Essay Comparing Holden And Mr Keating

Holden and Mr.Keating have the same goal in life. They both want to live life to the fullest. Holden mainly focuses on young kids while Keating focuses on teenagers/young adults. Holden uses the Catcher in the rye as guidelines to what he wants to be, while Mr.Keating uses poetry and carpe diam to set guidelines. Both of these characters want to transform people around them into unique individuals.

Both of these characters want make people into real individuals instead of just conforming to the “normal”. Holden mainly focuses on children because they are still more unique and have had less chances to conform. While Mr.Keating focuses on teenagers because they are already trying to stand out so they will take more out from his teachings then young kids would. “...I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff-- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them...” When Holden says this it really shows that all he wants to do is help people keep their innocence like his brother Allie. Mr.Keating does the same kind of thing with the teenagers in class but instead of

With Holden this is mostly seen when he is trying to keep phoebe's innocence. “Somebody'd written "Fuck you" on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them--all cockeyed, naturally--what it meant” Holden here is really just talking about how he hates that people ruin the innocence of kids. While you could say that Mr.Keating and Holden are different in the sense Keating is molding the kids, while Holden is just protecting them, this is where I would disagree. They are both striving for the ultimate goal of keeping their “students” from becoming