One Last Breath

if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse” (Salinger 8). Holden wants to make connections with people showing that he is emotionally invested in everything and one that he encounters; this ends up depressing him. 4)This ends up turning into periods where he displays alternating periods of severe depression. “Children with both OCD and BPD have higher rates of obsessions and impulses regarding to sex, anger,…

(Salinger 69). Holden responds to this angrily, “I do! That’s where you’re wrong! Why the hell do you have to say that” (Salinger 69). Holden’s fight with Phoebe kick starts him to grab hold of reality and helps him start thinking like an adult. ."..this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I'm going to apply myself with I go back to school next September. It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is…

In The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield strikes up a conversation with two New York cab drivers about the ducks in Central Park. He asks his first cab driver if he “happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance" and throws the same question at a second cab drive a few chapters later. In his breakdown moment, he stumbles drunkenly around the park looking to see “what the hell the ducks were doing, see if they were…

to lie to get through life they think he can just tell the truth.They argue that Holden lies out of pleasure, and uses it as a game. They believe that evidence of this can be seen when Holden is on the train to New York and is talking to a mother of one of the boys at his school, when he lies about his name, “‘Rudolf Schmidt,’ I told her. I didn’t feel like giving her my whole life story” (Salinger 54). Readers who think that Holden does not need to lie to get through life attempt to argue that,…

events and thoughts of individuals. The red hunting hat, curiosity about ducks, and visit to the museum are all symbolic. Using symbolism, Salinger creates a deeper understanding of Holden’s life, personality and his feelings of loneliness and fear. One object that has symbolic meaning…

Imagine that there’s two of you. One being the outcast and the other watching yourself be an outcast. In ‘The Catcher in the Rye,’ J.D Salinger shows Holden as an outcast. He’s consistently isolating himself yet tries to find ways to communicate with people; stranger or not. Holden sees that everyone is a phony and fake as an excuse to why he can’t seem to fit in with them. He thinks as if he’s found his place in the world by being in a mental hospital telling his story to a psychoanalyst but in…

Holden states, “One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies[…] It makes me so depressed I go crazy. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills” (Salinger 8). Although Holden did fail Pencey, he did not get expelled from Elkton Hills. He says he “just quit sorta” (7). It wasn’t because he wasn’t trying at school, it was because the people surrounding him always seemed to be lying and faking about everything. Mr. Haas, the headmasters at Elkton Hills, was one of…

metaphorical safety blanket to an insignificant object. Holden first starts to distance himself from the hat when he hands the hat to a woman he met in a bar. This small action gives him and the hat a short period of time apart, their first break from one another since Holden bought it. However as he is leaving the bar the woman he handed his hat to made him put it back on, realizing that even though Holden didn't know it, he needed the hat more than she did. Holden then gives Phoebe the hat,…

Holden’s parents impact his behaviour the greatest, as their neglect towards Holden is seen to greatly impact him throughout the novel. His parents are portrayed by Salinger as very dismissive of Holden and his well-being, which intern significantly affects Holden's behaviour. This dismissive nature is clearly depicted when Holden's parents are both unaware that Holden is expelled from boarding school. Furthermore, it also illustrates that Holden didn't feel safe and secure to disclose such…

Innocence doesn't last How old can kids be and still be considered innocent? In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, which is narrated by Holden, takes the reader through his life as a junior as he gets kicked out of his private school Pencey. Holden decides that he no longer needs school. Holden wants to move far away from the city where no one knows him. Before holden leaves he stays in the city for four days. During these four days he learns something important about what he…