Living in the Past in The Catcher In The Rye Essay

In Catcher in the Rye, the author allows a deeply disturbed and confused teenager named Holden Caulfield to tell his own story. In contrary to other teenagers, who wish to get older to benefit from advantages such as getting a drivers license and being independent, Holden tries to grasp what is left of his childhood as he realizes the existing phoniness in the adult life, and avoids being part in it for as long as he can. He wishes to remain part of the innocent and pure life that children lead in life, in which they face no problems but live peacefully and happily. In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger explores confusion, isolation and childishness in which Holden struggles to emerge from and yet succeeds eventually towards the very end, as he decides to go to a new school and set his mind into achieving something in life.

Throughout the story, Holden seems to be confused about the phoniness that exists everywhere he goes and within everyone he knows. To him, everyone seems so fake and untrue with themselves as well as with others. He loathes phonies and criticizes them a lot and yet the irony is that he, himself is a phony. He claims that hes the most terrific liar and fails to realize that a phony is a person that is fake, misleading and dishonest. As he dropped out from school, he headed to a hotel in New York instead of going home to his family, and out of boredom decided to call a girl named Sally Hayes. As he started talking to her on the phone, he instantly mentioned that shes kind of phony as well, just like everyone else. She was quiet a little phony. Her father already told her who it was (Salinger, 1951, page 106). Holden thought she was being dishonest by asking him who he was, since he assumed she already knew, given that her father must have told her. Although he believed shes a phony, he set a date to meet with her nevertheless. This makes him a hypocrite because he talked about what a phony she is, and right after that, decided to meet her, despite how much he despised phonies. Holden was confused and this led him to make quick judgments about people, claiming they were all phonies, and in the meantime, failing to realize that he too, was a phony.

Due to the phoniness in everyone, Holden struggled to get along with anyone and as a result, had no true friends and lived in isolation. In the beginning, Holden introduced one of his friends, Ackley, the one who he described as an ugly, repulsive boy with pimples all over his face. As much as Holden tried to not get attached to other people as he convinced himself that he disliked them, he really did like Allie in a way and felt he could speak to him whenever he was feeling lonely. Boy, did I feel rotten. I felt so damn lonesome (Salinger, 1951, page 48). He ostracized himself from Salley too, who seemed very sweet as she was willing to meet up with him when he called her up, and kind of cared about him. He pushed her away though as he was very rude, telling her that she was a royal pain in his ass. The reason why Holden never found anyone that he liked or could get along with because all the people his age thought very differently than him. Holdens immaturity led him to be isolated from the rest of the teenagers, as they couldnt wait to grow up, he dreaded having to grow up and held on to his childhood because of the innocence and pureness he found in it.

Holden, the unusually childish teenager that he was, had no concerns for his future and instead wanted to hold on to the past, to his childhood. Having seen all the cruelty in the world, he wanted to escape it by remaining a child, one who lives in innocent, whos pure and unaware of all the wrong things people do in life. He attempted to keep the children hidden from this other side of the world which he believed would violate their innocence by trying to scrub off the unpleasant insult that was written on one of the walls in school. He also got a long with his sister best, one that was younger than him, and that was probably becoming more mature than him as she was able to make him realize that he liked nothing, and that it was wrong. He was so nave that he unable to understand the true meaning of the poem, If a body meet a body coming through the rye (Salinger, 1951, page 173). Holden truly believed that by this, the author meant that one would be catching bodies that would be close to the edge of the cliff, saving them. He really liked the idea and hoped that one day he can do that, meaning save little children from falling off the cliff, what he really meant though is saving them from the reality of the world, keeping them innocent. Over time, at the end of the book, Holden finally realized that he needed to grow up and go back to school, he even seemed pretty determined, as if this time he was going to actually try to accomplish something. After all, he also realized that he actually missed the people that he talked about, although he did think at least some of them were phonies. He even advised his readers by saying: Dont ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody (Salinger, 1951, page 214). Holden did care about these people in a way, he just didnt realize it, not until he left them, and started talking as well as thinking about them.

Confusion, isolation, and childishness took over the disturbed teenager Holden who tried to figure out life and was over thinking everything in it. He made judgments about people, calling them phonies, and failed to realize that he was a phony as well. In The Catcher in the Rye, a teenager tells his story, displaying a confusing, troubling phase that he was going through as he tried to understand the world he lived in, and saw everything in black and white, black being the evil, cruel world in which people committed atrocities and white the pure, innocent, simple world in which children enjoyed and in which he wished to stay in forever.