Catcher in the Rye

Throughout his novel, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger’s main character, Holden Caulfield, pretends he has a greater level of maturity to cover up his constant inability to succeed.

In my eyes, Holden’s educational years earned him the title of “failure.” He could not manage to stay in school as he was kicked out year after year. Throughout the novel, Holden uses profanity a lot, usually unnecessarily. I don’t think he even notices himself cursing most of the time as it becomes such a habit. He also attempts to escape his dreary life temporarily through smoking, drinking, and sex. Although it was a different time when the novel was written, it still was not necessarily normal for someone so young to turn to such things. Holden was a very heavy smoker, and he spent a lot of time going to bars to consume alcohol although he was underage. One particular time Holden was at the bar when he attempted to flirt with older women. The entire time he thought they were actually into it, but he eventually realized that they were just messing around with him. His focus on sex is even more prominently shown when he orders a cheap prostitute to his room.

Holden see’s many flaws in almost everything around him, yet rarely notices the obvious flaws of himself. I think that Holden actually does realize how flawed he is, so he picks out the flaws of everyone else to feel better about himself. At one point he states how he hates when people repeat themselves, yet throughout the entire book Holden uses repetition in his dialogue. This shows that he is very hypocritical. Even seemingly unimportant things are not so unimportant in the eyes of Holden. “I hate it when anybody has cheap suitcases.” He surprisingly puts up a respectable argument about why he hates it, but still it is of little importance.

A major issue that Holden faces in his life is that he can’t seem to fit in with everyone else. Holden is just different, plain and simple. Everywhere he goes he cannot relate to...