phong+hoang+first+draft

The novel The Catcher in the rye was first published during 1951. The novel takes place in New York and the main Character is Holden Caulfield as he talks about his experiences in New York. J.D Salinger’s novel, //The Catcher in the Rye,// has made people want to kill. For fact John Lennon was killed because of him being expected of being a phony. Chapman the murder thinking that he is Holden goes out and kills Lennon for being a phony. During Chapman’s case his defense was the catcher in the rye book. In the novel //The Catcher in the Rye,// by J.D Salinger, Holden Caulfield fears adulthood. Throughout the story he explains of why kids should enjoy childhood and why they still can. He also explains of why adults are so phony. ** Holden fears adulthood because of relationships and intimacy, fear of losing innocence and, and the fear of being a phony ** **. **

Holden fears adulthood because he is afraid of losing his innocence. Holden tells Phoebe that he wants to prevent children growing up. He blames the world’s corruption on adults and he then believes that if he stops the children form growing up he will be able to preserve their innocence and save the world. Finally Holden realizes that he can do absolutely nothing but also he cannot go anywhere to hide from it. Phoebe challenges Holden on his plan of escaping out west. As he is telling phoebe that she cannot run away, he discovers that he cannot run away either. “You can’t ever find a place a place that is nice and peaceful because here isn’t any.” The final breakdown comes near at the end of the book when he is watching phoebe on the carousel. As all the kids on the carousel try to grab the golden rings, Holden hits the final breakdown. Being the catcher becomes obviously unrealistic. It is as this point that Holden sees that he cannot stop children form growing up and therefore losing their innocence.

Holden fear of adulthood is because he is afraid of intimacy and relationships. He fears intimacy because complexity, unpredictability, and potential for conflict and change. At the museum of natural History Holden would like the world to be silent and frozen, because it would be then predictable and unchanging. Since people are unpredictable they challenge Holden and force him to question his confidence and senses. Holden has trouble dealing with this kind of complexity. So he isolates him self form the world and stays away from intimacy and relationship as if he was in a shell. . Although he encounters opportunities for both physical and emotional intimacy, he bungles them all, wrapping himself in a psychological armor of critical cynicism and bitterness. Even so, Holden desperately continues searching for new relationships, always undoing himself only at the last moment.

Holden is afraid of the adult world because of the “phonies” around. Holden criticizes everybody of being a phony except for the children. He believes that he can stop the children from being phonies by stop them from growing into adults. Holden is afraid of adulthood because he doesn’t want to be the phony that all the adults are. Even though Holden judges other people of being phonies he never stops and observes his self. Holden continually lies about himself for example, on the train to New York; he perpetrates a mean-spirited and needless prank on Mrs. Morrow. He’d like us to believe that he is a paragon of virtue in a world of phoniness, but that simply isn’t the case. Although he’d like to believe that the world is a simple place and innocence rest on one side of the fence while phoniness rest on the other.