J. D. Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye
The stories that Holden tells in the novel The Catcher in the Rye are that of a rebellious teen. He gives multiple examples of how he feels the world is against him. Holden continues to act out against those who attempt to guide him into a particular direction. For example, he has recently failed out of another school, which is the third he mentioned. Holden knows his parents will enroll him in another school the following fall, but he claims to have failed at Pency High because he has no interest in the subjects in which he was being taught. Many friends and teachers try to explain to Holden that he has a lot of potential and could excel at whatever he wanted. However, Holden, like many other young people, cannot find or identify what he wants
…show more content…
These unattainable dreams often make the children feel inferior and breeds anger that causes them to reject the parent’s pressure. In the novel The Joy Luck Club, Suyuan Woo is constantly finding ways to test her daughter, Jing-Mei’s, abilities. These tests ranged from memorizing state capitals in a set amount of time to performing complicated multiplication problems in her head or memorizing an entire page from the bible in three minutes. The mother forced test after test on her daughter with high expectations. After one particular test failure, Jing-Mei could see her mother’s disappointment. This upset Jing-Mei to the point, where as she put it after crying in front of a mirror “The girl staring back at me was angry, powerful” (Tan 134). Mrs. Woo had pushed her daughter to such a state of anger Jing- Mei told herself “I won’t let her change me, I promised myself. I won’t be what I’m not” (Tan 134). By the time Mrs. Woo requested her daughter to learn to play the piano, a skill she could have learned through time, Jing- Mei was already in the mindset she would not do anything her mother asked. This rebellion is what happens when a parent places too much pressure on their child often leading to failure as the child refuses to conform to their parent’s
These unattainable dreams often make the children feel inferior and breeds anger that causes them to reject the parent’s pressure. In the novel The Joy Luck Club, Suyuan Woo is constantly finding ways to test her daughter, Jing-Mei’s, abilities. These tests ranged from memorizing state capitals in a set amount of time to performing complicated multiplication problems in her head or memorizing an entire page from the bible in three minutes. The mother forced test after test on her daughter with high expectations. After one particular test failure, Jing-Mei could see her mother’s disappointment. This upset Jing-Mei to the point, where as she put it after crying in front of a mirror “The girl staring back at me was angry, powerful” (Tan 134). Mrs. Woo had pushed her daughter to such a state of anger Jing- Mei told herself “I won’t let her change me, I promised myself. I won’t be what I’m not” (Tan 134). By the time Mrs. Woo requested her daughter to learn to play the piano, a skill she could have learned through time, Jing- Mei was already in the mindset she would not do anything her mother asked. This rebellion is what happens when a parent places too much pressure on their child often leading to failure as the child refuses to conform to their parent’s