Holden And Phoebe example essay topic

'Phillips 1 The Personalities and Emotions of Holden Caufield By: Wendy Phillips (Pearl River Community College) In the novel The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger tells of Holden Caufield's struggles in life. Holden is a somewhat troubled mind, who has very strong beliefs and thoughts. Holden has many problems going through adolescence. Holden is presented to the readers as being very different in a way that other characters were portrayed during the time period the novel was written. Everyone thinks Holden is crazy. Holden's character is very casual towards society.

People think if that is so then he must also be a very big psychological case. At the opening of the novel Holden is kicked out of yet another school. He goes to talk to one of is older friends, maybe for advice, and learns that he, himself, has no discipline whatsoever. Holden's older friend tells him that the grades do not particularly matter. It is no all about poetry or history anymore.

He told him that a lot of people have been in the position he is in now, and they have all learned from each other, and that is what it is all about. The advice to Holden was to get back in school, but Holden does not listen because he is so tired. He does not want to hear a lecture, he wants to go to bed and sleep. This visit for advice left Holden sadder and more confused than he ever was before. He does not know what he wants to do now.

Holden is telling this story from some sort of a mental hospital. He is here simply because everyone thinks he is crazy. Holden even refers to himself as being crazy. He stands out in the cold without a coat or gloves.

He calls himself crazy stating that he must have a screw loose in order to act in that manner. No one really Phillips 2 brings into account Holden's childhood during they psychoanalysis. His family was not very stable and he lost his younger brother when Holden was thirteen. If more was known about Holden's childhood, then we may know more about why he does the things that he does.

Such as, provoking fights and then getting beaten, or making sexual advances that he does not carry through. Another thing, Holden has a red hunting cap that symbolizes his great need for protection and also of his rebellion. Holden lets off steam and bypasses a break down by horsing around and by lying. Why does he feel the need to do all of this? Why does Holden act like a child of twelve or thirteen but then turn around and notice such things as beauty as well as phoniness? Holden has a huge problem with things being phony.

He feels that a lot of things are phony. He has an older brother named D.B. This brother is out making movies; a sort of thing that Holden thinks is phony and immoral. D.B. is also a writer. Holden feels his writing is okay. Holden has big plans of having his own cabin one day, far away and he will only come home for holidays or important deaths. He will let Phoebe, his younger sister, and D.B. come to visit, but they can not do anything phony while being there. Otherwise, he will ask them to leave.

He is pretty strict when on the subject of phoniness. Holden had a younger brother named Allie that died of Leukemia. Now, Holden feels very guilty because he is still living and Allie had to die. He does not feel he should be able to live anymore because it is not fair. He thinks about Allie a lot and notices things about other children.

Phoebe symbolizes a lot of things that Phillips 3 Holden notices about children. Most importantly, Phoebe makes him notice alternatives that he overlooks because he has too much of an attitude. Holden feels that preserving purity and security of childhood is pretty much the only thing that makes life worth living. Holden liked things that never changed. Things like a museum or even mummification because the bodies would never rot.

The only thing that would change would be him. After confronting Holden about the things he does not like, he tells Phoebe that he likes Allie. Phoebe will not accept that because Allie is dead. Holden basically has two huge emotions. One of mourning the death of his brother, and the other, being in love. They are both very powerful to him.

These emotions are very strong and controlling to Holden. He almost has a nervous break down while walking in New York because he has such a morbid preoccupation with death. It is said here that Holden is having a crisis because of everything that is going on around him, and him being kicked out of yet another school is what triggered these feelings this time. Holden thinks about the idea of suicide, but Phoebe talks him out of it.

Also, he does not like the thought of people staring at his corpse". Holden's disturbance was taken to be both his unique, personal gift, and the fault of a hypocritical, uncaring society, one particularly indifferent to its more sensitive souls". (Shaw 97) Critics think that maybe it is not Holden's fault that he is mad, but he is this way because of the world that he has to be subjected to. Other critics believe Holden is the way he is simply because of adolescence.

Phillips 4 Holden decides it is time for him to go and he wants to see Phoebe one last time before he leaves. He goes to her school and while walking down the hall he notices vulgar language is written in several places on the wall. Seeing these words written on the wall totally appalls Holden in the light that all of the little children have to read such terrible things. This brings to mind another belief of Holden's, that you can not find a place that is quiet and peaceful, and if you do, someone will find a way to write obscene language right by you.

He is convinced that someone will write such obscene language on the tombstone of his grave. Anyway, Holden sends a note to Phoebe telling hr to meet him at the museum around the corner. When Phoebe arrives she has a suitcase and begs Holden to let her come along. Holden refuses and takes a walk with her. The brother and sister end up at the zoo. Holden and Phoebe have shared so much over the years.

They have told each other so many things. Holden was watching Phoebe play at the zoo and he thought about how much he wanted to protect her from the hardships of growing up. He thought back to a time when they were talking and he told her, "I would like to be 'the catcher in the rye' and save thousands of small children, playing in a field of rye, from falling into the nearby abyss, the very one into which he has already fallen, or is falling at this very moment: '... if they " re running and they don't look were they " re going I have to come out form somewhere to catch them. ' " (Bungert 184) When Holden states he wants to be the catcher in the rye, maybe he is not talking so much about catching them from falling from the cliff but them falling into Phillips 5 adulthood; something he wanted to save himself from. "Holden Caufield faces a society in which there seems to be no place for him, particularly since it is a society structured essentially to accommodate adults". (179) Holden has many problems but who is to say he is crazy just because of the way he thinks about things, maybe it really is the world around him.

Outline Thesis Statement: What really caused Holden Caufield's personality and emotional problems? I. Introduction II. The beginning of Holden Caufield. School problems. Holden against society. Family life. Holden's personality.

Holden's emotional thought sIV. Conclusion

Bibliography

Bryan, James. "The Psychological Structure of The Catcher in the Rye". Critical Essays on Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. Ed. James Nagel. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1990.
101-17. Bungert, Hans. "Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye: The Isolated youth and His Struggle to Communicate". Studies in J.D. Salinger Reviews, Essays, and Critiques of The Catcher in the Rye and Other fiction. Ed. Marvin Laser and Norman Frum an. New York: The Odyssey Press, 1963.
177-85. Pinker, Sanford. "And Holden Caufield Had a Great Fall". The Catcher in the Rye Innocence Under Pressure. Ed. Robert L ecker. New York: T wayne Publishers, 1993.
72-88. Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951.
Shaw, Peter. "Love and Death in The Catcher in the Rye". New Essays On The Catcher in the Rye. Ed. Jack Salzman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.