Research Paper On The Catcher In The Rye

An ill person. A boy stuck in time. A runner. The mindset of a young teenager is wild and untamed. While they are going through the shift into adulthood, some of them try to run away from it until time slowly catches up to them. Along with a dramatic childhood, it can affect your future and how you choose to grow up or not. In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger explorers the topic of childhood and growing up. He claims throughout the novel, that some people oppose the view of growing up. Reading from the main character, Holden Caulfield’s story, he tells us about the trauma he went through when he was a child, and what he sees of the adult world and despises it. Furthermore, Holden Caulfield sees the adult world as full of phonies, …show more content…
Also, “Historians have tended to focus on two fairly distinct, if imprecise, phases of "growing up": childhood and youth. The former suggests a time of innocence, freedom from responsibility, and vulnerability. The latter includes but is not necessarily restricted to adolescence and is normally characterized as a period of "coming of age," when young people begin taking on the responsibilities and privileges of adulthood (Marten 1).” To conclude, according to Litcharts, the theme of childhood and growing up in the novel is that, “In contrast to all adults whom Holden sees as riddled with flaws and phoniness, he sees children as pure, gentle, innocent, and perfect. The characters he speaks most fondly about in the story are all children: Allie, Phoebe, and the poor boy he hears singing the song about the “catcher in the rye.” He constantly dreams up schemes to escape growing up, such as fleeing to a New England cabin or working on a ranch out West. The only role that Holden …show more content…
During the novel, Holden enlightens us a little bit about his childhood. Holden says, “I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don’t blame them. I really don’t. I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn’t do it (Haugrud).” So, therefore when Holden was a child, he had to bare the news of hearing his younger brother, Allie pass away. This made Holden so upset, he went into the garage and punched out all of the windows and he had already broken his hand when he tried to break the windows on the station wagon. Holden did not care about school, because he was not so smart. He believes his parents are treating him the way they are because they are using him as a scapegoat for Allie. See, Allie was smart and got really good grades. And Holden has terrible grades and he is flunking out of high payment and high educational private schools, but his parents still decide to put him through private