Catcher in the Rye Essay: Holden and the Complexity of Adult Life

Holden and the Complexity of Adult living What was wrong with Holden, the main character in The catcher in the Rye, by J.D.Salinger, was his moral revulsion against anything that was ugly, evil, cruel, or what he called "phoney" and his acute responsiveness to beauty and innocence, especially the innocence of the very young, in whom he truism reflected his own lost childhood. There is something wrong or lacking in the novels of despair and frustration of many writers. The sour note of bitterness and the take place theme of sadism have become almost a convention, never well pardoned by the authors dependence on a psychoanalytical interpretation of a major character. The male childs who ar spoiled or turned into budding homosexuals by their mothers and a loveless home life are as long-familiar to us today as stalwart and dependable young heroes much(prenominal) as John Wayne were to an earlier generation. We have accepted this interpretation of the squeamishness and bewilderment of our young men and boys because no one had anything better to offer. It is tragical to hear the anguished cry of parents "What have we done to harm him? wherefore doesnt he care about anything? He is a bright boy, and why does he fail to pass his examinations? Why wont he jaw to us?" A remarkable and absorbing novel, J. D. Salingers "The Catcher in the Rye," may serve to calm the apprehensions of fathers and mothers about their own responsibilities, though it doesnt attempt to explain why all boys who dismay their elders have failed to pass successfully the restriction between childhood and young manhood. It is profoundly moving and a deplorable book, but it is not hopeless. Holden Caulfield, sixteen years old and six creation two inches in hei... ...Boy, I was shaking like a madman." The Catcher in the Rye is not all horror of this sort. There is a wry humor in this sixteen-year-olds trying to live up to his height, to make happ y with men, to understand mature sex and why he is still a virgin at his age. His affection for children is spontaneous and delightful. There are a couple of(prenominal) little girls in modern fiction as charming and kind as his little sister, Phoebe. Altogether this is a book to be file thoughtfully and more than once. It is about an unusually sensitive and intelligent boy but, then, are not all boys unusual and worthy of understanding? If they are bewildered at the complexity of modern life, unsure of themselves, floor by the spectacle of perversity and evil around them - are not adults equally shocked by the knowledge that even children cannot escape this contact and awareness?