Both stories follow a young male on his journey to independence, trying to find their own way in life. This is the main theme for both. Both Holden from the Catcher in the Rye and Christopher from the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time become fed up with their lives in their current situations and decide to leave. Holden stops trying in school and eventually gets kicked out. However instead of waiting till his parents are alerted and he's sent home he decides to leave school on his own and take a journey before returning home. Whereas Christopher decides to investigate the death of Wellington, his neighbors Poodle which leads him to discover some family secrets that make him leave home. Holden's reached an age where he's figured out what he likes and what he doesn't but hasn't quite figured out what he wants. He loathes phony people and seems to find them everywhere he looks. He's grown up and lost innocence and hates the world he's seen. Unsure of …show more content…
Up until he finds letters addressed to him, Christopher has been under the impression that his mother died from a heart attack until he realizes the truth about his Mother running away with Mr. Shears. Since Christopher is autistic he processes information much differently than most and reacts quite illogically to most shocking news. Christopher hates brown things, food that's touching, touching people and crowded places. This makes his decision to get up and go live with his mother quite spontaneous and tricky. He walks to the train station, then using his father's Fast Cash card hops on a train relying on the directions from strangers which he usually refuses to even talk to. Once he gets to his Mother's house however, he doesn't get along at all with Mr. Shears, therefore she decides to move back to Swindon but doesn't move back in with father so he goes in between
Holden’s immaturity causes him many problems throughout the story. Although he is physically mature, he acts more like a child. “All of a sudden I
Throughout the novel, Holden attempts to find the true from of himself as he struggles with the social interactions around him. Due to the struggle and confusion that arouses from it,
Holden is a self-cautious boy, always judgmental of those around him. Females are of much confusion to him. Often he is unsure of how to properly treat them and seems to think too far into things, such as over using the word “phony” to describe
Holden does not only suffer from being kicked out of school and anticipation of his parent’s reactions or even punishment, but also his inner feelings on depression as well as maturing. He is shown to be a dreamer and as someone who runs away from struggles (a resolution).
Holden’s attitude toward life in general is perplexed. He pretends to be an adult by drinking heavily, yet he complains like a child. Holden's thoughts aren't what an average sixteen year old boy would think about. He describes death in a peculiar way and he pretends to be injured often yet he hasn’t been in that position before. He is a bit violent and sexual for a kid his age. He lies about his age to certain people he meets. He tries to lose his virginity to a prostitute but he doesn’t go through with it. Holden isn’t a straightforward guy because he shys away with his lies. In other words, Holden tries to act like an adult at times, but he is actually extremely terrified of the adult life.
Holden is going through teenage hood, which is a very difficult time for many people. His visualization of life is very vivid to his own limits. He fixate of being real, Holden see’s flaws in other constantly and consistently labels them as fake, as bogus. He sees those flaws through the lens of social factors and the materialistic norms. Holden conception of life is that all the people he has encounter with are not their real self, they pretend to be something other them self. Holden sees them has these people portray to the world an image. There are obvious signs that Holden seems to be troubled and unreliable. What is that Holden is running away from is it the people around, is it the materialistic society, what is he trying to get rid off.
Holden Caulfield’s life is defined by his dislike of pretty much everyone and everything because his parents never taught him to do otherwise. His parents neglected him by sending him to multiple schools and never taught him how to deal with his emotional issues. Holden was never taught by an adult how to deal with his grief after his brother, Allie’s death. Since almost every adult Holden meets end up letting him down, he grows up to be emotionally stunted and thus is rejected by the world around him.
He doesn’t apply himself at school. He doesn’t want to become smarter than Allie was. He doesn’t care about his life. Holden has failed out of
Holden does not have any close friendships with any of his peers, even though he occasionally has fun with Stradlater and is nice to Ackley because he feels obliged to, in the end he always has bad things to say about the phony people there. Holden struggles to find a place in society, and struggles to make friends with the critical attitude he has against society in general, and the current world.
A major distinction between Holden Caulfield,the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D. Salinger, and Natasha Kingsley, the protagonist of The Sun is also a Star, by Nicola Yoon, is the mental stability between both characters. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden’s mental stability weakens as the novel progresses, and readers understand the mental incompetence that is within Holden. A great example of this is when Holden makes the impulsive decision to leave his boarding school, because of a dispute between his roommate. Holden decides, “All of a sudden, I
Before he was required to officially leave the dorms of school, Holden got in a fought with his roommate after finding out this friend and the girl he liked possibly had sexual interaction with one another. It ticked Holden off, so he threw a punch and also got one in return. After fighting his friend, Holden has the urge to leave the private school immediately. Since he didn’t tell his parents about getting kicked out of school, he decided to leave to New York. When he got to the hotel he was going to stay at, he got super lonely, so he decided to hire a prostitute only to end up trying to talk to her. He ends up getting beaten up by the prostitutes so called ‘owner’ and gets more money taken away from him than expected. Although Holden starts to contradict himself many different times, you can actually see him being genuine through his language and actions when his brother died, and he decided to break all of the windows. Its obvious he broke all of these windows because he was in so much pain and agony. He decided to go crazy and break everything since he did not have anyone to talk to. The fact that his brother had already died causes him to use “you” instead of “me.” He uses the word listen with Phoebe and this shows that he is generous, and is a great ‘big brother’ because of his
At this, Christopher becomes extremely upset and fearful and decides almost immediately he must leave the house and his father. Looking at the letters he sees that his mother has included her new address in London with Roger. Christopher decides that although it will be difficult he will make his way to live with his mother. All alone and extremely distraught from the circumstances, Christopher sets off to navigate the way to London. At the station, Christopher has another encounter with the police. He is assisted by an officer through the station. The officer
The song “What’s My Age Again?” by Blink 182 really portrays how Holden doesn’t know what he wants. For example, Holden doesn’t know if he wants to be a child or an adult. He says, “I have no wind, if you want to know the truth. I’m quite a heavy smoker, for one thing-that is, I used to be” (Salinger 5). Holden smokes and drinks throughout the book which shows the side of him that wants to grow up, but then he does childish things like asking Carl Luce about his sex life. Carl Luce says to Holden, “I refuse to answer any typical Caulfield questions tonight. When in hell are you going to grow up?” (Salinger 146). This goes to show that Holden can’t decide whether he wants to stay the child that he is or grow
In today’s society, many teenagers struggle in their everyday lives due to the fact that they have different qualities than others. The novel, Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, is about a young man named Holden Caulfield, who suffers from multiple mental illnesses, causing him to be treated different by others. Due to tragedies he has suffered from in the past, and all that is going on in is present life, Holden can no longer cope and runs away to New York. Christopher Boone, from the novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, also suffers from multiple mental illnesses and has experienced life changing tragedies over the years. For many years Christopher’s father has been
Holden Caulfield is a unique individual, to say the least. He often has different outbursts of mixed emotions accurately representing the stereotypical behaviors of teenagers. He often stands by the conception that everyone around him is a “phony” and puts on a mask when communicating and socializing with others. Because of this, Holden has chosen to isolate himself from most of the outside world around him and truly only trusts less than a handful of people. Funny enough, those he does trust are not in his age bracket such as his sister Phoebe and one of his older teachers named Mr.Spencer. The author and creator of the novel made Holden this way in order to relate to the teenagers of his generation, however, it is not certain whether or not this still applies in today’s day.