Literary Analysis Essay Topics For The Catcher In The Rye

The Catcher In The Rye Final Essay

This book, The Catcher In The Rye, written by J.D Salinger is a novel that portrays many themes that appears occasionally in every chapter. One of the themes was growing up. Holden, the protagonist in the book has been kicked out of prep school over four times, thought of everyone he saw as phonies, and has always deemed himself of depressed thoughts. He had trouble coping with life, change, and refused to face the fact that growing up is avoidable as what Alan Watts states,” life can never be grasped, never possessed or made to stand still.” Throughout the novel however, Holden’s perception of life changes towards the end. His realization of growing up, as there’s many examples, some obvious ones were when

His first encounter was in the stairs where someone has written the word,”F**k you,” on the wall. This infuriated him, coming to this statement,” 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 is meant, and how they’d all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever 's written it” (201). This encounter shows that at first he wanted to get rid of these writings in the wall and kill the person who done it. This shows Holden was trying to protect the innocence of these children, especially when it’s in a school filled with children from seeing this. As Holden walks down a different staircase, he finds yet another,”F**k you,” on the wall but scratched in. Instead of reacting angrily, he realizes it’s hopeless and that no profane language like these written in the walls can never be removed around the world. This shows that he somewhat stops caring about this and tries to move on thinking it is impossible ridding all this even if given a million years do so. His last encounter was in the mummy section of the museum where he saw,” F**k you,” written in a red crayon right under the glass wall. His reaction this time, is that he starts joking about it and the way someone will write this on his tombstone. He comes to a conclusion stating,” You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn 't any”(204). This means no place is safe from all profanity and non innocent actions. Overall, all these has thought Holden a that non innocence can never be avoided for long as it is present all