Essays on Catcher in The Rye

Catcher in the rye brings out the anguish and confinement in a teenage boy called Holden, in the mid-1950 (Bratož 95). Holden is faced with disparities in life, which makes him to reconsider the meaning of life. Similarly, Charlie, in perks of being a wallflower is faced with problems that Holden encounters in life. Despite living in different social, economic and cultural confinement, ideologies represented in the two pieces of literature are uncanny. Holden was a victim of the World War 2 post-war trauma in the United States of America. The post-war conditions had forced Holden to give up ...

Oftentimes in life as a result of complex family situations or events, we experience anxiety and breakdowns. Events in the book The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger are powerful examples of this. The experiences in Holden Caulfield’s life lead to academic, social, and mental breakdowns from which he struggles to recover. The events and experiences that Holden goes through cover three days. After being expelled from school he chooses not to go back home to his parents but instead heads to New York to live independently. The challenges that 17 year old Holden faces reflect those ...

The art of Jerome Salinger and Charles Bukowski, the two famous authors who are best known for their works The Catcher in the Rye and Ham in Rye, seems to draw many parallels between the two authors. Indeed, even the titles of their books are similar to each other, along with the overall theme of their narration. Therefore, it is important to dwell on the works of these two great authors to investigate the influence they might have on each other. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye that was released in 1951 represents the story of a seventeen ...

Many people have experienced a lot of different events that have changed their lives. Everyone has his own unique story that will touch their grandmothers and aunts, which will show the originality of the life of the subject and tell us that that the man lives his life singularly and his life is not similar to the others. I cannot claim that my story stands out from the other in its originality or eccentricity but I am willing to tell about it and say that I am not an especial guy but have something that really influenced my life. “ ...

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 uses The Museum, Profanity on the walls, and the Carousel to express that the loss of innocence is inevitable as the harsh realities of the world are encountered in his novel, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’. The novel, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ was written by American author Jerome David Salinger in the year 1951. The novel gathered a huge controversy once it was published because of its realistic and explicit portrayal of youth and related issues. Born in a wealthy family, Salinger witnessed all luxuries in his life and he portrays a number of events from his own ...

The minds of assassins generally teem with oddities. For example, Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President William McKinley, was so devoted to his anarchist principles that he refused to talk to anyone whom he perceived to be an authority figure in the aftermath of the assassination. This included his court-appointed attorneys and the judge at his trial, which led to his attorneys attempting to secure a finding of insanity but ended up exasperating the jury, which only required an hour of deliberations to find him guilty of first-degree murder and sentence him to the electric chair. When he finally said ...

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 are the differences between how adults and teenagers think when they read the book?

I believe there are substantial differences between the reactions of adults and teenagers when reading The Catcher in the Rye. The tale of a disaffected teenager desperately trying to find his place in the world, while also bucking authority at every turn, reads as different things to different generations. This, perhaps, might be at the crux of the argument regarding censorship and banning of the book; adults either do not understand the book’s message or believes it glorifies Holden’s behavior, while teenagers may find Holden’s lack of identity and adolescent confusion relatable. When teenagers read 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 ...

The ‘catcher in the rye’ is a novel by J D Salinger. The novel carries the novel, themes on teenage rebellion, confusion, alienation and anger. The novel’s main character, Holden Caulfield presents the key themes through his representation in the novel. In the novel, Caulfield narrates his story from a hospital bed. He gets to address the reader on the events that culminated to his breakdown the last December (Salinger 14). Holden gets faced with depression, impulsive spending, nervous breakdown, vulgarity, sexual exploration and other erratic behaviors. Holden candidly narrates his story, which can get associated to the present day ...

Classic English Literature

This novel has given an emphasis on Holden’s red hunting hat throughout the story. The hat symbolizes Holden’s vulnerability, insecurity and an overwhelming sense of loss. In the chapters of the book, there is a line where in Holden had stated that he gets “a big bang out of that hat”, which is an indication that the hat provides him some sense of security. In the opening part of Chapter Three of the book, Holden said that he purchased the hat in New York one morning after deciding to leave all the fencing equipment in the subway when he ...

Passage Analysis (Chapters 21)

In the event where Holden, the guy from the story, takes the way up the apartment of his family to check them and then just leave right after to visit his other friends, the author was trying to convey the difference between children and adults. Well, in the passage, the author tried to use Holden’s eyes, thoughts and movements to convince its readers that his emotions were real and that it really came from a unique person. One particular thought that Holden was able to come up in this passage has something to do with the way adults and ...

Anna Quindlen

How effectively does the author present her argument? Anna Quindlen’s 'With a No.2 Pencil, Delete: The Destruction of Literature in the Name of Children’ is an a argumentative essay lamenting and arguing against the censorship of books for children, whether it is by banning them from school libraries or by bowdlerizing extracts from a writer for use in state examinations for English. Her argument is powerful and emotive, and, overall convincing, but it could have been made much stronger if she had used other strategies. One strategy she uses through the assay is tone: the very first sentence is a ...

Summary

The story begins with a seventeen year-old Holden Caulfield’s description of his encounters with the students and the faculty of Pencey Prep, Agerstown in Pennsylvania. Holden criticizes them of being phony or superficial. Because of his poor performance academically, Holden is expelled from the school. He then packs and lives the school after a physical clash with the roommate in the middle of the night. Holden boards a train to New York; however, he doesn’t want to return to the family and therefore checks into a hotel. In the Hotel, he dances with three tourist girls in the evening and gets ...