Holden Caulfield, The Fynamic Character In The Catcher In The Rye

1. In most cases, the dynamic character of the novel is the protagonist. In this case, it is the same for this novel. Holden Caulfield is the main character of The Catcher in the Rye and he develops quite a lot throughout the novel. Most of these changes that he goes through are abstruse to realize at first glance but at further inspection, you realize that Holden matures a lot throughout the novel. Holden begins off as an eleventh grader in high school who attends Penecy Prep. He is then kicked out of the school because he was failing nearly all of his classes. However, despite going through such a bad experience, he does not seem to worry about it as much as someone else would. Although he is sad about it, you would expect a student to react …show more content…
During this scene, Holden was sitting in his room alone and decided that he would go visit his history teacher before he permanently left the school because his teacher had requested that he stop by his house. At this moment in the novel, Holden was already depressed because of him being kicked out of another school so he found everything to be depressing. So when he goes to visit his teacher, who is an old man, he finds that his house is very depressing and boring and he makes a comment on nearly everything that he sees. Then when they begin to talk, his teacher seems curious about why he is failing out of school, I think this is because his teacher saw potential in Holden since he was a bright student. They begin to have a casual conversation about Holden and during this conversation, Holden is not exactly paying attention. He then says something that catches Holden’s attention and is very essential quote for the reader to understand, which is, “Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules,” (Salinger 11). This quote is important because of the hidden meaning behind this which is that you have to go through the hardships that life throws at you and there is no easy way out of it because life is not easy. His teacher believes that the reason why he keeps getting kicked out of schools is that he wants to take the easy way out of things and does not want to put in hard work, rather than him being dumb. However, Holden’s point of view is completely different. Holden does not understand what important life lesson his teacher is trying to give him. Holden believes that he does not fit in society and that there is no place for him there, no matter what he does. Since Holden believes that his life is not mutable, he does not try to change his life at all. In the passage after the quote, Holden references “hot shots,” who are people who have an easy