Holden left Pency Prep and took a train back home to New York City. He takes some time off from everyone telling him what to do and decided to stay at a hotel and try to find a woman to loose his own innocence to. He goes to a bar in the restaurant where he continuously tries to pick up women. The room is filled with "old, show-offy-looking guys and their dates" (69) except for three women who, in Holden’s opinion, were pretty ugly except for the blond one. He flirts and dances with them in the hopes of getting lucky.…
Holden gets depressed when Sunny takes off her dress because he realized that she was a child. He agreed to a prostitute because he was pressured and depressed so he thought he can blow off some steam using the prostitute. He changes his mind about having sex because the girl tells to stop and he doesnt know if he should continue or if he should stop. He stops most of the time.…
Holden's got the good luck to find a substitute elevator boy on duty, and he makes it up to his parents' apartment without attracting too much attention. Phoebe is asleep in D.B.'s room, where she likes to stay when he's away, and Holden…
Sexual relations appeal to Holden’s maturing mindset, yet he also finds these actions indecent. When Holden first arrives at the Edmont hotel, he looks out his window and watches the people on the other side of the building. He sees people partaking in odd activities such as cross dressing and couple squirting water on each other. Watching these people makes Holden think about his own sexual opinions and desires: “The thing is though, I…
Holden finds himself wandering aimlessly around New York, encountering different experiences that he didn’t expect. He also finds himself in a situation with a call girl who is approximately the same age as him. He starts to view her as a person, rather than a sex object. He pays for the service yet he only wants to converse with her but she leaves in frustration. She brings her pimp to physically abuse Holden. As the days go by he searches for nothing except embracing his surroundings after hearing a young boy sing lyrics “if a body catch a body coming through the rye “ and he misinterprets it to be as a signal Holden believes that to be a "catcher in the rye" means to save children from losing their innocence. He begins to perceive the world and comes back home to his younger sister back in his hometown. He meets a girl when watching the play “Romeo and Juliet” where he meets a girl Sally and after hanging out together for a moderate amount of time he impulsively asks her to elope with him to a place far away forever. She declines his offer and refuses to speak to him.…
Most journeys involve a change in character. One example of this is the journey of self-discovery that Holden Caulfield undergoes in “The Catcher in the Rye”. J. D. Salinger uses a variety of linguistic and literary techniques such as characterisation and setting to take the audience on Holden’s journey.…
The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger is a reflection of his own life being shown through a teenage boy, Holden Caulfield. Like Salinger in the novel Holden jumps from prep school to prep school not finishing each time, however excels in English classes. Holden’s life in the novel shook the nation with controversy and curiosity. Illustrated in the text it conveys extreme depression, sexual tension, love, and lewd language. Holden attempts to see the “phony” world through a new light, however fails due to the type of person he is, his troubled background, sexual confusion, family issues, and fallacious world we all live in.…
However, Holden does so by not thinking about the situations he puts himself into. At the beginning of Holden’s journey, Holden finds out that a jock named Stradlater had gone on a date with a girl that Holden has a keen interest in, Jane Gallagher. Holden inflicts pain upon himself by trying to fight Stradlater because of Holden’s own jealousy towards Stradlater. Stradlater is obviously stronger than Holden and expresses his reluctance towards hurting Holden as Stradlater says “Holden, God damn it, I’m warning you, now. For the last time. If you don’t keep your yap shut, I’m gonna— ” (50), yet Holden “tried to sock him, with all [his] might ,“ (49) but “only he missed” (49) and ended up getting hurt. Holden should have realized the reality of the fight and kept his feelings inside or avoided violence altogether, but Holden starts a situation that only ends up with him getting hurt. Moving on, Holden puts himself into another situation as soon as Holden leaves the school and enters New York City. At one…
Holden is constantly trying to surround himself with other people, but isn’t able to form real connections with anyone. Holden socializes with girls multiple times throughout the book. He makes an effort to engage in conversation with them, but they never seem to want to reach past small talk. This leaves Holden frustrated with the lack of connection made. Holden goes into a club with the hopes of drinking, but is not allowed due to lack of identification. He searches for girls, only to find a group of three who he does not like very much, but dances and flirts with them anyway. He tries to create conversation, only to deem them stupid as a result of their lack of interest in him. When Holden meets up with an old friend, Sally, he rants about New York and the phonies at his school, eventually digressing into a proposal to run away to different states. Sally rejects his proposal and tells him she does not see what he means with his ranting, and he begins hating her, even going on to tell her she gives him a pain in his ass. Holden thinks of the girls in the club as very stupid because he has to force the…
Holden vainly seeks for innocence in society only developing anger and depression as a result. Holden acts disturbingly at the thought of Jane, his childhood friend, having a casual encounter with his room…
Everybody has a moment some point in their life where they feel as if they can not struggle any more. We see this in detail in The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger. Holden Caulfield, the main character, is a sixteen year old teenager who has not had the easiest life. The novel focuses on Holden’s journey from getting kicked out of private school in pennsylvania to having a wild weekend in New York City hiding from his parents, told from his room in a mental hospital near hollywood. Although it is told over the course of a couple of days, Holden is sub consciously fighting to keep his life from spiraling out of control. Towards the end of the novel, Holden is in his little sister Phoebe’s room after sneaking into his own apartment, and…
Although she declines his offer it shows that Holden still has some growing to do to become an adult. After Holden hangs up on Faith, Holden goes down to Lavender Room in the hotel. He sits at the bar, but the bartender realizes that Holden is a minor and refuses to serve him. Although this seems small it has a greater meaning as the story purpose later on. After the bartender refuses to serve Holden he begins to flirt and dance with three older women. He begins to feel a sense of “Fake Love” with one of the women after he sees how well she dances. After Holden reveals to the women how old he is the three women leave making Holden responsible for the bill. Afterwards, Holden goes out to the lobby, he starts to think about Jane Gallagher and, in a flashback, recounts how he got to know her. This shows how Holden is reflecting upon things that he has done when he was a child. This shows how Holden is starting to understand that he is growing up. He begins to reminisce about his childhood and he begins to remember how he had meet Jane. He remembers how they played golf, checkers, and held hands at the movies. He remembers how one day when they were playing checkers and her father came on the ponch and when he left she began to start crying. Holden had moved to sit beside her and comfort her. This is a great example of how Holden really care about things even though he tries to hide it. He kissed her all over her face but, she wouldn’t let him…
Holden loses touch with reality when his younger brother Allie dies, he cannot comprehend why the essence of pure innocence had to suffer and die. Allie represented the good and truth in the world while everyone else represents the phony and evil aspects. After losing Allie, Holden believes that the only innocent people left are himself and his younger sister Phoebe. The death of Allie is the start of Holden’s…
The Catcher in the Rye is a book set in the 1950’s. The time period was a highly racist time which effected the book greatly. The main protagonist is Holden Caulfield who is also the narrator of the novel. Ackley, Stradlater, and Jane Gallagher are a few of Holden’s peers. The trio and the rest of his family & peers affect him deeply. Some people believed that Holden was “his own worst enemy’.…
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…