Gender Roles In Catcher In The Rye

Throughout several works, authors tend to focus on aspects such as gender, social glass, and race. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is not, at first glance, a book that discusses gender in depth; however, through Holden’s thoughts and discussions with other individuals the reader is able to experience different views that people might have about men and women. Overall, gender is a key that defines which conduct and appearances are anticipated by a man or a woman. Holden fears the adult world, which is mainly to have sex, but the main reason he fears it is due to all the phoniness: I took her dress over to the closet and hung it up for her. It was funny. It made me feel sort of sad when I hung it up. I thought of her going in a store and
Once one loses his/her innocence, he/she crosses into adulthood. Holden sees the difference in the female role as played by Sunny and Phoebe. Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is also a novel that explores the idea of gender. In chapter eight, Biff Brannon’s feminine side is introduced. Ever since Alice passes away, Brannon takes into account everything that is hers; from redoing his room to sewing all his mourning clothes to wearing Alice’s perfume, this shows that Brannon is not the type of individual who sticks to stereotypical gender roles. From the beginning chapters, Brannon mentions that the sexes are not quite different; this is from his perspective when Alice dies and he begins to show his feminine side. In The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway signifies the difference between gender and their roles. By using the idea of a Code Hero, Hemingway focuses most of his stories on creating the Code Hero which is defined as a man, which already in this case gives the male role more strength than the female role. Hemingway defines a Code Hero as “a man who lives correctly, following