Catcher In The Rye Conformity Essay

The “Age of Conformity”, the decade of the 1950s in the United States, was a time when “far out” ideas were punished and societal norms began to form, and teenagers living in this decade were far from exempt of conforming to these overbearing social norms. J.D. Salinger, author of the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, explored the difficulties teenagers faced in the post-World War II era in a captivating story told by a teenage boy named Holden Caulfield. For over 60 years, Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye has been a controversial work that receives criticism from some and praise from others, but leaves no doubt that the story of Holden Caulfield has intrigued readers regardless of their overall opinion of the novel. Salinger poured his own anxiety and PTSD from the war onto the pages, and by doing this, created Holden Caulfield. Holden, unarguably a deeply-troubled teenager, is one of the most relatable characters in literature read by high schooler students today regardless of their mental health state. Notably, Holden, described as a relatively normal teenager, displays many signs of mental illness throughout the

This connection to readers far outweighs the negativity of the swear words and inappropriate events that are included in the writing. Although Holden clearly has an extreme mental illness that is not normal to face during teenage years, many readers, especially young readers, can relate to him on some level that they may not be able to relate to most characters on, and this is the most important part of Holden’s story; mental illness is not something that should be hidden, and readers should feel understood and accepted because Holden and most everyone has experienced similar feelings and emotions to what they