Holden Caulfield And The American Dream

Holden Caulfield is a teenage boy whom fails to find human connection, this sense of alienation makes it clear that Holden is victim to the American dream. The American dream is the idea that through hard work and determination it is possible for anyone to become prosperous and wealthy. This prosperity should naturally lead to happiness, which in turn suggests that, the American dream is actually about achieving fulfilment. ‘The catcher in the Rye’ is a novel written by J.D. Salinger in 1951, J.D. introduced the world to ‘The teenager’ when he created a seventeen year old male protagonist whom proves himself to be an unreliable narrator. Holden is a part of a wealthy family, his father being a Lawyer and his brother writing for films in Hollywood,
He reveals his fondness of Allie which suggests there was a strong connection which is something that Holden doesn’t have in his life anymore. . ‘I remember once, the summer I was around twelve, teeing off and all, and having a hunch that if I turned around all of a sudden, I’d see Allie. So I did, and sure enough, he was sitting on his bike outside the fence.’ The irony of his brother’s death is that the only person Holden had a connection with, passed away leaving him alienated. Through Allies death it also becomes evident that Holden can’t deal with change. His stream of consciousness continues to explain how he reacted to Allies death. “I broke all the windows in the garage.” He confirms his emotional dysfunction to such a vast change and reveals how alienation took over his life. Holden speaks using a puzzled sense of emotive language. “He’s dead now. He got leukaemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You’d have liked him.” He suggest that the reader would have liked Allie and though the rest of the scene he speaks fondly of him, though to talk of his death in such an emotionless way begins to contradict everything he is saying “He’s dead now.” Later during a conversation with his sister Phoebe he reveals that he is in fact isolated from people and the one true person he was close to has died “Just because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop
He wants to be the protector of children that fall of the cliff while playing in the Rye fields, the symbolism used here is that Holden would rather catch the children than let them metaphorically fall and lose their innocence, in other words grow up, “What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff-“. Holden views adulthood to be the conformity of ‘phonies’ and he refuses to confine to societies expectations