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Catcher In The Rye Setting Analysis

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The title of this work is The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger who is an American author.
The year of publication for this piece is 1951.
The setting of this novel takes place in the late 1940’s of New York City. The setting affects the standards set for teenagers at the time. This can be regarded as smoking and drinking underage frequently. This sets Holden on a path of violence and depression throughout the story.
The novel revolves around the daily life of a seventeen year old boy Holden Caulfield, who is also the narrator. He attends pencey prep school but fails to pass most of his classes due to the people and places that surround him. This includes a fraudulent student and teacher body that apply pressure to him regarding …show more content…

An example would be “she really is” after describing his sister as intelligent. The author makes use of this phrase after describing almost anyone. The repeated use of profanity when frustrated or annoyed is also an example of repetition.
“It’s full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques”. The quote displays how Holden perceives the vast majority of the school and success in the adult world. The idea of fraudulent behavior branches off from this quote and becomes the main reason for his avoidance of others. In Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye change is necessary in order to grow as a person and succeed in life. For example, Holden avoids change to be seen as a more genuine person, but he sacrifices his relationships in order to do so. Realization of this leads to him recanting his past thoughts in order to succeed in school and grow

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The book, The Catcher in the Rye, takes place in the years of the 1940s-1950s of New York City. Author J.D. Salinger expresses in the book about the struggles and the countless amount of stereotypes and establishments of the American society. Holden Caulfield, J.D Salinger’s protagonist, gives perspectives of society’s conflicts and facets of society. Holden addresses that would should not change, but should be preserved within a glass case at a museum. Now explore the varieties of encounters and how the give an example of the theme of conflict between control and independence that the protagonist confronts in the book, The Catcher in the Rye.

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In more depth, this quotes shows his need to save children like his sister phoebe or his dead brother Allie from losing their childhood innocence and becoming adults which he believes are all phonies. In reality, Holden is one person so he can not be the catcher in the rye; despite that he keeps trying to be till he reaches a loin where he is truly lost in touch with reality and blinded. He does however realize that in the back of his mind, which is what leads him on such a destructive path of competing with himself constantly on meeting the idea he believes he is. He does this by drinking, smoking, becoming involved in fights and even attempting to have meaninglessness sexual encounters. However in the end he comes to the realization that he can not be the catcher in the rye despite what he’s done, and what triggers this realization for him is when he sees the word “Fuck you” on the walls of phoebe’s school.

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