According to most analyses, The Catcher in the Rye is a bildungsroman, a novel about a young character’s growth into maturity. While it is appropriate to discuss the novel in such terms, Holden Caulfield is an unusual protagonist for a bildungsroman because his central goal is to resist the process of maturity itself. As his thoughts about the Museum of Natural History demonstrate, Holden fears change and is overwhelmed by complexity. He wants everything to be easily understandable and eternally fixed, like the statues of Eskimos and Indians in the museum. He is frightened because he is guilty of the sins he criticizes in others, and because he can’t understand everything around him. But he refuses to acknowledge this fear, expressing it only in a few instances-for example, when he talks about sex and admits that “[s]ex is something I just don’t understand. I swear to God I don’t” (Chapter 9).
Instead of acknowledging that adulthood scares and mystifies him, Holden invents a fantasy that adulthood is a world of superficiality and hypocrisy (“phoniness”), while childhood is a world of innocence, curiosity, and honesty. Nothing reveals his image of these two worlds better than his fantasy about the catcher in the rye: he imagines childhood as an idyllic field of rye in which children romp and play; adulthood, for the children of this world, is equivalent to death-a fatal fall over the edge of a cliff. His created understandings of childhood and adulthood allow Holden to cut himself off from the world by covering himself with a protective armor of cynicism. But as the book progresses, Holden’s experiences, particularly his encounters with Mr. Antolini and Phoebe, reveal the shallowness of his conceptions.
That day, I go to the bookstore from a pile of world famous works of selected a very thin book called the catcher in the rye, I picked up the book, I didnt think so thin a book on my produce so much influence, make me deeply, I think this book form and the contents are quite good.
America is a fairly chaos in the 1950s, the period of the war has not been cleared the cold war, a cloud of smoke and rapid development of science and technology plays. On the one hand, and on the other hand, people lack of ideal, depression, oneself are faint change in the social background, the unexamined life. Then, "collapse generation" appeared, holden is one player, smoking, drinking too much, not aspirant, but he was still not reduced to drugs, social position, because in his heart, always have beautiful and distant ideal - do a "the catcher in the rye".
We live in a country, this era is in great reformation, everything in the process of changing development. In some sense, this with the 1950s American really some alike. Social progress, peoples thought also is in produce change, many people start confusion, depression, they gradually forgotten my ideals, no initial enthusiasm, began to yearn for mediocrity.
We are a group of life in the new era of children, nature has been used to confusion and annoyance, but we should concentrate on certain ahead of us, our road, we should be a group of ideal is ambitious. If holden without his pure ideal, that he might fall off the end, is his ideal let him survive. Ideal is the beacon, it takes people into the future, and into the light. Our life is just beginning, though life let our generation some confusion and uncertainty, but all but is temporary, not can be in the past, we now need most, it is our ideal.
Yes, there is an ideal there is hope, hope it is tomorrow, tomorrow will be more beautiful!
The hero Holton, a complicated and contradictory young man, came into my sight with his mouth full of dirty words. His cynicism caused a negative rebellion. He believed that no one in the adult society was credible, all "false hypocrite", and he longed for simplicity and sincerity, but all was false and deceptive, and he was unable to change the situation, and finally compromised and even fled to the real society. In the real world, go to the backcountry to pretend to be a deaf and dumb person. But he has a childlike innocence, a pursuit of a better life and a noble ideal. In order to protect the children from falling off the cliff, he also longed to grow up as a "catcher in the wheat field", giving out the voice of "saving the children". In a word, he is a lonely and struggling man, but he is a man who demands the perfect man in the world and is helpless to yield to the reality. The kind and uneasy situation of the contradictory man is jumping, bleeding, and my eyes full of sympathy.
Holtons actions and speech actions are like the "he" that we have gone through: cynical, cynical, but conscientious and loving, Leng son, he always speaks aloud, sometimes aloud, his restless heart of youth.
Reading novels, I seem to read the confusion and dissatisfaction of teenagers on their way to life. Looking back at our current life, are there any struggles like Holton? There must be a lot of it. The confusion of puberty must be faced. Everyone in youth is probably Holton. They walked through a lot of curves, narrow roads, dangerous roads, even cliffs, and then stood, sprint and run in a bitter struggle, and finally set foot on the road of life. Perhaps hand and foot injury, perhaps head broken blood, perhaps exhausted, but finally will come over, his face has a firm smile.
The catcher in the Rye is a twilight of youths lost journey. The confusion and loss of Holton are always the confusion and loss of the growing people. I hope that the realities of Holton will correct the deviations in the journey, step on the right track, and walk on the journey of life.
The leading role Holden Caulfield is a sixteen-year-old school student who was born in a rich family. Although he is rich and kind, no one in the school likes to get along with him. So he always feels constantly lonesome. Such as like the book says “His loneliness arises from the fact that no one seems to share his view of the world, no one understands whats going on in his head.” In his view, school is a hypocritical place. The purpose that you go to school is only to get a good job or beat others.
The surroundings talk about wine, women and sex all days. Holden hates this society. He never puts his heart in study so he is always be punished by teachers. And when he is flunked out of school the forth time, he doesnt go home but stays in New York-the place where he was born and lived. That is just the time several days before Christmas. He lives in hotel, stays in the bars all the day, makes many girlfriends and drinks heavily.
At the same time, he feels sad about the teenager and the life. He feels what he never thinks before in the true life. He wants to escape from this society but he cant. This is just the background of Holdens story. During this time, Holden thinks of many things and many important people to him. Except introduces Holdens life in New York, the book also tells us Holdens life in school and some important people and things to him.
The catcher in the Rye is a typical novel which reflects the confusion and rebel of the 1950s in America history. From year 1945-1955, the American society seemed to be blissful on the surface while the fear of uncertainty caused by the growing communist challenge was affecting the culture of society. People became paranoiac and youngsters of the time became rebel or even violent resulting from the lost of aim and belief. Holton, the main character of this novel, is portrayed by the author as a typical teenager of the time.
Born in a wealthy middle class family, Holton was supposed to live a good life. However, he expelled from school four times, not dare to go home, wandering alone in York city one day and two nights, living in small inn, going to nightclubs, being alcoholism. He wanted to escape from the real world because he feel depressed, confused, filled with all sorts of unrealistic fantasies. This novel can be defined as both the tragedy of Holtons and the author Salinger, who is a young people of that generation.
In 1950, the Korean War started, which was an extension of the Cold War which strengthened the hostilities and conflicts between America and the Soviet Union. It definitely leaded to the panic of normal people because they were uncertain about the result of the competition between the superpowers. Teenagers were emotionally confused of the changing society, doubting their life and their future. Salinger has also written other novels such as Nine Stories, a collection of short stories even more depressed than The catcher in the Rye, which at least have expressed some hope at the end of the novel. Actually, characters like Holton become popular at that time, not in literature only. In the film Rebel Without a Cause describe a very similar situation, the tendency of rebel and violence among youngsters in American culture at that time. In the early 1950s, the accumulation of emotions and conflicts were bedding the transform a few years later, which had significant influence on American culture of that period.