Relationships In Catcher In The Rye

Throughout the course of their lives, humans form many important relationships, with people, institutions, and society. It is these relationships that impact a person’s life and they way they grow up. In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, struggling with the death of his brother and his recent expulsion from school, wanders New York City for several days. As Holden meets a variety of different people, including an old friend, a prostitute and his sister, he struggles with accepting the fact that he needs to grow up, and consequently destroys his relationships with almost everyone he meets. In Kindred, written by Octavia Butler, a black woman, Dana, discovers that she is able to travel back in time to the Antebellum South, where she must save her slave-owning great-grandfather, Rufus,

One’s actions and words often impact important relationships in life, which can affect the course of their maturation.
Avoiding responsibility in an attempt to avoid maturation backfires, often ruining a person’s relationship with important institutions and forcing the person to come to terms with a more harsh reality about their future. For example, following his brother Allie’s death and his subsequent deterioration, Holden begins to stop putting effort into his schoolwork. At Pencey Prep, Holden fails four out of five of his classes and is expelled from Pencey for academic failure. Holden decides to leave school early and ends up wandering around New York before eventually ending up at Mr. Antolini’s house. Mr. Antolini expresses concern about Holden’s future because he met Holden’s father a few weeks earlier and learned that Holden had been doing poorly in school. According to Mr. Thurmer, Holden had been “making absolutely no effort at all. Cutting classes. Coming unprepared to all your classes” (Salinger 205). When Holden goes to school, it is expected that he will put effort into