Catcher In The Rye Maturation Analysis

In The Catcher in the Rye, the author J.D. Salinger, introduces the protagonist; Holden Caulfield. Holden feels the sense that he cannot choose between the two worlds. For example, he makes it seem as both of them are complete opposites from each other. In the book, Holden wants to keep his innocence, but he also wants to grow up and toss that innocence away. He still keeps his childhood personality by constantly obsessing over things that shouldn’t matter. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden demonstrates the struggle of transitioning between childhood and adulthood by revealing his hassle to grow up.

In this novel, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is the narrator that goes through a variety of problems. He has dilemmas, but meets/reconnects with people on his quest of life. This novel is more than just a simple story about a protagonist and his life events. This novel follows the structure of bildungsroman. There are four parts to it- character’s growth in social structure, a form of loss, process of maturity, and if the character ends in a new place of society.

Catcher in the Rye In the book Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger, the narrator and protagonist Holden Caulfield a sixteen year old junior undergoes a series of changes. Holden learns multiple life changing lessons; one of them is you must grow up. In the beginning of the novel, Holden starts out as “that kid”; the one with the parents who expect him to get into an ivy league school, and end up with a kid with no intentions of doing so. At the beginning of the book it is very apparent that Holden lacks motivation; he also has hit rock bottom.

How Holden matured People go through rough stuff in their lives, such as losing a close sibling. It seems impossible to pull yourself out of the pain and guilt of your loss. It appeared Holden was in the same predicament, but through his experiences in the novel The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger he learns to grow up. Aside from being very immature, holden refuses to grow up and dislikes people who have grown up.

Adulthood is when we mature into a person that continues to live life in reality as we let our childhood and adolescence become a faint memory. The memories, however, taught us lessons of acceptance as we cannot always shape the future. Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye takes a journey through the rite of passage by experiencing the innocence of youth and the phoniness of adulthood.

Tragic events can affect your mindset in irreversible ways, causing self-destructive behavior, low self-esteem, and devious actions. Jerome David Salinger in his novel, The Catcher in the Rye, he develops the character of Holden Caulfield, an adolescent boy who is living a tragedy, causing suffering and deep pain within him. According to Mary Klages from the University of Colorado, she incorporates Warren Hedges and Freud through a psychoanalytic lens and they come to a conclusion that psychoanalytical approaches reveal how and why people behave as they do, which helps clarify Holden Caulfield’s actions in the novel. Holden is presented as a troubled adolescent, facing discontent of his childhood in which he desires not to describe much in

As the book starts Holden describes his childhood and how he has been kicked out of several school and once more again from his currently school, giving a sense of irresponsibility and no care in the world. Holden later on mentioned slowly the loss of his brother due to leukemia and how he reacted outrageously by breaking the windows of his garage home. As a reader one would view that behavior as abnormal, but Peter Shaw descried it as a normal behavior for a fictional character in the 1950s and by mentioning that Holden, “is presenting in a somewhat different manner than are the sentimentalized young people in other novels if his period” (par. 3), admitting that Holden was somewhat of an outcast of a character even for its time he is still considered normal. Shaw also challenged the reader’s view of Holden by emphasizing that Holden is not a real person, but a fiction character developed in the 1950s and in fact a mad psychological character is normal and made the reading rather more interesting and acceptable during that time. As readers someone may come across as understanding Holden’s behavior due to a loss and everyone mourns differently and as Shaw said, “ the one period of life in which abnormal behavior is common rather than exceptional” (par.

Furthermore, Holden starts to hate all the adults or loses faith in them, calls them phony. Holden has a second thought of becoming an adult he loses hope in his future and it seems to him nothing in the world matters to him anymore. We can see that throughout the book. He smokes, gets drunk, and does daring acts like getting a prostitute in his room. He also tries to escape all this guilt and grief by wasting time with unnecessary people he calls phony.

With having frantic episodes to having unstable and intense interpersonal relationships, alternating between extreme idealization and being constantly mad. Holden tends to lack any self-esteem and he's constantly trying to fill that void of emptiness by indulging in alcohol, smoking, and he never faces the problem instead he runs away. This is proven on how he doesn't care about school and always gets kicked out because of his ideology that everyone is “phony” and that it's his duty to

The Coming Of Age Many people struggle to grow up and, being adults, but many do grow up. Phoebe and Stradlater teach about coming of age to Holden. They teach him things like not being childish and growing up, and how it 's okay to grow up. In the book Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger, Stradlater, and Phoebe help develop the theme of coming of age by teaching Holden that he should himself and not be childish, accordingly how it 's okay to grow up. Holden struggles to grow up so Phoebe and Stradlater teach him some things about maturity and the coming of age.

He faces many problems throughout the book, and is always trying to save kids innocence. Holden also wants to stay a kid and not grow up, however he finds out that he can’t do this by the end of the novel. Some people may think that Holden wasn't successful throughout his journey, however, one could also see how he was successful in his journey. By the end of the novel, Holden was able to find out that he couldn't save kids innocence, he couldn’t be a kid forever, and he sees that even though the world is filled with evil, he can accept it, or at least live with it.

He has trouble growing up and accepting life as it is. Holden thinks adults are "phony" which makes him hate the fact of growing up and staying innocent as much as he can while he is old enough to become an adult. He is frustrated with the world and people which makes him act with anger. His innocent childish dream is to be the Catcher in the Rye, to catch the kids before they become phonies like Holden says about adults. The moment he realizes that he cannot keep kids from falling or in other words, from growing up and becoming adults, he, reaches adulthood, and takes a big step towards it at the end of the novel.

In J.D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye, the ongoing tension between maturity and innocence helps show the simultaneous presence of youth’s purity and adulthood’s corruption in Holden’s mind. In his bildungsroman, Salinger illustrates the all necessary struggle of adolescence that strives to balance purity and corruption as Holden comes to terms with the indefinite nature growing up. In Holden 's eyes, very few people in his life are “worthy” of his respect. One example of the innocent and pure and those who receive respect from Holden are nuns.

Many people harbour a desire to accomplish something specific in life. Sometimes this desire stems from the background of a person, and sometimes desires are developed over time and with age. “The Catcher in the Rye” narrated by Holden Caulfield, who is an overly disturbed teenager, is about the change from childhood to adulthood. Holden, like many, has a burning desire to protect the innocence of children; this desire is tied to the themes of relationships, intimacy and sexuality which are carried throughout the novel. In a stroke of genius, the author, J.D. Salinger, sums up this desire in the title, which is taken from a poem by Robert Burns: Comin ' thro ' the Rye ( 1796).

Adolescence is the transitional period of psychological changes that generally occurs during puberty. Although the Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951, when the characteristics of adolescents were not fully acknowledged, Salinger portrays adolescents’ struggle comprehensively. He depicts teenagers’ unstable mindsets through the Catcher in the Rye, especially through his teenaged protagonist, Holden Caulfield. Throughout The Catcher in the Rye, he uses Holden to convey the immature curiosity, painfulness of the process of growing up for a typical teenagers and adolescents’ view on the adult world.