The Role Of Alienation In Catcher In The Rye

Someone who is confident would not lie and play with the emotions of someone else. Another example of Holden contradicting himself would have to be when he hired Sunny, a

Holden Caulfield is a character much like Huck Finn who chooses to bathe in the glory of individualism. On leaving his Prep school, he comes in contact with reality and encounters people, most of whom he dislikes. He is appalled at their need for approval and pretentiousness. A Journalist, William Whyte termed these people as the “organization men” which he defined as individuals focused on getting along and incapable of any kind of independent thought or action. Caulfield offered his own term of disparagement- phony and thus appeals to broadly shared anxieties about a conformist culture.

He thinks of it as a very phony and painful world. Salinger sends the message that growing up is very painful and phony and that the young should be saved from this complex aspect of life. Growing up is a very complex idea. Not everyone wants to go through it’s process, especially Holden. He resists the process of maturity and fears change.

In the book 1984, the protagonist Winston Smith tries to lead a rebellion against Big Brother. In the end he has now been through many things such as torture, but he has failed his rebellion. Throughout the book Winston was bound to fail because he was careless and not rebellious. An example of him being careless is that he has blind faith in O’Brien.

Holden oppresses himself when the prostitute comes over by instead of having sex with her he tells her to leave and he will still pay for her fee, this proves that Holden pretends to be a sex maniac while oppressing his sexuality. Holden also states that with all of his girlfriends he could have “given them the time” but whenever they said stop, he would, thus sating his oppression and that he thinks that sex is morally wrong at his age. “I’ve had quite a few opportunities to lose my virginity and all, but I’ve never got around to it yet” (92).

Lonesome…depressed…negative. In the thought-provoking book The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden struggles to form relationships after his brother’s death, and becomes careless after flunking out of multiple schools. Holden has no feelings besides negativity towards all of his surroundings. He thinks of everyone as phonies when he himself is phony as well. Holden has many struggles, but they are all mostly formed by his inability to grow up.

While speaking about his elusive affair Proctor states,“We never touched” when speaking Abigail about the affair. Untruthful, in a bigger sense, can also be applied to John Proctor as he commits the sin of adultery. This makes him unfaithful as well as untruthful as he is supposed to follow the Ten Commandments. In his religious life it is expected that the commandments be followed, yet Proctor is also untruthful to that when he breaks the seventh one. Being untruthful is simpler in most instances so John Proctor continues this pattern up until act three.

It is clear that Holden is at odds with the mainstream, as he controversially identifies as an atheist and a pacifist. In many ways, Holden was before his time. His prevalent profanity, lying, and drinking contrast with our traditional view as of the 1950s as a paradigm of virtue. Perhaps the best representation of this “man against society” struggle is the tragic case of James Castle. Castle, a relatively minor character, is one of the few people other than Holden who speaks out against the status quo by calling a well-to-do fellow student “a very conceited guy” (Salinger 188).

There are subtle hints to why he is there, “I have been accused of a multitude of things, of jealousy, and paranoia, of not being man enough to satisfy my wife, of having relations with male friends of mine... ”(64)During a meeting with all the patients nurse Ratched accuses him of a various things and one of those things is Harding being gay. During that same meeting, Harding was also heard saying that he is scared that he is not satisfying his wife, and she will cheat on him. “He had stated that his wife ...and that this made him uneasy because she drew stares from men on the street.... he may give her reason to seek further sexual attention.”

Therefore, these are all essential communal struggles Holden experiences throughout the novel. To start off with, a central matter Holden faces and seeks to protect is innocence. Holden witnesses a “man and woman squirting water out of their mouths” at each other. Holden’s perception of this reveals to readers how Holden is uncomfortable with sexuality. Holden considers what the “perverts” are doing is “crumby behaviour.”

Hypocrites conceal their true identity to judge others based on their own ideals, yet neglect to follow the same values themselves. The book The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, is a coming of age story featuring a character named Holden Caulfield. Holden has recently been expelled from his school, Pencey Prep, when the story begins and follows him on his procrastinated journey home. Holden believes that everyone should abide by his standard of be who they really are, and anyone who is slightly dishonest or genuine is a “phony”. Throughout the novel he constantly judges other people and the world from his perspective of how everything should be, yet he fails to realise his own flaws.

Or (your heads), I should say” (Who 's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). Furthermore, the pain and

As Monica Geller once said in Friends, “Welcome to the real world. It sucks. You’re gonna love it!” Growing up and having to face reality is hard. In J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, he illuminates the themes of alienation and the painfulness of growing up through the eyes of a conflicted teen.

Closed off, no stable relationships, no will to maintain having friends how are we supposed to see what Holden feels? In the Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, Holden is afraid of being open with people and not willing to reveal his true thoughts. Throughout the story, Holden’s fears are revealed using strong figurative language. Salinger uses powerful symbolism to show Holden’s inner thoughts and fears of death and change. Holden is afraid of death and also afraid of change

Often, a main character’s apparent madness and irrational behavior plays a crucial role in the development of the plot. In J.D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the rye, central character Holden Caulfield reasonably exhibits eccentric, impulsive and erratic behavior as a reaction to the “phoniness” of everyone around him, the self-alienation he faces and, as a standard coping mechanism for the changes in his life. Holden acts almost solely on impulse. He is often knowingly riling up other characters in the story just because he feels justified in doing so.