The Last Battle

It is often said that ignorance is bliss. No members of society live more blissful and ignorant lives than children. They live unaware of evil in the world and free from the judgement of others. During childhood, kids exist in almost a separate world, where they are able to be truly genuine people. Holden Caulfield of J.D Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye persistently fantasizes about the freedom of childhood. Holden thinks highly of children and praises how sincere they are. Holden also feels…

A Futile World; Existentialism and The Catcher in the Rye The United States has adopted and developed thousands of ways of thinking in its short amount of time as a country. Amongst this numerous ideologies is existentialism, a paradigm most present in the 1940s through 60s that took its strongest hold around World War II. The war brought a new thought to the people: one could be responsible for his or her own experience in life. With this thought people began exploring the idea of existence…

Although Ben starts off as an insecure teenager, after meeting Mrs.Carver, he gains confidence in who he is and realizes that there’s more to him than his scars. In the beginning of Scars by Sarah Beth Martin, it is clear that Ben’s lack of confidence affects the way he acts around people, even those he is familiar with. “Even those who saw him everyday stared”(1). Constantly being stared at because of his scars, causes Ben to feel insecure about the way that he looks and has led him to fixate…

J.D. Salinger writes conversationally in Catcher In The Rye, he often makes use of technically incorrect grammar and untraditional punctuation, such as dashes. In this work I attempted to mimic Holden's style but not his character necessarily. The allusion to The Royal Tennenbaums reflects Holden’s tendency to reference outside works, though Holden would never use a film as a positive comparison due to his hatred of hollywood. A symptom of Salinger’s stream of consciousness style is Holden’s…

In the short story "Greasy Lake" by T. Coraghessan Boyle, the narrator uses first person point of view to convey how "bad" he and his friends were when they were just out of high school. The author chooses this point of view to illustrate to readers that pretending to be someone that you aren't, could affect your judgment and leave you facing major consequences. The rebellious teenagers acted as to rebels that were dangerous, wearing leather jackets, drinking gin, reading provocative literature,…

«Catcher in the rye had a profound impact on me – the idea that we all have lots of dreams that are slowly being chipped away as we grow up.»- Judd Nelson. The Catcher in the Rye is a captivating and astonishing novel written by J.D. Salinger in 1951. In the first few chapters, readers know that Holden Caulfield, the protagonist, is writting this book from the mental institution about his three life-changing days spent in New York after he was expelled from an elite private high school, Pencey…

Circles make up an important aspect of life. Famous uses of circles include the broken wheel symbol of Nemesis, the Greek goddess of revenge, and indignation. Pi (π) which also comes from the Greeks, is a mathematical constant of the ratio between a circle’s circumference to it’s diameter. A goddess who represents anger and resent and a never changing number represent more than just mathematics and mythology, it’s also what Holden Caulfield’s life is like. In J.D Stalinger’s novel, the catcher…

Innocence In his novel The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger uses the title of the novel to show the innocence of children and Holden’s need to preserve it. The author does this by showing us a song which relates to the title. It is brought up first when a child is singing on the edge of a busy street which, shows the innocence of the child. When Holden becomes aware of the child it makes him happier. When it is first spoken of with Phoebe he thinks of him saving kids from falling off of a rye…

“We have to acknowledge that adolescence is that time of transition where we begin to introduce to children that life isn’t pretty, that there are difficult things, there are hard situations, it’s not fair. Bad things happen to good people,” - Laurie Halse Anderson. The concept of adolescence is a universal phenomenon that includes the transition from a child into a young adult. It is the exact moment where a young individual discovers their newfound values and incorporate those principles onto…

Holden Caulfield Catcher in the Rye, has shown to have a few eccentric tendencies, however Holden has shown to be a fairly normal teenager. Nevertheless, Holden seems to be seen as border lining on insanity due to his tendencies of mass amounts of anxiety and depression, which were strange for the time. Yet, Holden’s understanding of the world and how the world sees him is a factor that is often overlooked. Leads Holden is a normal teenager going through adolescence and is simply misunderstood…