Catcher in the Rye Essay: Holden Caulfield - A Nice Kid in a Cruel World :: Catcher Rye Essays

Holden Caulfield - A Nice pincer in a Cruel World Over the years, members of the literary community of interests have critiqued just about every author they could get their drop a line on. One of the most popular novels to be critiqued has been J. D. Salingers The Catcher in the Rye. In favorable critiques, Holden Caulfield is a good guy stuck in a naughty world. He is trying to make the best of his life, though ultimately losing that battle. Whereas he aims at stability and truth, the mature world cannot survive without suspense and lies. It is a testament to his innocence and decent spirit that Holden would place the safety of children as a goal in his lifetime. This serves to only re-iterate the point that Holden is a harmonised character, a person of high lesson values who is too vulnerable to pick himself up from a difficult situation. S.N. Behrman, in his review for The saucily Yorker, alike took a sharp look at Holdens personality. Behrman found Caulfield to be ve ry self-critical, as he often refers to himself as a awful liar, a madman, and a moron. Holden is driven crazy by phoniness, an idea beneath which he lumps insincerity, snobbery, injustice, callousness, and a lot more. He is a prodigious worrier, and person who is moved to pity quite often. Behrman wrote Grown men sometimes align the emblazoned obscenities of life too much for them, and leave this world indecorously, so the fact that a 16-year old boy is overwhelmed should not be surprising (71). Holden is also labeled as curious and compassionate, a true moral escapist whose attitude comes from an intense hatred of hypocrisy. The novel opens in a doctors office, where Holden is recuperating from carnal illness and a mental breakdown. In Holdens fight with Stradlater, his roommate, he reveals his moral ideals he fears his roommates sexual motives, and he values children for their sincerity and innocence, seeking to nurse them from the phony adult society. Jane Gallagher and A llie, the younger brother of Holden who died at age 11, fabricate his everlasting symbols of goodness (Davis 317). A quote by Charles Kegel seems to adequately meaning up the problems of Holden Caulfield Like Stephen Dedalus of James Joyces A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,Caulfield is in search of the Word. His problem is one of confabulation as a teenager, he simply cannot get through and through to the adult world which surrounds him as a sensitive teenager, he cannot get through others of his own age (54).