J D Salinger Essay

“ Course he ain’t mean. But he gets in trouble alla time because he’s so Goddamn dumb.” (pg. 41). Lennie Smalls, in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, is the pathos of this story. This line was said by George Milton describing Lennie, which makes sympathize him because he’s a nice person and a hard worker, but he gets into trouble a lot. Lennie’s too dumb to know what’s right and what’s wrong, he just does what he just told to do. “He ain’t bright. Hell of a good worker, though. Hell of a nice…

In coming of age stories, the protagonists often experience a grave or dramatic moment in which they take a step into adulthood through a mock heroism - in this moment the reader realizes that who someone claims to be in their imagination is different from who they are in reality. In the story, The Intruder, a boy named Kenneth represents the grave moments in coming of age stories when the protagonists realize they live covered by a mask of heroism. The story starts off with Kenneth is in…

Holden is at his fingertips; all he has to do is commit to the call. Along with struggling to go through with calls, Holden has very few friends he is able to talk to. He runs into the problem that his “address book only has about three people in it” (Salinger 136). Holden has alienated everyone he knows to the point in which he is traveling through life with almost no one by his side. With no one to talk to, he struggles to find direction in his life. “He rarely finds- and rarely seeks- a…

Childhood to adulthood. Isn’t it supposed to represent the point in one’s life where a person moves on from the past? It certainly is not the time to end up in a mental institution. For Holden, in Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, he is cemented in between the two worlds and it collapses. Holden is obsessed with the idea of childhood and protecting other children from growing up. He does not apply himself and eventually, ends up in a mental institution. Although Holden is soon to enter into…

Holden avoids tough conversations and feelings by disuniting himself from people and refraining from expressing his true emotions. Holden struggles to get out of awkward situations by lying. “I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life” (Salinger 16) he tells the reader in the first few chapters. By having him admit this, it proves that he knows that he does not communicate well, but chooses to do nothing about it. The reader knows this by the fact that he is a pretty good liar,…

Lysette Anthony once said, “Mental illness leaves a huge legacy, not just for the person suffering it but for those around them.” In J.D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, the main character Holden, leaves a huge legacy for himself and the people around him with his mental illness. He hints that he is mentally ill but only says it outright at one point in the book. Holden is a 16 year old guy living in New York City. He is a troublemaker and routinely gets kicked out of multiple, very expensive…

chapter six while Holden is at a train station he states “‘You know, one of those stories with a lot of phony, lean-jawed guys named David and a lot of phony girls named Linda or Maria that are always lighting all the goddamn David’s pipes for them’”(Salinger 29). Holden finds something that is phony in almost every single chapter and manages to find phoniness in everyday life and even points out the little things he finds fake. How frequently Holden finds phoniness everywhere in the adult world…

Tobias Wolff is the author of This Boy’s Life. Tobias, or Toby for short, writes this memoir about his own life when he was a young boy. Toby lived a difficult childhood and caused a lot of trouble because of it. He didn’t grow up with a father figure, and he was constantly moving around because his mother couldn’t stay put. Even though his childhood living situation was terrible, it doesn’t exonerate the juvenile acts he performed in his judgement. Based on what Toby went through when he…

The Phoney in the Catcher in the Rye The Catcher in the Rye is a novel where the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, tells his story about being a normal sixteen-year-old boy struggling to move into adulthood due to being afraid of growing up. This even inspires him to want to save all the children from growing up, desiring to be the Catcher in the Rye. Holden appears to be normal, but exhibits an abundance of signs of depression throughout the story. In this book consisting of 26 chapters is Holden…

It is sometimes difficult for children to realize when is time to mature and grow out of childhood. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is a coming of age novel about sixteen year old Holden Caulfield’s weekend adventure. Salinger describes Holden's extreme depression, his beliefs that just about every adult is a phony, and his protection of innocence. Holden’s most significant character flaw is him being stuck in childlike views. Some instances in Holden’s life that prove that he is stuck…