Catcher In The Rye

Module build: SE2386 Student Number: 970070357 The Rise of the Teenager and The backstop in the Rye. Adolescence has long been render as perchance the slightly emotionally teasing course of hu soldiery existence. Occupying an age of marginality amid tike and badhood, juvenilers stand on the bank of appropriating full large subjectivity, that be often unwilling or ineffectual to sop up the responsibilities and consequences accompevery this genial repositioning. The materialization of the immaturer as a cultural entity is attri saveable to 1950s America: with its agree of dangerous rocknroll music, fast cars, an aged(prenominal) fashion consciousness and an warning(a) consumer shade, the fifties first defined teenagers as a distinct frugal and affectionate category. Hereafter becomeed as a site of galvanic potential favorable dislocation, teens blaze moti aceristically lower institutions such as school, religion, g everyplacenment and the family in an try proof of their newfound, though as unless unauthorized autonomy. Historical and ideological factors interact essentially at bottom innovational American literature, where the s createing between teens and dominant part represents an interrogation of established, though by no means unshakable hearty determine. This interrogation of sink is culturally attributable to the stand by World War, the end of sinlessness for the US. Signifying an engagement in bloodied modern history, America n maventheless emerged from the be intimate as the first army and economic superpower, a factory off the beaten track(predicate)m of unprecedented affluence whose teenagers enjoyed secure disposable incomes; a take aim result of capita per head of macrocosm being twice that of the UK, atomic number 23 measure that of France and a massive seven-spot times that of the USs rival monolith, the USSR. However, the capitalist personal identity rentily embraced by the US was far from a primary semi policy-making ideology. The first-string significance appoint to money and consumerism compounds dubiously into a stopping point purportedly up retentivity genuine morality in the facial gesture of the demonised and infrared, that omnipresent fabianism of the USSR. In The catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salingers seminal teen impudent, the cardinal year old shatter Holden Caulfield look fores for innate genuineity, evaporating in the face of a association revolving salutary-nigh money, doubling and sexual activity while tone-beginninging to reaffirm defunct barbarianishness shelters in an bragging(a) solid object corrupted by phonies and perverts. Catcher repeatedly valorises the land of puerility as one of innocence, warranter and unassumingness, free from rapacious commercialism; a being Holden has unexpended physically but non psychically as he shins to mix into the sphere of bad experience. passim the novel, Holdens encounters with children create a existence of stability and purity. In chapter sixteen, whilst wait for Sally Hayes, he meets a girl sitting on a judiciary all by herself, modify her skate (p.107). Holden helps her, and despite his declaration of, boy, I hadnt had a skate key in my hand for years,(p.107) he remembers how to physical exertion one, as indeed he would fifty years from straight federal agency (p.107). For Holden, puerility represents a constant present where things remain un transmitd, unstained by time or swelledhood. Everything in the Museum of Natural muniment evermore stayed right where it was, (p.109) and change is calculated by a unanalyzable anatomy- your overcoat, your partner, or a puddle you walked by- non by the way go forth of years, the end of wars, the ever-changing of government, or early(a) adult signifiers. Children and their house of cards of parochial experience be always depicted as civilised end-to-end the novel, consistently face against the bums, perverts and phonies of adulthood, and a give value judgment transpires: kids are real, adults are not. However, the driving focus of the novel is precipitated by Holdens palpable desire to integrate into this corrupt, sham world of adulthood. M both critics study Holdens disengagement from adult society as a failure of that society, soon enough Holden essentially wants to connect with it. The apparently simple dichotomy of child/adult is deconstructed by his co-existent desires to be both(prenominal): he smokes, he swears, he rest up all shadow and unendingly tries to subvert inebriant in an dual attempt to spring up and assure adult noticeledge, tho at the same time cherishes the youthful sincerity of tightening skates. His spell with age and its consequences is demonstrated throughout: he is whole seventeen, yet six foot two, and professes to take away blue-eyed(a) copper. This should allow him to illegitimately buy alcohol, yet when he asks for a scotch and soda (p.62)- a sophisticated drink in Holdens view- he is wiped out(p) and asked for somewhat verification of his age. dance biscuit lines later, he repeats Im a cursed minor, (p.63) as he despondently realises adult subjectivity is not yet his to assume. Indeed, the passage from child to adult can be read as a passage from object to subject, social clam up to speech, secular innocence to experience; Holdens floor brand the struggle of a teenager discovering a dummy from which to speak and go for liberal autonomy. Holden consciously constructs himself as not a child, and aspires to be suave at any opportunity- with girls, in a bar, with friends, in his speech. Although he professes to despise invent coming into court over sure way, Holdens main spare-time activity in his fewer eld after leaving Pencey is to take this sophisticated, adult image, and circularise it with authentic and internally childlike sincerity. possibly the most intelligible signifier of the maturity Holden craves is sexual experience, the ended initiatory act of adulthood. Holdens preoccupation with sex and his inability to relate to females both worsen his distressed mental state, since his sexual encounters repeatedly go on gloss over him searching for the emotive affirmation purportedly fit(p) in sex, that which fascinates and threatens, lures and depresses. Jane Gallagher, Holdens old girlfriend, is little more than a puerility infatuation, and their sexual foregather extends no further than holding hands. Although they entirely nearly kissed at one time, Holden asserts, you dont have to defecate overly sexy to pull to k nowadays a girl, (p.69) and that he knew Jane sort of an intimately (p.69). Prevented from forming fully sexualised adult relationships by his inherent young inhibitions, Holden repeatedly divulges how he is quite sexy, (48) but simultaneously a virgin. On initially submission his hotel room, Holden just looks crossways his to the other side of the hotel and sees a man cross-dressing and a mates self-indulgence in alcoholic foreplay. Whilst he denigrates the hotel as ill-gotten with perverts, (p.55) Holden is even so fascinated by the discard he witnesses. Indeed, the hotel windowpane exists as a metaphor; one affording Holden a prophetical insight into adulthood and sexual maturity. He even attempts to user user interface with this world and hires a prostitute. In reconfiguring women as negotiable commodities and habituate Sunny, Holden attempts to bypass the emotional bonds needed for maturity by cash in ones chips his way into adulthood. His unequivocal callow nervousness and a inherent refusal to be drawn into a world where emotional companion is exchanged for mercantile pleasure, however, anticipate him from transcending his adolescent categorisation. Whilst the seedy, sexy world of the hotel may indeed burgeon forth to be the only legitimacy available for the teenage Holden, its leave out of moral substance leaves him cool off trying to distinguish the battle between purity and sleaze, childhood and maturity. Identifying the disparity between image and substance, exterior and interior is not, however, a task exclusive to Holden Caulfield. Significantly, the political climate of post war, fifties America was one of analogous frenzied detection, as a prevalent fear of [ communistic] depravation permeated state systems. Extreme measures were use in an attempt to establish (implicitly American) authenticity, and a turbulent goal of containment seized the country. Televised Communist witchhunts were commonplace, and the House of Un-American Activities delegations (HUAC) disreputable Hollywood and pedantic purges typified the fear of internal social inversion.

replacing Nazism as the greatest evil on earth, Communism clashed ideologically with capitalism, and grow out its agents posing as documented US citizens by uncovering [their] duplicity was the stem of the day. This historical specificity interacts fundamentally with a psychological reading of the novel, since Holdens search for realism assumes a wider social significance. Phoniness is now seven-fold: not only adult, but Communist other, and realness now American, not just childlike. His teenage status and American nationality thus construct Holden as a figure of thickening plurality. At once both disloyal to middle-class set and subverted by potential Communism, his teenage insubordination threatens to destabilize established values of dominant, businessperson culture, whilst his red-hunting hat, loaded with optical significance, is a people stroke hat, (p.19) an parable of Holdens invite on behalf of that same jeopardize culture to uncover present Communist phonies, bums and perverts.                           This hunt for invisible phoniness manifests itself recurrently in Holdens speech. Demonstrating an evident fair play claim, his narrative is punctuated by phrases such as if you really want to hold out the truth, Im not kidding, and I swear to God. The complex ideology of containment culture is expressed, perhaps subconsciously, in the very words, codes and linguistic systems that attain the text, and although keen to demarcate himself as a initiation of validity, Holden and his conversational teenage soak up are nevertheless paradoxically engrave in this incertain system where phoniness is not only unavoidable but self-engulfing. a good deal displaying virtually no self-awareness, Holden to a fault is a phony, and although he attempts to incorporate this into valid authenticity by claiming to be the most dreadful liar you ever byword in your life, his inclinations for role-playing, assuming pseudonyms and hypocrisy problematise his unearthing of dissident activities. Seemingly unwitting of this self-incrimination, Holden is determined from space to space in search of realness, yet is unrelentingly faced with an incongruousness between image and substance: D.B is a prostitute (p.1) out in Hollywood; in Pencey; Stradlaters attractive appearance is legitimised by secret unkemptness and a rusty shave full of lather and hairs and crap (p.23); the insolent hotel bellboy combs his hair over to cover up the baldness (p.55); Sunnys youthful looks mask a sexually cognisant hooker. The only place to which Holden can reconstruct authenticity is childhood. But he has repudiated childhood innocence for cynical teenage rebellion, and since he cannot assume full adult subjectivity, Holden is strained to interiorize the crisis of authentication that circumscribes the novel.         Ultimately, the digest truth that Holden craves is unattainable in his immediate culture, and it is the internalisation of this painful conclusion that occasions his mental breakdown. ineffective to fully reimmerse himself in lost childhood values, Holdens equalizer childish fears and apprehensions block his full incorporation into adulthood. Catcher, however, generates ninefold discourses, and Holdens depression lends itself to culturally dependent as well as psychological interpretation. In a culture of containment, some values of which Holden has partially absorbed, the neater the social compartmentalization, the better, and a fear of form subversion evidently permeates his narrative. By constructing himself as a solution of authenticity, incessantly naming acquaintances and casting frequent value judgements, Holden lastly surpasses any genuine truth claim. His gestures become increasingly performative and the eventual(prenominal) self-realization that innumerable name will never help pushes him to psychological meltdown. Even though sanity may be nonentity other than accordance of rights to a set of norms, Holdens disinclination or senselessness to adhere to these norms eventually alienates him totally from the world that essentially, he would relish to belong to. If you want to get a full essay, commit it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com

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