《An Analysis of Holden’s Growing Path of Life》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《An Analysis of Holden’s Growing Path of Life（15页珍藏版）》请在金锄头文库上搜索。
1、An Analysis of Holdens Growing Path of LifeI. IntroductionThe Catcher in the Ray is the only novel written by J. D. Salinger. With its publication in 1951, J. D. Salinger becomes one of the most significant Post-World II American novelists. The novel immediately becomes very popular in America soon
2、after its publication and has been reprinted again and again. In one from or another, Salinger is Everybodys favorite with that audience of students, students intellectuals, instructors, and generally literary, sensitive, and sophisticated young people who respond to him with a consciousness that he
3、 speaks for them and virtually to them, in a language that is peculiarly honest and their own, with a vision of things that captures their most secret judgments of the world. (Harold 2)The Catcher in the Rye narrates a series of picaresque adventures of a sixteen-year-old boy in the New York for thr
4、ee days. It belongs to the American initiation story and has a very important status in the literature. American initiation story is a novel genre, which attaches great importance to growing up problems of the adolescence, but it has its own features in terms of narrative structure, plot and protago
5、nists. The protagonist Holden Caulfield became a legendary figure, and his acute adolescent awareness is the same as most sensitivity young Americans.Since its publication, The Catcher in the Rye is a controversial literary work. Some very famous literary critics including John Aldridge, Maxwell Gei
6、smar, Leslie Fiedler, Grederick Gwymn even doubted at the value of The Catcher in the Rye. This situation lasts until Warren French publishes his first work on Salinger: J. D. Salinger. Additional criticism of The Catcher in the Rye concentrated on the language, narrative structure, and cultural con
7、tinuity compared with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the education or initiation of an adolescent, and Holdens awareness crisis.And this paper will be dissertation to analyze the growing path of Holden in The Catcher in the Rye. How can he get over the growing crisis from “rebellion” to “final
8、enlightenment?” Especially “nature”, which Holden is actually searching for, contains the external nature world and an innocent world in his fantasy. After Post-world War, more and more young people faced on the main-adolescence growing up crisis in the America. During adolescence, boys and girls go
9、 through the biological, Psychological, and social changes necessary to prepare themselves to successfully meet the challenges of the next stage of development, namely, adulthood. Rogers explains it more exactly, “Adolescence is a processa process of achieving the attitudes and beliefs needed for ef
10、fective participation in society.” (Rogers 5) But, they didnt suit the changes from young to the marital adult. Holden is such an adolescent, he fails in school, uses vulgar expressions, gets drunk, and is very interested in sex. He may be considered to have low moral standards. Although these commo
11、n adolescent characteristics may not fit in with the idealistic conception of a teenager. On one hand, Holden finds the innocence of children and wants to be a protector of the innocence; on the other hand, he must be growing up and gets into the dilemma between the childhood and the adulthood. He r
12、efuses the traditions of school in which they focus on educating people materialistically, lacking depth and warmth. His loneliness and rebellion come from his passive rejection of the false conventions and phonies that surrounded him. However, no matter whatever the rebellion of Holden, he is not t
13、o overthrow society. So at the end of the novel, the red hunting hat cant stop the pouring rain; Holden has the wet clothes. Holden must be inevitably going back under the help of Phoebe. II. Growing PainAdolescents CrisisAdolescents are in marginal situation; it represents a special period of human
14、 development, a fascinating transitional period in which adolescence undergoes many changes and bears the great responsibility for further development into adulthood. But adolescence didnt suit the changes for these years, causing great disorder and disarray, as an interruption of peaceful growth, a
15、nd as perilous, Holden is in such a situation. He “does not refuse to grow up as much as he agonizes over the state of being grown up.” (Galloway 140) Standing at the door of growing into maturity, he finds that the surroundings are a phony world. He cant understand the world and wants to preserve t
16、he innocence childhood. And then the sensitive adolescent is trapped in the dilemma between pure childhood and phony adulthood, between his inner innocence and the outside experience.A. The Phony World in Holdens EyesIn this novel, readers find that one of the most frequently used words in Holdens remarks is “phony”. The schools are phony, teachers are phony, the sponsors are phony, and the students are phony too. “Phony” is
