Catcher In The Rye :: essays research papers

Holden Caulfield is a sixteen-year-old prep school student who has flunked out of school the week forrader Christmas. Several days before hes expected home for Christmas vacation, he leaves school, planning to spend some sentence on his own in New York metropolis where he lives. Though Holden is friendly with many people at school, and though he has several friends in New York, hes constantly lonesome and in subscribe of someone who will sympathize with his feelings of alienation. The person Holden feels closest to is his ten-year-old sister, Phoebe, notwithstanding he cant call her for fear of letting his parents know he has left school. He spends his time with a variety of people, but he cant make meaningful contact with any of them. After a day of this futility, he sneaks into his home to see Phoebe, but she disappoints him by being annoyed at his being expelled from still another school. Holden decides that the only solution to his overwhelming problem is to run away and es tablish a new identity as a deaf mute who will not need to communicate with anyone. On the verge of a nervous collapse, Holden changes his sense and decides to rejoin his family. He then enters a hospital or rest home not far from Hollywood, California, and he is telling us his story enchantment in this institution. At the novels close, Holden isnt sure whether hell be able to handle things better when he leaves the institution, and hes sorry he told his story at all. Catcher in the rye whiskey is a rich psychological portrait of a boy whos frightened at the prospect of growing up, a boy who has few of the tools necessary to lay out the world on his own.