"The Catcher in the Rye" opens with Holden Caulfield at Pency Prep, his high school, where he has just been kicked out for failing almost all of his classes. Holden, as a lost and frustrated teen, goes to his room for his last night before planning to run away from Pency Prep for some "alone time" before telling his parent he was kicked out of another school.…
When someone is young, they tend to have innocence about them. As children grow up, they no longer possess this natural innocence. Exposure to all of the hatred in the world causes this loss. Holden Caulfield realizes this simple fact, as he himself grows up, and has a difficult time with the change. He experiences problems with communication as well as his school work. A common theme used throughout The Catcher in the Rye has to do with contradictions Holden makes. In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, first person point of view is used to highlight contradictions Holden makes throughout the novel.…
J.D Salinger has a written a novel called catcher in the rye, about a teenage boy named Holden Caulfield who lives in New York City. Holden is not an ordinary teenage boy. His way of viewing life is different its extraordinary Holden is confused, lost, and depressed. His character is very complex to understand through the book Holden tries to reach out to a lot of people and he tries to build a relation but something is not letting Holden to do so, the fact that Holden wants to remain a child is keeping him away from growing up and becoming more understandable to himself and the people around him. He has no stable relation with his parents which has affected him to do poorly academically. Through the book J.D Salinger have used symbolism that shows Holden’s mental anguish. The symbolism explains everything that’s is going on with Holden…
1. D.B is Holden’s older brother who writes a volume of short stories that Holden admires very much, but Holden feels that D. B. prostitutes his talents by writing for Hollywood movies. D.B. is the height of phoniness in Holden's mind because he's sacrificed his art (writing stories) for money.…
He sees adults and friends who succumb to these norms, and he outwardly looks down upon them and call them phonies of society. As an author, J.D. Salinger created Holden Caulfield as a character to challenge the expected norms of this time period, and as a whole, the novel addresses the challenge of accepting societal norms and diverging from norms to create a different lifestyle. For Holden, although many other reasons attribute to his refusal to accept society, he mainly believes that the 1950’s American Dream culture valuing marriage, family and education is not one that he wishes to be associated with. It is also crucial to note that by the end of the novel, Holden ends up in a mental institution, the location from which he narrates Catcher in the Rye. This element of the novel is crucial to our understanding of Holden as a character; he seems to have rejected the values and views of the post-war era so intensely, he is literally unable to function and has been…
Throughout the book, Holden travels from place to place, discovering how adults truly act. As he gets sick of seeing such corrupted society, he wishes to escape from reality by talking to his younger sister, Phoebe. In chapter 22, Holden discusses what he wants to be when he grows up with Phoebe. He says that he wants to be the “catcher in the rye” and he doesn’t know why but that is the only thing he would like to be. He explains in a big field rye, he will be standing on the edge of a cliff, catching kids as they got close to the cliff. The big field of rye represents childhood and the rye is made high to limit kids from looking beyond, just as children are unable to see beyond their borders of childhood. Holden wishes to stand where the rye field of childhood and the cliff of adulthood separates, and protect kids from falling off the cliff into the impure world of adults. He aims to be the savior of the innocence in the world around him, a world that let him fall alone into the abyss of adulthood.…
In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, the author, J.D. Salinger, takes the reader through Holden Caulfield’s struggles with adolescence as he makes his way through New York City in the 1940’s. Salinger shows how Holden attempts to go on an unrealistic quest to save children from a sudden loss of innocence. Holden’s wake-up call comes in the form of his little sister, Phoebe, who unintentionally illustrates to her big brother that reaching for the gold ring isn’t always a scary thing, but a part of life that everyone must go through. The author uses symbolism to create Holden’s idea of becoming “The Catcher in the Rye,” a way of preventing others from the abrupt loss of innocence. Holden’s idea is challenged by his interactions,…
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.…
There are many people who have a fear of having to grow up. When a child grows up their innocence starts to fade away. It is something that happens no matter how much someone wants to keep it. Some people cannot accept the fact that growing up is a part of life. That as one grows up they learn and understand things that they did not when they were children. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is the protagonist who is not too keen of having to grow up. Throughout the novel this fear is shown. He is caught between being a child and turning to an adult. He knows that growing up is something that going to happen no matter what. There is no way he could prevent or at least help the children from losing their innocence. But he still wants to be able to try and do something about it. He wants to be the catcher in the rye and preserve the innocence of the children. Holden Caulfield’s protection of innocence can be seen through his talks about the Museum of Natural History, Jane Gallagher and Phoebe, but he…
Themes in stories can be developed through many different means. It can be openly stated or just simply implied. Throughout history symbolism has been used to develop stories. Even in the bible there are multiple symbols that can be found. J.D. Salinger uses symbols to help readers understand the overall message and theme of his book The Catcher in the Rye. From Holden’s red hunting hat to Allie’s baseball mitt, symbols are constantly being thrown into the story. One other symbol that I think is highly significant is the ducks in Central Park.…
Throughout the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger a symbol that my group chose that we believe represents Holden is the ducks at Central park south. Holden repeatedly asks people where the ducks go because he likes the ducks staying where they are. Holden worries about the ducks at Central park south “But I didn’t see any ducks around . . . but I didn’t see a single duck. I thought maybe if they were any around, they might be asleep or something near the grass and all. That’s how I nearly fell in. but I couldn’t find any” (Salinger 154). Holden then asks the taxi cab driver who he doesn’t know where the ducks go. “You know those ducks in the lagoon right near Central park south? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you know by any chance?”(Salinger 90). “I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and…
The song “Catcher” by the Swedish band Komeda refers to Holden’s fantasy. The lyrics include, “ Who will catch you when you fall? / Who will do it all? And/ There ain’t no catcher in the rye” (from the album Kokomedada, 2003). These are apt words because Holden’s dream job is to protect children from growing up and becoming phonies and perverts. In Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield's New York odyssey leads to his dark fall.…
“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole…. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you” (Salinger 121). The museum represents the world Holden wishes to live in. It’s the world of his “catcher in the rye” where nothing changes and is simple. “Another thing, if you touched one of the paddles or anything while you were passing, one of the guards would say to you, `don’t touch anything, children' but he always said it in a nice voice, not like a goddam cop or anything” (Salinger 120-121). “Not-touching is similarly indispensable to preserving what is valuable at the Museum of Natural History, a favorite place of Holden's” (Takeuchi).Holden likes the Natural History museum because no matter what changes in his life the museum was always the same and a safe spot he can always come back…
J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is about a young Holden Caulfield’s growth into maturity. Caulfield begins the novel as an inexperienced boarding school student attending Pencey Prep, a private boarding school located in Pennsylvania, who is struggling academically and socially. After getting kicked out of yet another boarding school, Caulfield travels to New York City before going home. After staying in New York for the time period between when he got kicked out and when he can return home Caulfield learns the struggles of living in the adult world. As he experiences New York, it opens his eyes to the painfulness of growing up and he wants to escape it. A major theme in this story is keeping innocence, which is portrayed through Caulfield’s theory about the catcher in the rye, his need to protect his sister, and the red hunting hat.…
In his The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger uses the museum and to prove that growing up is more difficult without healthy coping mechanisms and communication skills. When Holden was in New York, he visited a museum and described it as. “...in that museum was that everything stayed right where it was...you could go there a hundred thousand times… only thing would be different would be you “ (128). Museums contain snapshots that show the past in many different ways. In relation to Holden, he likes them because they do not change, unlike his ever changing world, and everything is constant inside them. This is unhealthy because in order to deal with the future, one must deal with the past with healthy coping mechanisms. Furthermore, Holden…