Cacther In The Rye Essay -- essays research papers

JD Salinger, also known as Jerome David Salinger, is an American novelist and short story writer. Critics and readers similar recognize Salinger as one of the most popular and influential writers. His plainly novel, The Catcher in the rye whisky, drew such great attention during the fifties and sixties that those years have been called the age of Holden Caulfield (Contemporary literary Critiscm, Vol. 12). Salinger is a exceed of contemporary dialect and idiomatic expression. He created in Holden Caulfield a share who became the prototype of alienated adolescence for an entire generation of Americans. The Catcher in the Rye has been banned even recently from a few libraries, schools, and bookstores for the starkness of its quarrel and attitudes and the realism of some of its settings.Although Salinger has fallen out of critical favor because of his sentimentality, it is broadly speaking agreed that Catcher has yet to be surpassed in its portrayal of the var. and pleasures of a youth searching for love and direction. In all his do Salinger draws upon the experience of his own life. For instance, his parents shared the same gumptiongrounds as do those of his assumed Glass family. An undistinguished student, Salinger flunked out of private high school. His family sent him to vale Forge Military Academy, the model the Catchers Pencey Prep (Contemporary literary Criticism Vol. 3).The protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, is one of these American heroes, and with a significant difference. He seems to be engaged in some(prenominal) sorts of quests at once he needs to go home and he needs to leave it. Unlike the other American knight errants, Holden seeks moral excellence second to love. He wants to be good. When the little children are playing in the rye-field on the clifftop, Holden wants to be the one who catches them before they fall off the cliff. equivalent these American heroes, Holden is a wanderer, for in order to be good he has to be more of a bad boy than the puritanical huckaback could have imagined. Holden has had enough of both Hannibal, Missouri, and the Mississippi and his tragedy is that when he starts back up the river, he has no place to go- save, of course, a California head-shrinkers couch (Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 12).Holdens quest takes him outside socie... ...oment ever becoming a segment of the past. Holden views his life as being in a state of continual change. Since a developed intellect is needful to realize immutable conceptions, and since Holdens thinking is limited to his sense of the mutableness of life, Holden remains trapped within time, unable to recognize anything permanent in human existence (Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 5). One might conclude by stressing that Holden is talking, not to an analyst, but to you, the reader. Holden is talking directly to anyone who might be as troubled morally and spiritually as Holden was about the nature of this dom ain in which everyone exists. He offers his narration of The Catcher in the Rye as a record of his troubles for anyone who might wish to learn from his experiences. As Mr. Antolini says, Its a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isnt education. Its history. Its poetry. (Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 12)Work citedContemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 3Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 8Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 12Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 5