The Catcher in the Rye: Holden Caulfield's Coming of Age Story

Teenage years are sometimes believed to be a fun time in many people’s lives; but the transition between childhood and becoming an adult can be tricky. In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the main character Holden is stuck in between the change of childhood to adulthood because he doesn’t want to let go of childhood and the care-free attitude he can have. In adulthood, people have to have some sense of maturity, and Holden demonstrates that he isn’t ready for that until towards the end of the novel. Holden is stubborn at the beginning of The Catcher in the Rye because he is not alert to the world surrounding him. The reader sees him transform and become mature because he comes to terms with his life and realizes that he was wrong about growing up, and that he is ready to come to terms with the end of his childhood.

In “A Catcher In The Rye”, a novel by J.D. Salinger, Salinger did nothing if not perfectly capture the school life of a young man identified as Holden Caulfield. Throughout the novel, Holden struggles with life decisions, as well as his past. His peers are little to no help, while Holden becomes further entrenched in his own downward spiral.

Have you ever found a book that relates to you? If you feel lost, you are alienated or you are a teenage angst. You are not alone. This character Holden Caulfield is the main character in an extraordinary novel “Catcher In The Rye” written outstandingly by J.D Salinger . This novel is suppose to relate to adolescent because it is a literary realism and coming -to- age story. Holden Caulfield is a sixteen year old boy from New York that have been expelled from flunking classes at Pencey Prep. He is telling his story that takes place only three days. Holden resents the adult world and turns down the doorway to adulthood. He is engaging with the trappings of adulthood, but he doesn't want to grow up . His fear is to lose his innocence. He doesn't want to accept life. If Holden had a choice on what he want to be , he wants to be a catcher in the rye because he wants to save children falling and save their innocence too. Catcher in the rye is relevant to teenagers today because they have the same qualities.

The novel, The Catcher in the Rye, is about a boy named Holden Caulfield. His story begins from a mental institution in California where he is currently undergoing treatment from a nervous breakdown after being kicked out of Pencey Prep. He had been kicked out of previous schools before Pencey and he continuously fails. Aside from his social life, Holden is a depressed young man. He was suffering from deep grief over the loss of his younger brother who was known as Allie. Because of his depressions, Holden cannot make any friends and fights with everyone around him. Holden then leaves Pencey Prep without authorized permission after having a fight with his date, Jane. He leaves Pencey just days before Christmas break was supposed to begin. Side

A lost sixteen year old boy deals with death and trying to find his place in the world. Despite growing up in a privileged white household, Holden Caulfield is still crippled with feeling invisible. In Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, he makes Holden come to life by creating a personality that is easily relatable to rebellious teenage boys. And though this work caused much controversy, Salinger was able to capture the struggles of not wanting to grow up and the preservation of innocence. In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D Salinger creates a character that reflects his own difficulties growing up in a privileged white household in the 1950s while struggling with the the difficult realities of the adult world and finding his place in the it.

Growing up is a difficult transformation for any young person. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, illustrates these ideas through Holden Caulfield, his main figure. By displaying how tough it is for him to grow up and admit that he cannot stay adamant in his belief and realize his interpretation of others is limited. The time that is presented allows Holden more ground for stereotypes and explains why his mindset is so set and why he interprets individuals and circumstances in his own sense. The perception of Holden help to present the internal struggles that people in societies face while attempting to age. J.D. Salinger uses the point of view, characterization, and setting to relate to his crowd and to make his book much more

“I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall.” The Catcher in The Rye is a fiction novel by J.D Salinger. The main character Holden Caulfield struggles with growing up and becoming an adult. A rebellious tennager with a behavior and attidtude can relate to teens nowadays. As he's growing older he realizes that the older you get life gets hard. He is between childhood and on the verge of adulthood. The older you get the less innocence you have.

“It’s just a phase, right?” Throughout history, teenagers have tried to convince themselves of similar thoughts in hopes of dismissing their misery. When adolescents transition into adults, they endure a series of physical and mental changes that alter or completely change their views of the world. In The Catcher in the Rye, author J.D. Salinger portrays the main character Holden as an unstable teenager who is hardly tolerating the routines of life. His internal chaos is an accurate representation of what a typical adolescent could experience during this stage, thus the importance of a healthy transition into adulthood. Although many critics have disliked Holden’s character for being irresponsible, Salinger wanted society to realize that Holden’s thoughts are a reality for many teenagers. Holden represents a universal adolescent as he tries to comprehend the world through his inconsistent personality, and the way he copes with traumatic experiences.

“I don’t give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am - I really do - but people never notice it. People never notice anything” (Salinger 12). In the book, The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger talks about growing up and how depressing it can really be. Throughout the story he makes many comments about adults being phony, shallow, and hypocrites. He explains how children are none of these and they need to cherish their childhood. Holden Caulfield is a teenager who was kicked out of Pencey Prep for failing all but one of his classes, then he went to New York City. He goes through the struggle of making a connection with other people, growing up, and dealing with phonies. He witnesses the reality of growing up and he hopes that his sister, Phoebe, never grows up which is inevitable. Ultimately, The Catcher in the Rye is a sad book because it shows how terrible it is to have to grow up.

Importance: Many argue about whether Holden Caulfield goes through a “typical” coming of age journey in his book or if his journey was different from others. In the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield goes through a coming of age journey that is different from a “typical” journey because he goes through struggles that people who are maturing into adults usually don’t go through.

J.D. Salinger expertly crafts a coming of age novel The Catcher in the Rye. This coming of age novel has set the tone for many other novels of the like. The main crux of the novel focuses on maturity and how it affects characters. This is very apparent with the main character Holden Caulfield, and Salinger uses this character to subtly create a commentary on maturity. Throughout The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is not the only character who demonstrates this claim, but he is the best example. The overarching tones of the shift of maturity majorly affect The Catcher in the Rye and demonstrates to the reader that maturity, or lack thereof, is not always set in stone.

In the novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is discovering the actuality of what it means to be a teen. Throughout the book he encounters several situations, such as his brothers’ death, that are forcing him to grow up. Salinger’s message in the book is to explain the main changes during the adolescent transition; depression, mortality, and preservation of innocence.

In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger tells the story of a teenage boy, Holden Caulfield, who has just been expelled for failing four out of his five classes, from his third boarding school, Pencey Prep. Holden, a sixteen-year-old junior in high school, is transitioning from being a child to becoming an adult. However, he is struggling to grow up, mostly because of his very negative and cynical view towards adults and growing up, and seems emotionally stuck in childhood, unable to develop into a young man. Throughout the book, Holden mentions quite a few times that his secret goal in life is to be “the catcher in the rye”, meaning that he wants to “catch” children before they fall off the cliff of innocence and childhood into adulthood. In The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger uses this metaphor, being the “savior of childhood innocence”, as a symbol throughout the novel to represent the hardship and painfulness of growing up.

In the Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger perfectly captures a teenage boy’s struggle with adolescence. The story is told from the perspective of Holden Caulfield. Throughout the novel, Holden takes the reader through a few days of his life, in which he flaunts his hostile attitude to the reader. Over the course of his journey, there is a subtle, yet important, pattern. The Catcher in the Rye includes the constant motif of Holden Caulfield rescuing others, while failing to rescue himself.

There are certain qualities that define maturity, and they vary from person to person. Throughout the story, Holden Caulfield, the sixteen year old protagonist of “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger is slowly but surely becoming a mature, young boy. He battles through his teenage life because he is caught between two worlds; one of pure bliss and innocence, the other of a mature adult. As he aspires to be “the catcher in the rye”, he wants all children to hold on to their innocence as long as they can because he feels the world is full of “phony” adults. However, with the help of some friends and family, he is able to realize that he cannot save all children and that they will eventually have to grow up. Jeannette Walls, the author