...The Catcher in the Rye, is a novel, about a young boy named Holden Caufield. Holden is a very splenetic and choleric character, who lost his brother at a young age. Which led Holden to really focus on gaining back his innocence. Although he was also very interested in protecting the children and saving their innocence. It seems as if Holden doesn't want these young innocent kids to go through what he has in his life at a young age. He doesn't want them to lose their innocence like he did. The main focus of Holden throughout the novel, is innocence and how he can get it back and save other children. Holden lost his innocence at a young age. Holden had a brother named Allie and he really looked up to Allie. Holden had a hard time when Allie...
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...One cannot hold onto innocence forever, the longer he or she holds onto it, the more they can lose sight of themselves. In The Cather in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield struggles with accepting his loss of innocence which leads towards his downfall. Holden is a struggling 16 year-old boy, trying to find his place in this world, clinging onto his innocence in urgent desperation. Over the span of three days, the novel follows Holden where he eventually accepts his loss of innocence, but not without going through many struggles along the way first. Through Salinger’s use of symbols, the reader is able to clearly identify Holden’s reluctance toward becoming an adult and surrendering his innocence. Throughout The Catcher in the Rye, the author uses the Museum of Natural History, the erasing of profanity and the carousel to reveal that a person cannot avoid his or her loss of innocence. Holden visits his childhood spot, Museum of Natural History, symbolizing a world in which nothing has to change. While reflecting on his memories from the museum he realizes that the reason he loved it so much was because he could count on everything staying the same, “the best thing though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move…the only thing that would be different is you” (Salinger 121). Just like the thought of preserving innocence, Holden revels in the thought of everything staying exactly the same, forever. However, Holden knows he has...
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...The Protection of innocence in The Catcher in The Rye Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in The Catcher in The Rye is a sixteen year old boy who is distressed between the corruptness of growing up, and the beauty of staying innocent. Holden can not withstand the thought of adulthood, he constantly emphasizes and intends to protect innocence in children. He fears that once a child loses their innocence they will become a “phony” like everyone else (Salinger 84). Holden tries to protect Jane Gallagher an old crush, Phoebe Caulfield his virtuous little sister, and all children who still have their innocence. Jane Gallagher is a not so beautiful girl that also happens to be Holden Caulfield's former crush. Jane Gallagher is...
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...train station in the freezing weather. As Holden was covered in blood, due to the fight with Stradlater, he decides to wash his face with the snow beneath him while waiting for the train to arrive. When looking back in the book Holden mentions how “the car looked so nice and white” (36). The car was covered in snow. It is evident that he likes the purity the snow has. Throughout this novel, the readers can perceive the pain that comes with growing up. Despite Holden seeming to want to grow up quickly and acts quite mature, through this context the readers can infer his wish to hold on to innocence. For...
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...Caulfield: Protector of Innocence The novel The Catcher in the Rye is a coming of age tale of a teenager’s journey into a mental breakdown. The main character, Holden Caulfield, sees the world as an extremely phony, cynical place that he wishes to escape from. As a result of this, he forms the idea that the only way to be free of the hypocrisy and cynicism of society is to maintain one’s childlike immaturity and innocence. Because of this idea, throughout the novel, Holden is trying desperately to hold on the shreds of innocence that he has left, all while trying to protect the innocence of those around him as well. Two minor characters mentioned in the novel that Holden tries to protect, Sunny and Phoebe, both display to the reader signs of developing maturity. Holden’s interactions with both Sunny and Phoebe provide prime examples of how even though Holden tries desperately to protect their innocence, growing up cannot be prevented. One of Holden’s most prominent traits throughout the novel is that he is has this urgent need to protect the people around him from losing their innocence like he did when his brother passed. Even though he constantly drinks, smokes, and curses, Holden’s main goal throughout the text is to make sure that innocence is maintained as long as possible before a person grows up and matures. “He struggles to preserve his own tenuous hold on youthful innocence-or as he sometimes puts it, ‘niceness’-and despairs when he finds that innocence lost or threatened...
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...Caulfield's “Catcher in the Rye” Fantasy Growing up, we have all experienced a particular desire to achieve something; an ambitious state of mind that gives us meaning to life. Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, has a primary ambition - to become the Catcher in the Rye – the protector of the young and innocent, as stated in his conversation with Phoebe (Salinger, 191). Completely imaginary and a hopeless fantasy, this passage underscores what is prevalent throughout the novel - the issue of Holden's black and white perspective on the dark, phony world of adulthood juxtaposed with the light, innocent, world of childhood. The important passage contributes to Holden's clinical depression as a result of his beloved brother's death, therefore his cynical view of adulthood, and his anxiety about growing up, resulting in the overall angst and alienation palpable throughout the novel, leading to his eventual catharsis. Holden's imagery of “catching” children playing in a field of rye before they fall off a cliff is unrealistic, misheard from a little boy, and it serves merely as an escape route from what he fears most about adulthood – the change and overwhelming complexity. Holden wants everything to be easily understandable and eternally fixed, similar to the Eskimos and Indians in the museum. Opposed to acknowledging that adulthood scares and mystifies him, Holden instead invents a fantasy – that childhood is an idyllic field of rye, while adulthood...
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...Catcher in the Rye: FLE In J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield expresses his love of innocence as he sees it in others, in numerous ways. He demonstrates this through the way he talks about others and the way he acts around them. We learn that Holden lost his own innocence at an early age after his “perverty” (193) encounter with Mr. Antolini. Because of this, he cherishes, and wants to protect innocence in others. This is really a reflection of his desire to be innocent himself. Allie is a paragon of innocence to Holden. I know he’s dead! Don’t you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can’t I? Just because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop liking them, for God’s sake–especially if they were a thousand times nicer than the people you know that’re alive and all (171). Innocence is lost in adulthood. Since Allie never becomes an adult, he is for Holden the epitome of innocence, consequently, Holden’s love for him is very deep. Holden’s memories of Allie will always be of an innocent Allie. Holden says that he will not stop liking Allie just because he is dead. The other people he talks about are the adults that Holden sees around him. He does not like any of them because they are phony, and have lost their innocence. Mr. Spencer is one person in the book who definitely has lost his innocence, but Holden does not dislike him. Although Holden says he likes Mr. Spencer, he does imply that Mr. Spencer is a phony. There are other...
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...Loss of Innocence Ones loss of innocence can be over time or lost by an abrupt choice. In the two books Fahrenheit 451 and Catcher in the Rye both characters lose their innocence over time by the choices they make. Guy Montag the main character in F451 loses his innocence over time by collecting books without even knowing which is against the system he lives in. Holden Caulfield also loses his innocence over time by growing up into an adult and tries to save children’s innocence throughout the book. Even though ones loss of innocence can be made by an abrupt choice, ones loss of innocence in these two books is a gradual experience. The concept of innocence is one that is applied to childhood. Children, for example, are innocent because they have not been tainted by the idea that the world is not as it seems to be. But, as children grow up and mature fully into adults, the loss of this pure quality of innocence begins to be noticed in a person’s life. As this awareness comes forth, it shows that life is not always easy, it is complicated and there will be tough moral decisions that have to be made. Holden Caulfield the main character of Catcher in the Rye wants to preserve innocence so he dedicates his life to protecting childhood innocence. In Chapter two Mr. Spencer tells Holden, “Life is game that one plays according to the rules”. Holden does not believe that life is a game he believes that life is dictated by adults. These adults are phony and cruel and he does not...
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...The Catcher in the Rye: A Struggle to Preserve Innocence Adolescence is a crossroads for many, there is the natural gravitation toward adulthood as that is the next logical step in life, or for others, like Holden Caufield, it is means never growing up. William Faulkner once said ‘The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.’ This applies to Holden at his core. He is a teenager struggling to balance his need for preserving childhood innocence and his desire to become an adult. In contrast to all adults whom Holden sees as riddled with flaws and phoniness, he sees children as pure, gentle, innocent, and perfect – frozen in time. His need to become the protector of the innocent or the “catcher in the rye” is deeply rooted in the traumatic loss of his younger brother Allie, along with his own fears of changing and growing up. This is what drives him to protect Phoebe and Jane as he might feel that if he can protect two people he loves from the thing he fears most, he can also protect himself. Holden was traumatized by the death of his brother Allie, sensitizing him to the reality of unjust death and suffering. His family’s impersonal approach to Holden’s expression of grief may have been an important contributing factor in the way he deals with figures of threatened innocence. Jane’s interactions with Holden occur a summer apart from the death of his brother. Holden states that ‘She was the only one, outside [his] Kanal2 family, that [he]...
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...“The Catcher in the Rye” is written by J.D Salinger which focuses on the reality of life through the eyes of a teenager who sees the world as a painful existence. The novel is written from the perspective of Holden who has been expelled from his fourth school. After a fight with his roommate, Holden leaves early to explore New York City alone. Holden battles with the reality of adulthood that has turn a different turn on his life. We get to this stage where we fear to grow up and see what will be coming for us next in the future. Salinger’s novel clearly displays the experience of being isolated from multiple activities which can lead to the theme of alienation, the creation of the character (Holden) and also the symbolism which can be unnoticed. Salinger tries to convey a message with his writing to also displaying human connection is a must. The theme of “The Catcher in the Rye” is alienation which connects to Holden (the protagonist)...
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...Catcher in the Rye – closed analysis With close reference to pages 183-186 analyse Salinger’s use of language and structure, exploring Holden’s contradictory view of the word Holden is an adolescent struggling against the unfair, sometimes cruel nature of the adult world and sees the hypocrisy and attempts to flee it. Salinger uses Holden’s character to express his views on the 1950’s America and gives us as readers an insight through the first person narrative to the average American boy’s life. Throughout the novel we are able to identify that Holden holds many critical views on the society around him which results in his inability to connect to it. He expresses this insecurity by criticising the flaws that he finds, for example, the unfair class system. At the beginning of the extract when Holden is talking to the two children, he tells them “you should” learn about how Egyptians bury the dead, yet this is a clear contradiction to what Holden himself is like as he doesn’t care about his own education, yet is advising others. Here I believe that Holden is being what he calls ‘phony’ and in this circumstance phony refers to the false pretences and the way he acts like someone he isn’t. However, though Holden uses the word ‘phony’ repeatedly throughout the novel, it doesn’t always mean the same thing. It’s what he uses for describing the superficiality, hypocrisy, pretension, and shallowness that he encounters in the world around him and it stands as an emblem of everything...
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...THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. SALINGER I. Content of the Book Holden Caulfield is a very weird and interesting young man who likes to do things on impulse or because as he said 'he got such a bang out of it'. He has a brother, D.B. who is a writer in Hollywood, a little sister named Phoebe and another brother Allie, who has already died before the story even began. In the beginning of the story Holden narrates that he'll be leaving his school, Pencey Prep (a school full of Phonies from Holden’s point of view), because he flunked out in the four out of five subjects he was taking, the only subject he didn't fail was English. Holden tells the readers that he had come back to Agerstown, Pennsylvania though he was traveling with his team for a fencing contest, he lost all of the foils in a New York Subway, and so the match was cancelled instead. Holden even mentioned that on the way home his mates treated him to silence and he found this very amusing. Though there was a football game going on, Holden didn't go down and watch it, instead he went to visit his old history teacher, Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer is a very old man who wants to help Caulfield in his studies (since Holden has also been expelled in a few other schools as well) and at some point Mr. Spencer even read out Holden's examination paper and the little note that Holden had written in the end saying that if Mr. Spencer would like to flunk him then he'd be all right with it, Holden explained to the readers that the...
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...Analysis of The Catcher in The Rye Through a Psychoanalytic Lens Mental health is an important aspect of one’s wellbeing that may be significantly impacted by a traumatic experience. The author J.D. Salinger illustrates this idea in his novel The Catcher in the Rye, which focuses on the life of the depressed protagonist, Holden Caulfield. Holden experiences the death of his young brother Allie and struggles with transitioning from his innocent childhood to his materialistic adulthood. This transition eventually influences his mental state of mind, which is evident by his lack of motivation in school, and results in him suffering from loneliness, frustration and alienation. The psychoanalytic lens discusses an individual's actions based on their conscious and unconscious mind. The Catcher in the Rye can be better analyzed through the psychoanalytic lens rather the existential lens, and this is exemplified by Holden’s desire to avoid inevitable change, his resultant isolation and his battle between his conscious and unconscious mind. Holden has a fear of change and desire to avoid...
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...Jerome David Salinger was born in 1919 in New York, New York. He was born to Sol and Miriam Salinger, where he was raised in Manhattan. Despite his apparent intelligence, Salinger flunked out of school and was shipped off to the Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania. After graduating Valley Forge, Salinger spent five months in Vienna learning the language as well as import business. Salinger returned to the United States, and enrolled at the Columbia University where he met Professor Whit Burnett. Burnett saw Salinger’s talent as a writer, and as the editor of Story magazine, Burnett assisted in publishing Salinger’s work in big-name publications such as Story, Collier, and the Saturday Evening Post. Just as Salinger’s careers was taking...
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...Catcher in the Rye • J.d. Salinger • 1919-2010 • He has written several books about young people including Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zoey • Served in WW1 • Has not given an interview since 1980 • Born in NYC to parents Sol and Miriam: father was jewish, mother was catholic • Jerome David salinger • Recognizes as one of the most popular author after 1950. • He by choice stayed out of the public eye • He was a recluse • Published in 1951 • He sold over 65 mllion copies • It was one of the most frequently challenged books in library history because of the sex and vulgar language • Named one of the best novels of the 20th century by Time Magazine • Until 2006, Catcher was one of the most frequently banned books • Mark David Chapman (assassin of John Lennon) and John Hickley Jr. (attempted assassin of President Ronald Reagan) both had copies of the book in their pockets when they were arrested • Tells the story of a teenager expelled from his high school and his journey across NYC in the 1950s • Issues discussed in the book include: School, teacher, music, sex, alcohol, hypocrisy, family and being a teenager. • A story is about Holden Caulfield, the 16 year old protagonist of the novel and his experiences in school and new york city. • Holden Caufield- sketch of an American teenager • Nearly all readers identify with or see some of their friends reflected in different aspects of Holden’s characters • Young readers see in Holden Caulfield...
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