FREE ESSAY ON THE CATCHER IN THE RYE: CHARACTER ANALYSIS OF HOLDEN CAUFIELD

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE: CHARACTER ANALYSIS OF HOLDEN CAUFIELD

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The Catcher in the Rye
In J.D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, the main character, Holden Caufield,
describes in detail the parts of his life and his environment that bother him the most.
He faces these problems with a kind of naivety that prevents him from fully understanding
why it is that he is so depressed. His life revolves around his problems, and he seems
helpless in evading them. Among others, Holden finds himself facing the issues of
acceptance of death, growing up, and his own self-destructiveness.
One of the hardships Holden must cope with is his inability to come to terms with death,
in particular that of his younger brother, Allie. Holden seems to have experienced a
rather happy and carefree childhood; he lived with his siblings, Phoebe and Allie, and
had his older brother D.B. to look up to. Then Holden suddenly is faced with the
realization that he has to grow up, and learn to live without Allie. The initial reaction
is painful; Holden breaks his hand in a fit of emotion soon after the death. By the time
Holden is sixteen years old, he has done little more than accept the fact that Allie is
dead. We still see Holden seeking Allie in his bouts of depression. In chapter
twenty-five, Holden, while walking along Fifth Avenue, begins to believe that he will not
be able to get to the other side of the street each time he reaches the end of a block,
as if he will just fall off. He talks aloud to Allie to help him get through the ordeal.
Holden also continues to see Allie as one of the few things he likes about life.
Yet another demon that Holden avoids is the process of having to grow up. Throughout the
book, he seems hesitant to develop any real ambitions or goals. He is a perpetual failure
at school. He refuses to associate himself with mature ways of living, and so isolates
himself from anyone his own age or older. This is all directly connected to Holden's
picture-perfect image of his childhood. He sees this particular period of his life as his
own personal paradise. He does not want to finalize the fact that he has to concede it's
innocence in the end. Towards the end of the book, Holden shows his desire for life to
remain as it was by saying, ...certain things should stay the way they are. You ought to
be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. Holden
does not want to join a world of phonies and greed, a world lacking in carelessness and
irresponsibility. He won't, whether consciously or not, accept the fact that he has no
choice.
A final conflict in the life of Holden Caufield is his own self-destructiveness. That he
is suicidal is never deliberately pointed out in the book but there are several instances
in which it is implied. Mr. Antolini, being perhaps the only adult in the story that
truly understands the seriousness of Holden's situation, at one point remarks, I can very
clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause, possibly
insinuating that Holden might not value his life enough to avoid throwing it away. Phoebe
asks Holden about what he really likes about life, and all he can think of is a young boy
named James Castle that commited suicide. At least one chapter finds him irrationally
thinking he has cancer, and wandering around thinking he will certainly never make it to
the other side of the street. One of the most significant allusions to suicide is when he
walks around as though he has been shot, and afterward, in Central Park, he convinces
himself that he has developed neumonia and will die very soon. He imagines his funeral,
and the reaction of his parents and Phoebe. By the end of the novel, Holden has
envisioned his own death by at least four different methods: neumonia, nuclear warfare,
homicide, and suicide.
All of Holden's problems appear to have been derived from change, one way or another, and
they all end up leaving him confused and depressed. It is his problems with death and
adulthood, that bring his self-destructing nature into being. In The Catcher in the Rye,
J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield finds himself caught in the binds of death, the adult
world, and his personal self-destructiveness.