1) Many people view Holden as a visionary and a tragic hero. Is he a hero or just a selfish brat who needs to lose his ego.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
The catcher in the Rye is an epic novel about a selfish punk who wonders around New York. Holden Caulfield is kicked out of a private school for hundredth time because he thinks everyone is phony and he's so great. He goes to New York and gets drunk, he also buys a prostitute but just cries the whole time and then his pimp comes in a beats him up. He calls a bunch of girls he knows but ends up flipping out on them and storming off. He visits his sister at his parents apartment and talks to her. She looks up to her joke of a big brother because she is an innocent child. Holden wants to be a protector of children in a rye field so they do not fall of a cliff. He visits his old teacher and spends the night but when he wakes up to the teacher patting his head he runs away and cries. He takes his sister to a carousel and realizes he cannot be the catcher in the rye.
2 comments:
I would not call him either for it seems that Holden had some mental and emotional problems that should have been checked in to. He is a character with a internal conflict raging within him throughout the story.
I agree with Cieran, Holden is a combination of both things. He is an emotional wreck that seems to be immature. But that's because he is a young man growing into his own. HE has many issues that he has to work out in the novel. HE however isnt fully a brat because he truly loves his sister, the only thing he likes in the world. HE grows at the end realizing the real world which makes him a visionary. I think he is like a normal teen ( of course more colorful than most) who doesn'nt want to grow up and at the end he realizes he has too.
Post a Comment