Holden And Catcher In The Rye Comparison

In J.D. Salinger's Catcher and the rye, Holden struggles with loneliness and a longing for the past that he has glorified, and a general disdain for society with a will to flee to the fringe of society and live the rest of his days away from a society he perceives as corrupting. Both of these traits are directly characteristic of “American Characters” as described by Leslie Fiedler in Love and Death in the American Novel. In many ways Holden is jealous of Allie, because he embodies the past that Holden wants, and due to Allies sudden death at such a crucial time in Holden's life he remembers the time when allie was alive with a warped perception, only remembering the good, the days of golf with Allie watching, and the days of playing checkers with Jane. When given the opportunity to change his perception of this time through meeting Jane years later, he refuses after much self debate because doing so would ruin the perfect past and pristine image of Jane in his imagination. At other times Holden acts in very isolating and outright self damaging ways. He leaves the relative safety of the school after

On the other hand he needs an emotional connection with a person before he can do anything physical, hence why he could not bring himself to have sex with the prostitute without first talking, something the prostitute found bizarre and annoying saying “listen, if you're gonna talk, do it. I got things to do”. Later in the story he meets up with his old friend Sally Hayes, who he finds physically attractive, but cannot seem to create an emotional connection with her without being annoyed, and later tells Sally that “you give me a royal pain in the ass”, something that offends her so much that she outright refused to speak to him