Comparing Catcher In The Rye And The Breakfast Club

The Catcher in the Rye and The Breakfast Club both show that the loss of innocence is inevitable in children when they are prematurely exposed to the realities of adulthood. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden loses his innocence when he witnesses actions that were more mature than what he was exposed to as a child. Holden checks into a run-down hotel and looks out his window only to view a sight which was very odd and strange to him. He could see a couple in another room taking turns spitting mouthfuls of their drinks on each other. Holden describes the scene, “The trouble was, that kind of junk is sort of fascinating to watch, even if you don’t want it to be… I don’t like the idea. It stinks, if you analyze it” (Salinger 62). Holden had never

In The Breakfast Club, Brian is forced into maturity when he is not able to live up to his parents’ adult-like expectations. Brian reveals to his peers that the reason he was in detention was because he had brought a gun to school in an attempt to kill himself. Brian had failed an assignment in his woodshop class and decided that he would rather stop living than face his parents’ disappointment (The Breakfast Club). The root of Brian’s desire to die had originated from the immense pressure he was receiving from his parents to succeed in school. Brian loses his innocence when his parents expect him to be mature and to earn only good grades. When he makes one small mistake with a project, his innocence is ripped from him with the thought that he may disappoint his parents. This belief that making mistakes is unacceptable contradicts the realities of childhood. Thus, when children are introduced to expectations of perfection, they lose their purity and their innocence as well. Both The Breakfast Club and The Catcher in the Rye show that when one experiences mature acts too early in their life then they lose the piece of them that keeps them