Catcher in the Rye Essay: Holden Caulfield - A Nice Kid in a Cruel World :: Catcher Rye Essays

Holden Caulfield - A Nice Kid in a Cruel World Over the years, members of the literary community confuse critiqued just about every author they could go away their pen on. One of the most popular novels to be critiqued has been J. D. Salingers The Catcher in the Rye. In favorable critiques, Holden Caulfield is a good guy stuck in a bad world. He is trying to make the best of his life, though ultimately losing that battle. Whereas he aims at stability and truth, the vainglorious world cannot survive without suspense and lies. It is a testament to his innocence and decent spirit that Holden would place the safety of children as a goal in his lifetime. This serves to only when re-iterate the fact that Holden is a sympathetic character, a person of high moral values who is too weak to pick himself up from a difficult situation. S.N. Behrman, in his review for The New Yorker, also took a sharp look at Holdens personality. Behrman found Caulfield to be very self-critical, as he ofte n refers to himself as a terrible liar, a madman, and a moron. Holden is driven crazy by phoniness, an idea under which he lumps insincerity, snobbery, injustice, callousness, and a lot more. He is a prodigious worrier, and mortal who is moved to pity quite often. Behrman wrote Grown men sometimes find the emblazoned obscenities of life too much for them, and leave this world indecorously, so the fact that a 16-year old boy is overwhelmed should not be surprising (71). Holden is also labeled as curious and compassionate, a true moral idealist whose attitude comes from an tearing hatred of hypocrisy. The novel opens in a doctors office, where Holden is recuperating from physical illness and a mental breakdown. In Holdens fight with Stradlater, his roommate, he reveals his moral ideals he fears his roommates sexual motives, and he values children for their sincerity and innocence, seeking to protect them from the phony adult society. Jane Gallagher and Allie, the younger brother of Holden who died at age 11, represent his everlasting symbols of goodness (Davis 317). A ingeminate by Charles Kegel seems to adequately sum up the fusss of Holden Caulfield Like Stephen Dedalus of James Joyces A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,Caulfield is in search of the Word. His problem is one of communication as a teenager, he simply cannot get through to the adult world which surrounds him as a sensitive teenager, he cannot get through others of his own age (54).