Preview

Catcher In The Rye Opinion Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
231 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Catcher In The Rye Opinion Essay
In my opinion, I believe that the book Catcher in the Rye was not a problematic book. There are many more books that include far worse things than the language and context. I believe that the book was much more controversial due to the killings of John Lennon and assassination attempts. When you have those type of situations happening in America, its takes notice and becomes problematic to not only the authors life, but America as a country. I’ve read much worse books than The Catcher of the Rye. There are much worse characters in books with horrible situations than Holden, Stradlater, Ackley, etc. It could be problematic for children and young teenagers who read the book. They are vulnerable at such a young age and can become exposed to foul

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Similar observations are made by academic writer and author Sarah Graham in her book entitled Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. In this book, Graham addresses a variety of reading techniques, themes, and comparisons/contrasts in regards to Salinger’s most popular novel, but she specifically addresses the main theme of Holden’s attempt to escape the phony 1950’s materialistic focused society surrounding him. Graham begins her take on this theme of escaping society with a chapter on Holden’s rebellion: “Developing the theme of rebellion, Holden’s visit to Mr. Spencer confirms that he is opposed to the conventional ideas that school and society encourage in order to promote stability” (34). During this visit to Mr. Spencer’s house that Graham…

    • 1991 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Good people... are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure”. This quote from William Saroyan means that wise people acquire their insight from experiences, especially unsuccessful ones. I agree with the quote and the idea of people being knowledgeable because of the hardships and journeys they had endured. The two novels Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger both support the idea of gaining wisdom through experience.…

    • 545 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody” (Salinger 234). These two sentences alone, from J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, explain a lot about Holden Caulfield’s character and his actions throughout his journey. One of Holden’s many struggles is his lust for human connection, but he never allows anyone to get close–breaking it off before they can leave him. When someone gets close enough to see what Holden is really like, Holden sabotages their relationship by lying, insulting, or simply leaving them. He does this because of his fear of experiencing what he felt when Allie was taken from him.…

    • 715 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Controversy is often the source of many heated arguments. It brings about topics that people will more than likely disagree on and be able to debate with each other. The novel, The Catcher in the Rye has been a source of controversy ever since it was published. Author, J.D. Salinger incorporated multiple controversial senses into the novel, many of them having to do with the loss of innocence. Scenes such as Holden encountering a prostitute, lying to Mrs. Morrow, and attempting to erase all the f*** yous from the world, all display the controversial themes seen throughout the novel.…

    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Three seconds remain in the tied basketball game. The point guard shoots and scores right before the buzzer sounds off. I bet for a long time, that player worked hard in the gym to practice and perfect his shooting for game time situations like that. It just goes to show that nothing great can ever be achieved without hard work. Holden Caulfield from The Catcher In The Rye, however, does not quite understand this saying. In the story, Holden does not apply himself to his education at Pencey Prep, which results in his expulsion from school. Throughout the story, Holden, as well as a few other characters, represent the terms expressed in Freud’s Theory of Personality known as the id, superego, and ego.…

    • 774 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Catcher In The Rye Banned

    • 1423 Words
    • 6 Pages

    With this story being so out of the ordinary with its uniqueness and all, it became very well-known and had an extensive list of people who wanted it banned or challenged. Not all for the right reasons, though. I mean yes, parents do not want their children reading about such things, but in all reality, the parents just do not understand the character. They do not know the story, the reasons for Holden's actions or what he could be thinking, so how could they possibly like something they do not get? The Catcher in the Rye may have been useless to some, but to others, this story was something epically easy to connect with. This book should not have been banned just because it was…

    • 1423 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Imagine what it feels like to be a teenager. Is a teenager considerate and open minded? The novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger talks about a teenager named Holden Caulfield who tells his story about a school named Pency Prep in Pennsylvania, away from his sister and parents. Throughout most of this book, Holden explains his inner thoughts regarding everyone he knows, and most of them are judgmental. Holden is considered to be a typical American teenager in this novel. First of all, teenagers like to express their thoughts. In Sylvia Plath’s article “Sylvia Plath at Seventeen”, she begins saying,“As of today I have decided to keep a diary again―just a place where I can write my thoughts and opinions when I have a moment. Somehow I…

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In conclusion, The Catcher in the Rye or even any book should be banned because of the content. That is what makes it art and unique. After all the reasons why the novel got challenged I still believe that is should not be. After all the reasons why the novel got challenged I still believe that is should not…

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Words like “goddam”. (Salinger 34), “moron”(44), and “crap”(35) are the words that Holden uses constantly throughout the book when he talks to his peers, and friends that he tries to connect with. This type of language that J.D.Salinger uses puts a negative image on the book, and many parents disagree with the idea of kids reading, and learning a book that has profanity in it. Not only did parent not like J.D.Salinger use of the profanity, but parents also did not like that the author used sexual feelings, and thoughts in the book that kids read and learned. In the book the author shows the sexual thoughts of Holden a teenager “You'd think a prostitute and all would say “Like hell you are” or “Cut the crap” instead of “Like fun you are.”(123) Parents all around America complain about The Catcher in the Rye, and how the author uses sexual thoughts, and phrases with profanity in a book that is taught at school. This was just the beginning of the many bad reviews that The Catcher in the Rye got. One of the other major complaint that was submitted was the use of profanity in certain scenes. One scene that seemed very offensive and slanderous was when Holden was cursing in front of his little sister “ like as if Thurmer was a goddam prince or something.” “Don't swear so much”(218) Many parents, and authors found this offensive because it gave the impression that kids,and…

    • 1297 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The genuine joy Holden gets from watching Phoebe is a striking image of his fantasies of innocence and his collapsing psyche. For a moment Holden sees the joy that he envisions all the children of his rye field are like. Within Phoebe’s happiness Holden is transfixed and distraught, because the sudden realization that he is transitioning to a world he does not feel equipped for triggers the end of his ambivalence. As the carousel spins so does Holden’s reality, he loses sense of even further sense of himself. The Catcher in the Rye is a bildungsroman, but it is unique in how Holden not only resists growing up, but also he ends the novel more unstable and lost than he started off as. A quest or journey is supposed to lead to a literal or metaphorical…

    • 481 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I understand you have many things to consider at your point in life, but you are over thinking many things. In you conversation with Sally you mention the word “phony” often when you describe most of the people you have met. You said: "I hate living in New York and all. Taxicabs, Madison Avenue buses, with the drivers and all always yelling at you to get out at the rear door, and being introduced to phony guys that call the Lunts angels, and going up and down in elevators when you just want to go outside..."(pg 130) This type of thinking is just meaningless, your critiquing people and things without finding an answer to how to feel better. You are isolating yourself from many others by thinking you are the only one that…

    • 696 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the protagonist, Holden, exclaims that he dreams of a life where he can, “just be the catcher in the rye and all” (Salinger 200). Due to the pressures of American conformity in the early 1950’s, he discovers that he will never live a life where he simply keeps children from “falling off of cliffs”―helping them preserve their innocence. The Catcher in the Rye teaches readers that America promotes a materialistic culture in which conformity prevails.…

    • 439 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger it is about Holden the troubled teen. Holden finds that the world around him is almost unbearable and because the thought of growing up scares him, he tries to protect himself from adulthood that is coming to him. Holden has this mindset of not caring about his responsibilities in life. Also, he is scared for what the future has to bring him. In addition, he is scared of transitioning into adulthood. Though the book is about growing up, Holden never reaches that high level maturity.…

    • 427 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Help can be given and received only by those who accept it. The teenagers of today’s society seem to rebel against help and those who can give help. Teenagers seem to have the mentality that they have to do everything on their own, that they have to be “independent”, and that no one understands them. With that type of mentality no one can be helped. Holden has that same mentality. He believes that he is a grown independent man who can live on his own and that he does not need anyone. Therefore before her accepts any help he is forced to reach his breaking point.…

    • 609 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D. Salinger, I found the idea of self-isolation from human relationships that was portrayed through the protagonist Holden Caulfield very interesting. While over the course of the novel, which is set into a timeframe of three days, Holden interacts with many others, we see that he does not have a close relationship with any of these people other than his sister, Phoebe. This self-imposed isolation from any close human relationships is to protect himself from becoming a ‘phony’, which is what he labels those that he believes are fake and shallow. By isolating himself, he feels that he is protected from becoming this stereotype, and this is a source of strength to him however it also can also create problems for him. While his solitude drives him to get in contact and go on a date with Sally Hayes, his drive to be alienated eventually leads him to being rude and offensive towards her, with him saying she gave him “a royal pain in the ass”. In addition, we are shown that his isolation is leading him to have crazed, delusional moments, admitting to himself that “I swear to God I’m a madman” and insisting that, although Sally kept asking him to speak quieter, he “wasn’t even screaming at her”. In the television series Sherlock, the main character Sherlock Holmes is in a similar situation to that of Holden. At the beginning of the series, in the episode ‘A Study in Pink’, we see that Sherlock does not have any close human relationships as he feels that the he has a superior intelligence to most people, and therefore is above them. This leaves him leading a secluded lifestyle similar to that of Holden’s, showing us that this theme of isolation from human relationships is also apparent in other pieces of literature.…

    • 1059 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays