Socio-Economic Class in The Catcher in the Rye - Research Paper Example

number Socio-economic in The Catcher in the Rye This paper presents a discussion of The Catcher in the Rye byDavid Salinger. The focus is on how the author uses themes, motifs, and symbols to improve meaning to the novel’s chapters and storyline. A major theme in the book is alienation through self-protection. Across the entire novel, Holden appears to encounter an exclusion from the society. He mentions to Mr. Spencer that he has a feeling of being trapped on life’s “other side”. He continues trying to find a way across the world that he does not belong. The novel progresses to develop the perception that the alienation of Holden is a form of self-protection (Salzman 67). While he wears the hunting hat to sell his prowess, he makes use of his isolation to be proof of his better skills as compared to all other people around him. Therefore, they do not prefer interacting with him. However, the fact is that such interactions with various people overwhelm and confuse him making his cynical superiority sense serve as a typical aspect of self-protection. In turn, the alienation of Holden remains to be his little stability’s source in his life. The second theme expressed in the book is the painful experiences during his growth. This analysis considers The Catcher in the Rye to be a roman novel on the growth of a young character into maturity. Even as this becomes an appropriate topic to discuss, the novel considers Holden Caulfield an unusual protagonist in the bildungsroman situation. This is because the central goal is resisting the procedure of articulating maturity by itself. While the thoughts of the Natural History Museum demonstrate this, Holden is in constant fear of change through an overwhelming complexity (Salinger 106). He longs to have a meaningful connection that he shared with Jane Gallagher, but intense fright makes him withdraw any efforts of contacting her. He is dependent on his alienation irrespective of the fact that it destroys him.He seeks to have everything easy to understandable through eternal fixation. This is similar to the status of Indians and Eskimos across the museum. He remains aloof with frightening as he has a guilty notion of the various sins that he criticizes others. It also appears because he cannot fully understand the entire thing surrounding him (Bloom 65). Alienation becomes a source of Holden’s problems and strength at the same time. For instance, his loneliness triggers him into dating Sally Hayes, but the need to remain isolated pushes him into insulting her and driving her awayHowever, he is in a refusal of acknowledging such fear while expressing it through few instances. For instance, he communicates of sex while admitting that it is a thing that he does not understand (Chapter 9). Readers can see that the alienation causes more pain to him. He does not directly address his emotions, nor attempt to make the discovery of the ultimate sources for his personal troubles. He needs human love and contact, even though the protective inhibitor of bitterness is a major prevention from him looking for respective interactions. Holden makes an invention of the fantasy that adulthood entails hypocrisy and superficiality instead of having an acknowledgment that adulthood mystifies and scares him. Although the author would like to believe that the globe entails taking a stress-free position, the benefits and purity of relaxation lie on one side of the barrier while superficiality and phoniness relax on the other (Salzman 71). The world does not entail stress free lives as the author expects as he cannot follow the same black-and-white requirements when he continue judging other individuals. Thus, he imagines the element of childhood to be an idyllic direction of rye that children play and romp. For this world’s children, death equivalence is the fatal fall at a cliff. The created childhood and adulthood understandings allow Holden to continue cutting himself off away from the world through covering himself using protective cynicism armor. As the story progresses, the experiences of Holden, mostly his encounters with Phoebe and Mr. Antolini have a revelation of his conceptions’ shallowness. He mentions, “Dont ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody” (Salinger 75). A critical motif expressed in the book is loneliness. The loneliness of Holden becomes a concrete manifestation for his overall alienation issue as the driving force across the novel. A major part of the book offers a description of his manic companionship quest while flitting from one meaningless situation to others. “And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean, if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, Id probably lean over and tell myself to, please shut up” (Salinger 172). While the behavior is an indication of his loneliness, Holden shies from any form of introspection and hence does not know the reasons for behaving as he does. Holden heavily depends on the isolation for his detachment’s preservation in the world while maintaining consistent self-protection levels and sabotages his attempts of end the loneliness. For instance, his interaction with Carl Luce and Sally Hayes with his date becomes unbearable due to the rude behavior. His efforts of seeking Jane Gallagher end on similar reasons towards the protection of his fragile and precious individuality sense. Loneliness remains an emotional manifestation for the Holden experiences alienation where it is a source his security and great pain (Salinger 67). Though oversimplified, Holden’s findings are not entirely incorrect. He can be a very informative narrator, and he is very conscious of trivial actions in those around him. Throughout the novel his activities many figures that do seem affected, exaggerated, or superficial—Sally Hayes, Carl Luce, Maurice and Warm, and even Mr. Spencer take a position out as illustrations. Some figures, like Maurice and Warm, are truly dangerous. However, although the author uses so much power looking for phoniness in others, he never straight notices his own phoniness. His deceptions are usually useless and vicious, and he notices that he is an obsessive liar. Other motifs include sexuality, intimacy, and relationships. Intimacy, relationships, and sexuality become recurring motifs in relation to the larger alienation theme. Both emotional and physical relationships provide Holden with an opportunity of breaking out from his respective isolated shell. It is a representation of his fears about adult world including unpredictability, complexity as well as the conflict and change potential. In demonstrating the Natural History Museum, Holden develops a liking for the world due to the silence and frozen elements of the predictable and unchanging world (Bloom 73). In watching Phoebe sleep, he projects his personal childhood idealizations onto her. However, in the real-world relationships, people communicate back while Phoebe makes a revelation of how she has a different childhood from Holden’s notion (Pinsker & Pinsker 83). While people remain unpredictable, there is a challenge for Holden forcing him into questioning his self-worth and self-confidence senses. For unspoken and intricate reasons, stemming from the death of Allie, he has much trouble addressing such complexity. In the end, he isolates himself while fearing intimacy. Even though he faces opportunities to engage in both emotional and physical intimacy, he bungles all of them as he wraps himself with the psychological armor for critical bitterness and cynicism. Holden continues to search for other relationships while undoing him at the last moment. The author mentions, “The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one” (Salinger 27). Another motif is lying and deception, which are the very hurtful and obvious elements for larger phoniness categories. The definition of phoniness by Holden’s relies on a form of self-deception in that he seems reserves more scorn for other people thinking that they refuse to have an acknowledgement of their respective weaknesses (Bloom 16). However, lying to others amounts to a form of phoniness and a deception indicating callousness, insensitivity, or cruelty. Holden is guilty of the crimes. His repeated and random lying is highlight of his self-deception while he declines to develop an acknowledgement of his personal shortcomings as well as an unwilling of considering how the behavior influences the people around him. “It was that a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road” (Salinger 26). Lastly, a critical symbol in the novel is “Catcher in the Rye”. This symbol brings in much meaning to the novel’s content. While it props up in Chapter 16, Holden as a kid has an admiration of walking along the street as compared to the sidewalk through singing the “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye” song by Robert Burns. In Chapter 22, while Holden is asked by Phoebe what he wants with his life, the reply is from the song, with his image, of the “catcher in the rye.” He has an imagination of a rye field perched on a high cliff with children playing and romping. He would like to have the children protected from the element of falling from the cliff’s edge by “catching” each of them, as they seem to tumble over (Pinsker & Pinsker 78). Phoebe points out that Holden mishears the lyric. The song asks if there is anything wrong for people having romantic encounters from the fields from the entire public eye irrespective of the fact that they do not plan to make a commitment to each other. This becomes highly ironic as the term “meet” refers to encounters that translate into recreational sex. The word substituted by Holden is ‘catch’ while taking on opposites meaning across his mind. Works Cited Bloom, Harold. J. D. Salingers the Catcher in the Rye. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009. Print Pinsker, Sanford., Pinsker, Ann. Understanding The Catcher in the Rye: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999. Print Salinger, J. David. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Paw Prints, 2008. Print Salzman, Jack. New Essays on The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Print Read More