Understanding Holden Caulfield

Part I of Essay
in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger 1953), is a novel told in an autobiographical manner which tracks Holden Caulfield on his two day sojourn through 1950’s New York City. This short twentieth century novel delves int ....

Part II of Essay
.... high places” (Edwards 556). Thus, it is easy to explain reader’s acceptance of him. “Indeed, these people are like Holden himself - the Holden who can be willful, contrary, often impossible, yet in a manner insistently of his own making and at odds with whatever he deems dull or conformist” (Lee 102). “Ambivalence is, in fact, characteristic of Holden, the surest evidence of his mental instability" (Furst 76). He is not what he and many readers assume he is: "an anti-establish figure whose Kennedy 2 disgust is directed at other people” (Edwar ....