How Is Holden Caulfield Loss Of Innocence

Holden Caulfield feels alone, unloved, and he has little self-esteem. He does not know who he wants to be and where he wants to go in life. Throughout the novel, Holden is wandering from place to place, causing himself a lot of trouble on the way. He does not know where he is going, and eventually decides to move out west. He decided this because he does not seem to like anybody. They all bring him down. However, his biggest adversary is himself. One day he read an article and he states “It [The article] made me feel worse….your face, your eyes, if your hormones were in good shape, and I didn’t look that way at all. I looked exactly like the guy with lousy hormones” (Salinger 215). This shows that Holden not only feels upset about his appearance, but it also shows the influence other people make on his life. He compares himself to them. Earlier in the novel he clearly tore himself down. He stated that his nine-year-old sister is smarter than him. He also stated that he is “not good in bed”. Finally, he is comparing himself to the social standards that we have for people. Throughout the novel he is trying to find his self-worth. He finally decides to be who he wants to be and to stay

Holden Caulfield is a seventeen year old junior who was kicked out of Pencey Prep school in Pennsylvania for failing his academics. He lives in New York with his father, mother, and sister, Phoebe Caulfield who Holden adores for being so mature for her age. He has an older brother named D.B. who lives in Hollywood as a screenwriter and a brother named Allie who died from leukemia. Holden is very picky in taste when it comes to books- his favorite author is Ring Lardner, D.B., and war novels. Holden has a deep hatred for watching movies. He tries to quit smoking, but has an addiction to cigarettes (also drinking) which affects his health. Holden is the manger of the fencing team and is considered to be well off. He is a liar- he agrees with

The Catcher in the Rye, a story surrounding the teenage angst and downward spiral of main character Holden Caulfield, has captivated many audiences through its controversial writing. Although many consider Holden to simply represent the anger in adolescence and fear of becoming an adult with responsibilities, his angst, alienation, and depression represents much more: the stripping of childhood innocence all too soon. Due to Holden's need to rescue so many others and the consumption of the need to regain his innocence, he cannot rescue himself from his own downfall.

So far while reading the Novel I have met the main character Holden Caulfield who narrates this whole story. The character is very interesting being only 16 and already be kicked out of schools being out of shape because of smoking. The way that Holden views everything and everyone as "phony" Another character that we have met is Holden’s older brother D. B. Caulfield. D. B. wrote a volume of short stories that Holden admires very much, and is writing for Hollywood movies. I am intrigued by this character because of how different Holden and his brother are that Holden seems to be having troubles with academics because kicked out of several schools but yet his older brother is very successful. Another character that we have met is Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer is a history teacher at Pencey Prep. I find this character interesting because throughout the book with other characters Holden as something "bad" to

Holden Caulfield is a very unlikely protagonist. The reader ages along with Holden while he spends his week in New York. His journey starts at Pencey Academy and ends in a zoo. Holden sees the world in two different ways the child world and the adult world. The child world is innocent and full of honesty.

Holden was only thirteen when his brother died, and the way that Holden talks about him it sounds as if they were very close. When Allie dies, Holden feels as if it were his fault, because he let Allie fall and not being there to catch him. This emotionally destroyed Holden causing him to not want to feel that pain again. This is where his need for separating himself from others stems from. He let Allie in, he was his brother of course he did, but then he broke down. The bond that he had formed with Allie shattered, so Holden “broke all the goddamn windows with [his] fist, just for the hell of it” (Salinger 44). Holden feels like he fails Allie. He feels as if he should have been there to ‘catch’ Allie from this thing, cancer that was killing him. So in an unhealthy way to cope with Allie’s death, he fails out of every school that he attends. But not only did he fail Allie but then his parents failed him, by not allowing Holden to go to his brother’s funeral and cope with the loss the proper way, his parents allowed “lying and avoidance [to] become the norm in his life” (Privitera 204). Holden’s very delicate self-esteem would not have manifested in his alienation from others if his parents would have let him cope in the proper way. They also did not cope in a healthy manner and by seeing that Holden now thinks that drinking and partying is a correct way to cope with other struggles in his life. With these ideals in

A major theme in the novel is growing up and moving on from being an adolescent into an adult. Holden is trying to prevent kids from growing up because it sucks being in the real world. He is looking after everyone and preserving their childhood. Holden resembles a guardian angel to the children.

Throughout the novel, Holden is a tormented adolescent. He feels alienated and isolated at Pencey Prep, he is belittled and dismissed by women he wants to impress, he is beaten up twice, he dreams of escape from the world he lives in and he even considers suicide. Yet, despite these hardships,

Speaks to me: This is the first part in the novel where Holden truly grows. I have seen his development throughout the novel, but here Holden officially questions his own morals and decisions. It is partly because of his disease, but it is mainly because he is learning to decide what is important to him. His family is very important to him, even though he will

One thing that we learn soon enough about Holden is that he has a mindset of the adult world being phony and that he is very skeptical about many of the well kept hidden themes that come with it. Throughout the whole novel, Holden tries to unravel these concealed messages so that they can hopefully guide him into conserving the innocence of individuals. Innocence is a crucial theme that plays a part in this novel that Holden is very concerned about for not only himself, but others. This struggle is what creates his upbringings and responsibility for helping younger people including his sister and others

Ignorance is bliss when one is fortunately living the age of just a child. Their thoughts are not filled with stress about future responsibilities, they do not feel as if they have the obligation for acceptance, and their purity is genuine. Quite frankly, it is a beautiful thing to depict the mindset of a child. In the book The Catcher in The Rye, by J.D. Salinger, Salinger displayed how Holden Caulfield cherished their innocence. Through the use of the theme for a protection of innocence, Caulfeild was a man who struggled to accept the adult world and how it behaved, yet neither could he let go of the righteousness he found within the childhood world.

• Holden Caulfield, narrator and protagonist, is a 16-year old high school dropout. His last school is Pencey Prep (his sixth school), and can be a bright student if he applies himself. However, Holden seems to have given up as he finds the world around him unfair and unbearable. He tries to hide his alienation from the painful world through his cynicism. Thus, he is nonchalant about most things.

At this point in his life Holden is just confused and overwhelmed with growing up and having to enter adulthood. He is afraid of what he doesn’t understand and reverts to a cynical view of society to shield himself from the painfulness of growing up. Holden wishes he could live in a simple and understandable world but he must face the realities of life and the complexities that come with it. Confronting failure is often the most difficult thing to do especially at a young age for adolescences, however education is able teach not only book work, but life values as well. By obtaining an education, Holden will be able to transgress his previous conceptions about society and learn to succeed in the rapidly changing society he is thrown

To add to the positive side of Holden, he does have a capability of caring for other people. Firstly, Holden has a deep love for children and preserving their innocence, to the point that he tells his little sister Phoebe, “What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff…I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be” (224, 225). He wishes to keep children from falling off the cliff of innocence into the real world, and he even does this in a small way by rubbing off a profane message on a wall of the school Phoebe attends. As well as children, Holden has a deep affection for his fellow family members. Throughout the

Having no role adult role models in his life besides his teachers, he looks to his peers and adopts some of their habits and strategies they use to in tough situations. Since starting off the book we learn that Holden is flunking out of the school he is attending currently (Pencey Prep) and he is planning to leave before the date he is supposed to and take a trip to New York. Right away this is a coming way out of left field because usually, teenagers don’t go into the city for a few days unaccompanied. Before he left the school he got in a huge fight with his roommate, he kept egging him on calling him names and such and wouldn’t stop even when his roommate asked nicely, he got punched but Stradlater (roommate) instantly felt remorse and said “ Why the hell don’tcha shut up when I tellya to?”(pg58) He didn’t want to hurt Holden but felt like he had no other choice than to hit him, and when he felt bad about it, Holden had a blank expression on his face not even considering that he was also at fault. This happens another time in the book when the prostitute and her pimp come back to Holden 's hotel room and he opens his mouth up and gets beaten up once again. Holden said “ You’re a dirty moron, You’re a stupid chiseling moron… and you’ll be---” (p135). He was cut off, punched, and knocked out, his wallet and the money he “owed” they took, and instead of admitting to himself that he made a mistake and gotten himself in a bad situation he