Holden Caulfield: Holden Caulfield is the protagonist of Catcher in the Rye, however, he is a very unreliable and troubled narrator. He narrates this story inside a psychiatric ward, where he is speaking to his psychiatrist. The reason for him being in this ward is due to his brother, Allie’s death, and a suicide at one of the four schools he has attended. He is sixteen years old, and has recently been expelled from his school, Pencey Prep.
CH. 1: The first chapter is a little vague on where the narrator, “Holden Caulfield is. But from the very beginning of the book you can surely tell he’s not all there. Apparently he’s had some kind of mental breakdown of which you don’t find out later in the book. He mentions his brother who is a writer and even calls him a “Prostitute” writer.
The protagonist Holden Caulfield is liberated from his warped personality and finally begins to realize his aversion of the grown-up life that change is inevitable and always accompanied by a sense of loss. Not accepting the changes in the surroundings and his actions makes him immature and not a trusted narrator. Avoiding issues by not facing them in the first place makes him being followed by disappointment constantly. For instance, in the beginning of the book Caulfield mentions his own opinion on leaving places and we know that when he was thirteen years old his little brother died.
One of the most important parts of life is growing up. Everyone has to grow one day, and it’s a process nobody can avoid. In the book, Catcher in the Rye, the author J.D. Salinger, presents that exact process through the book’s protagonist, Holden Caulfield. He goes through three stages. First, Holden makes a lot of mistakes and hurts others due to his selfish acts.
The reason that Holden Caulfield is always trying to stop kids from growing up in the first place is because he want’s to protect them, and shelter them from the bad things in the world. By the end of the novel Holden realizes that he can’t protect kids all the time or save their innocence. Holden comes right out and say’s that you can’t protect kids, or their innocence when Phoebe is riding the carousel toward the end of the book, Holden says “The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them". This quote is one reason that proves Holden was successful throughout his journey in the
The character of Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger 's novel, Catcher in the Rye, is an excellent example of a psychologically sensitive portrayal of a child with autism spectrum disorder. Although, Holden is never diagnosed in the novel, his interactions with peers and his particular interests show that he is a young man struggling with this psychological disorder. I find this most interesting because the novel allows the reader to enter the mind of Holden to connect and sympathize with the young man and gain a new perspective to his unique disorder. Similarly, the scientific article written by, Jiri Koutek, discusses the social isolation of a sixteen year old male with high functioning autism who was hospitalized for a suicide attempt. The
Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons and Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye are both portrayed as heroes. Robert Bolt and J.D Salinger allow the reader to identify heroic qualities in each of the protagonists as the narratives progress. Although More and Caulfield both possess heroic qualities, they approach their heroic quests in a different manner to the archetypal hero. More, in A Man for All Seasons, is illustrated as an existential hero, who instead of receiving motivation and power from a supernatural source or presuming that he was born with a premeditated quest, finds the essence of his existence within himself. Although Holden Caulfield possesses heroic qualities, he is illustrated is as antihero as he lacks the conventional heroic attributes (Pazdzior, 2014).
Holden is a teenage boy who is going through the growing pains of the transition from child to adult. Holden has started seeing the reality of the real world, and how “fake” everyone in it is. Everywhere he looks, all he can see are phonies and fakes. The fakery of the real world bothers Holden very much, and most of the story is him trying to escape from the fakeness.
This shows how Holden is his unwilling journey to adulthood but has also embraced some parts of which he enjoys but also as a child he does what he wants without following societies rules (not to be confused with a teen who ignores the rules of
“Literally sickened by his transition between childhood and adulthood” Holden does not only want to protect himself from of the “phoniness” of adulthood, he also wants to protect the kids from from falling off the cliff, a symbol for the transition into adulthood (Baer and Gesler 407)(Holden
III. Argument Socrates main point was to change the mind of the court while pleading his case. Socrates attempted and failed to use two tactics to disprove Meletus accusations, which was an analogy and an argument. Meletus charges Socrates with corrupting the youth and being an evil doer. While trying to disprove the charges Socrates chooses to inadvertently alter his charges twice.
Adulthood is when we mature into a person that continues to live life in reality as we let our childhood and adolescence become a faint memory. The memories, however, taught us lessons of acceptance as we cannot always shape the future. Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye takes a journey through the rite of passage by experiencing the innocence of youth and the phoniness of adulthood.
Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual”. In the book Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield’s lies become habitual throughout the book. Holden is a sixteen-year-old boy, who has been kicked out of several schools including, most recently, Pencey Prep. Holden’s younger brother, Allie, died when Holden was only thirteen and his older brother is too busy working for Hollywood to care about Holden. Although his mother cares immensely for him, Holden saddens her by failing academically.
In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden demonstrates the struggle of transitioning between childhood and adulthood by revealing his hassle to grow up. Maturity comes through being an adult and growing up is all about becoming more mature. Throughout the book, Holden goes through numerous conflicts and problems. In the beginning of the book, Holden is gives information about himself.
He has trouble growing up and accepting life as it is. Holden thinks adults are "phony" which makes him hate the fact of growing up and staying innocent as much as he can while he is old enough to become an adult. He is frustrated with the world and people which makes him act with anger. His innocent childish dream is to be the Catcher in the Rye, to catch the kids before they become phonies like Holden says about adults. The moment he realizes that he cannot keep kids from falling or in other words, from growing up and becoming adults, he, reaches adulthood, and takes a big step towards it at the end of the novel.
