Number One The main idea of the story is basically Holden Caulfield's motivation throughout the story. Holden goes to New York City and spends most of his time looking for something, but he never tells the reader exactly what he is looking for, I don’t even think he knows exactly what it is he is looking for. He seems to be looking for friendship or just genuine communication, but he is looking for it in the wrong place. Nobody else is concerned with friendship or honesty, besides his little…
J.D. Salinger’s character, Holden Caulfield, in the controversial novel, Catcher in the Rye, struggles with alienation, drugs, and alcohol due to his tragic past. Growing up, Holden lived a pretty normal life, until his brother’s tragic death. His brother, Allie, even though he was younger than Holden, was Holden’s inspiration in life. When Holden discovered that Allie was dead, he slept in the garage, and at one point during that night, Holden managed to break all of the windows in his garage…
In Catcher in the Rye, Holden decides to leave New York to head out West after he experiences a frightening feeling of “just go[ing] down, down, down, and nobody’d ever see [him] again” (217). Yet, Holden decides to visit Phoebe one last time before leaving, so he pays a visit to her school. Holden’s experience of “go[ing] down, down, down” mirrors the image of someone falling off a cliff like in Holden’s imagination as a “catcher in the rye” (191). In a way, Holden himself is a child in the rye…
“He’s dead now. He got Leukemia and died when we where up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You would have liked him” (Salinger 43). In the novel, The Catcher In the Rye, by J.D. Salinger: Holden’s younger brother dies of Leukemia. Holden never full recovers from the family loss and is affected by this through the rest of his childhood and as he continues to grow up. In the novel, the death of Allie, Holden’s brother, causes Holden expresses multiple symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.…
“Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.” - J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye. The Catcher in The Rye is a novel about a 17 year old boy living in a “phony” world who ventures throughout the streets of New York to possibly find purity. J.D. Salinger’s reason for writing such a controversial novel was to appeal to the teenage mind. Holden is sexually confused and struggles expressing his…
‘The catcher in the rye’, written by ‘J. D. Salinger’ narrates the psychological and physical troubles of Holden Caulfield, a mentally unstable, teenage boy seeking approval in an ever-changing world. Throughout the novel, the author uses a variety of stylistic and language techniques are used to intrigue the audience into reading the text, which include the use of imagery, symbolism and metaphors. It is the different themes and techniques like this that are used throughout the text to pull the…
There has been a rise of mental health cases every year, and most of them occur during a teen’s life. Teens stress and struggle through their mental health problems, increasing the need for help from others. In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger explores the life of a teenage boy named Holden Caulfield, after he flunks out of the fourth elite boarding school he has attended. Throughout the novel, Holden struggles with depression and loneliness, and is unable to find help for…
In Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is a symbol of the younger generation who rejects America’s culture of conformity unlike his parents. The older generation of parents tried to defeat the spread of communism by conforming while the teenagers felt a disconnect to society. Caulfield uses the word “phoniness” to display his affection towards conformity. Caulfield would love to experience a human connection similar to his but does not find such thing. The youth during this time…
Adolescence is a difficult time in every person's life, because of the great deal of change that occurs during this time can be overwhelming. The Catcher in the Rye is the story of a teenage boy named Holden Caulfield. He has recently been expelled from school, and he travels home to New York to find someone who will listen to him and tell him adulthood will be okay. Holden tries to preserve his own innocence, and the innocence of others by not letting go of childhood memories and through his…
In the books, The Catcher In the Rye by J.D. Salinger and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald these authors write about two characters who have deep phoniness tendencies throughout their lives in the real world. The character in The Catcher In the Rye While Gatsby unquestionably is a big phony, Holden is the biggest phony because he lies just to isolate himself from other people, for no reason at all, and so adults would take him seriously. Although Holden is a big phony, Gatsby fabricates…