Chatcher In The Rye Essay

Catcher in the Rye essay

The Catcher in the Rye is a controversial book that although very well written, is banned in most schools today. This is mostly because John Lennon’s killer blamed the novel for his crime. It is still an excellent book which has several deep messages, it is interesting to try and interpret them, which is one of the reasons why many people still enjoy reading it. In J.D. Salinger’s modern American novel, The Catcher in the Rye, the main character Holden Caulfield is a mostly normal teenager who is struggling with finding his purpose in life and what to do about his loss of innocence and as a result occasionally lapses into insanity.        
In the Catcher in the Rye Holden is fed up with school and teenage life, he wishes he was older than he is, and as a result tries to act older. The problem he has though is that he doesn’t know what he wants to do when he is older, or what his purpose in life is, so he gets confused and ends up flunking out of every single school he goes to, smoking a lot, and drinking a lot even though he is underage. Holden is always going into bars and drinking alcohol, and when he is refused alcohol, he gets offended. He is always showing people his grey hairs to make them think he’s older than he is. For Holden to really become an adult though, he has to do more than grow grey hair and drink a lot of alcohol, he has to mature and learn to apply himself. I think this is one of the key problems Holden faces in the novel.
    Holden in always pointing out that some people are “phony”. These people tend to be very sexualized, showy, or liars, which is a bit hypocritical considering Holden lies about almost everything. The people he likes tend to be innocent, like phoebe his 10 year old sister, the nuns he meets at the restaurant, or Jane. Holden likes innocence because his own innocence has been ruined and he doesn’t want that to be the same for everybody. The passage on pages 155-158 is a good example of how...