drastic but realistic version of the amount of confusion and self-discovery in teenage hood while becoming an