Essays on Holden Caulfield

Released in 1951, Salinger's novel "The Catcher in the Rye" is a story of a seventeen year old American schoolboy Holden Caulfield, who was excluded from his school before Christmas for academic failure. The main idea of ​​the novel is the rejection of falsehood, which is manifested in the moral standards prevailing in the society and in the people, events, objects. This is closely linked to the image of the protagonist. Holden Caulfield introduces the reader not only to the external part of his life (time-space of the novel consists of three days, one of which the hero stays ...

This paper proposes to delineate the characteristics of Holden Caulfield, the adolescent protagonist hero of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and illuminate the reasons as to why this prototype of brooding adolescence, displaying a rather uber-cool style of disaffection, disenchantment and disillusionment became an indispensable figure of interest, in literary circles as well as popular culture. The paper seeks to take issue with the wider dimensions attached to the ‘incapacitation and debilitation’ Holden is often accused of and address Salinger’s vision behind etching Caulfield precisely the way he is. The paper also wishes to foreground the ...

Mark David Chapman is the condemned assassin of John Lennon. He willingly shot Lennon at the back 4 times when he and his wife were entering their apartment. Born in Texas on 10th may 1955 and grew up fearing his farther who was a sergeant in the U.S air force. He was nervous, phobic and disheartened because he was very brainy and subtle.He regarded himself as a misunderstood genius. As a teenager, he was introduced to drugs and by 16 years, he had tasted virtually all hard drugs. This might have contributed to his insanity and no wonder he mercilessly assassinated Lennon. ...

Insecurity and Safeguarding Ideal: The Catcher in the Rye

“The Catcher in the Rye”, this inspirational literary work, Jerome David Salinger’s masterpiece, marked the adolescence of many and it continues to fascinate teenagers and adults alike. The adventures of Holden Caulfield, which describe several days in his life, seem to reveal an autobiographic experience, as it vividly describes thoughts, feelings and sensations that could only be felt, not imagined. Salinger’s novel seems a story told to a friend in the dorm, in a sleepless night while secretly sharing cigars, although the smoking is denied within the boys’ dormitory. “Catcher in the Rye” is an expression of the original teenagers, ...

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most well-known, well-regarded and most controversial books in American literature, and for good reason. Salinger’s tale of disaffected teenager Holden Caulfield, and his quest to belong and find his place in a world he thinks is phony, has been a subject of discussion and debate ever since its publication. In many instances, schools and educational organizations have censored or banned the book due to its lascivious content, its unsympathetic main character, and the general amorality of the book’s surface details. To that end, The Catcher in the ...

- What I Know, Assume, or Imagine Given that the subject of my paper is censorship and book bans, especially as it pertains to the novel The Catcher in the Rye, there are certain things I assume and roughly know about the history of this phenomenon. In essence, censorship and book bans occur when a large group of people (typically concerned parents of students who might be reading the book in class) pressure a school or educational body to censor or ban a book in order to protect their children from objectionable content perceived to be in the book. The overall ...

Symbols appear throughout the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. The main character, Holden Caulfield, is passing through a painful period of growing up. To give a reader a deeper understanding of his emotions and feelings, the author uses symbols. The most significant symbols used in the book were Allie’s baseball glove and Holden’s red hunting cap (Salinger 36).

Allie is a deceased Holden’s brother whose baseball glove reminded Holden about happy days spent with Allie. Holden associated Allie’s glove with untroubled childhood. He kept the glove with written by the Allie’s hand poems, but ...

Holden Caulfield persistently analyzes his world of personas who are simultaneously tragic and humorous, despicable and admirable, phony and genuine, while his messages, wrapped up in the simplistic, though effective language of a rebellious youth, resound powerfully with the reader. It is through his constant negative criticism of the world around him and the people in it that the reader actually discovers how weird and asocial Holden really is. The passage this essay analyzes is the perfect portrayal of the distorted vision of the world in Holden’s mind. In this teenage Odyssey of his, he finds himself in a ...