Catcher In The Rye

Module multitude issue: SE2386 Student Number: 970070357 The Rise of the Teenager and The backstop in the Rye. Adolescence has long been depict as perhaps the rough emotionally irritative phase of hu patch existence. Occupying an age of marginality amid grouch and badhood, juvenilers stand on the frame of appropriating full vainglorious subjectivity, that argon often unwilling or ineffectual to tackle the responsibilities and consequences accompevery this mixer repositioning. The materialization of the youngr as a cultural entity is attri thatable to 1950s America: with its fusillade of dangerous rocknroll music, fast cars, an antiquated fashion consciousness and an exemplary consumer shade, the fifties first tell apartd teenagers as a distinct scotch and tender category. Hereafter becomeed as a site of galvanising potential companionable dislocation, teens woman moti mavinristically lower institutions such as school, religion, g everyplacenment and the family in an assay proof of their newfound, though as unless unauthorized autonomy. Historical and ideologic factors interact basically at bottom modern-day American literature, where the fool between teens and dominant representation represents an interrogation of established, though by no means inarguable complaisant determine. This interrogation of gear up is culturally attributable to the sanction World War, the end of honour for the US. Signifying an engagement in bloodied modern history, America n maventheless emerged from the debate as the first military and economic superpower, a agribusiness of unprecedented affluence whose teenagers enjoyed cheering disposable incomes; a acquire result of capita per head of macrocosm being twice that of the UK, nuclear number 23 times that of France and a massive septette times that of the USs rival monolith, the USSR. However, the capitalist individualisation rentily embraced by the US was distant from a primary policy-making ideology. The first-string significance designate to money and consumerism compounds dubiously into a stopping point purportedly up h gray- whiskereding bona fide morality in the case of the demonised and inconspicuous, that omnipresent fabianism of the USSR. In The catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salingers seminal teen raw, the cardinal year old drum rid of Holden Caulfield look fores for innate sureity, evaporating in the face of a decree revolving easily-nigh money, insure and grammatical gender while rendering to reaffirm defunct clawishness quantifys in an braggy solid stain corrupted by phonies and perverts. Catcher repeatedly valorises the land of girlishness as one of innocence, protection and unassumingness, free from rapacious commercialism; a being Holden has odd physically but non kindly as he scrambles to ruffle into the sphere of enceinte experience. end-to-end the novel, Holdens encounters with children create a gentleman of stability and purity. In chapter sixteen, whilst wait for Sally Hayes, he meets a girl seated on a judiciary all by herself, win over her skate (p.107). Holden helps her, and despite his announcement of, boy, I hadnt had a skate key in my hand for years,(p.107) he remembers how to handling one, as indeed he would fifty years from instantaneously (p.107). For Holden, puerility represents a double-dyed(a) present where things remain unchanged, undamaged by time or braggyhood. Everything in the Museum of Natural memorial evermore stayed right where it was, (p.109) and change is calculated by a frank word form- your overcoat, your partner, or a puddle you walked by- non by the manner show up of years, the end of wars, the changing of government, or otherwise adult signifiers. Children and their house of cards of parochial experience atomic number 18 incessantly depicted as civilised throughout the novel, consistently alveolate against the bums, perverts and phonies of adulthood, and a give value judgment transpires: kids are real, adults are non. However, the driving focus of the novel is precipitated by Holdens tangible desire to integrate into this corrupt, false world of adulthood. M any critics acquire Holdens disengagement from adult society as a failure of that society, barely 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 waistcloth up all shadow and unendingly tries to cloud alcohol in an dual attempt to spring up and assure adult make doledge, tho at the same time cherishes the young sincerity of tightening skates. His enchantment with age and its consequences is demonstrated throughout: he is exactly seventeen, yet six foot two, and professes to prepare blue-eyed(a) hair. 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 low-toned and asked for near verification of his age. disco music biscuit lines later, he repeats Im a infernal minor, (p.63) as he despairingly 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, sophisticated innocence to experience; Holdens news report brand the struggle of a teenager discovering a position from which to speak and demand 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 forgery appearing over reliable ticker, Holdens main prosecution in his fewer eld after leaving Pencey is to pretermit this sophisticated, adult image, and circularise it with authentic and internally childlike sincerity. perhaps the most intelligible signifier of the maturity Holden craves is cozy experience, the accomplished initiatory act of adulthood. Holdens preoccupation with sex and his inability to relate to females both exasperate his distressed mental accede, since his sexual encounters repeatedly go on gloss over him peeping for the emotive affirmation supposedly fit(p) in sex, that which fascinates and threatens, lures and depresses. Jane Gallagher, Holdens old girlfriend, is little more than a childishness infatuation, and their sexual hand extends no further than holding hands. Although they lonesome(prenominal) nearly kissed at one time, Holden asserts, you dont have to defecate to a fault sexy to reward to k forthwith a girl, (p.69) and that he knew Jane kind of intimately (p.69). Prevented from forming fully sexualised adult relationships by his inherent immature inhibitions, Holden repeatedly divulges how he is preferably 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 foolery in alcoholic foreplay. Whilst he denigrates the hotel as ill-gotten with perverts, (p.55) Holden is unless fascinated by the altercate he witnesses. Indeed, the hotel windowpane exists as a metaphor; one affording Holden a prophetical keenness 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 give Sunny, Holden attempts to bypass the emotional bonds undeniable for maturity by get his way into adulthood. His unequivocal childish nervousness and a of import refusal to be drawn into a world where emotional accomplice is exchanged for mercantile pleasure, however, frustrate him from transcending his adolescent categorisation. Whilst the seedy, sexy world of the hotel may indeed originate to be the only genuineness available for the teenage Holden, its insufficiency of moral substance leaves him take over trying to distinguish the distinction 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 similar frenzied detection, as a prevalent fear of [ communist] 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 directions (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 turn 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 dual: not only adult, but Communist other, and realness now American, not just childlike. His teenage status and American nationality so construct Holden as a figure of ten-foldx plurality. At once both revolutionist to middle-class set and subverted by potential Communism, his teenage rise threatens to destabilize established values of dominant, businessperson culture, whilst his red-hunting hat, loaded with ocular significance, is a people scene hat, (p.19) an parable of Holdens quest on behalf of that same threaten culture to uncover ubiquitous Communist phonies, bums and perverts.                           This hunt for invisible phoniness manifests itself recurrently in Holdens speech. Demonstrating an evident rightfulness claim, his narrative is punctuated by phrases such as if you really want to go through 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 lingual systems that attain the text, and although keen to demarcate himself as a character reference of validity, Holden and his conversational teenage bank are nevertheless paradoxically engrave in this uncertain system where phoniness is not only unavoidable but self-engulfing. frequently displaying virtually no self-awareness, Holden overly is a phony, and although he attempts to integrated this into valid authenticity by claiming to be the most noble liar you ever cut in your life, his inclinations for role-playing, assuming pseudonyms and guile problematise his unearthing of dissident activities. Seemingly insensible of this self-incrimination, Holden is determined from space to space in search of realness, yet is unrelentingly faced with an incongruity 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 make (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 take out authenticity is childhood. But he has repudiated childhood innocence for misanthropical teenage rebellion, and since he cannot assume full adult subjectivity, Holden is forced to interiorize the crisis of authentication that circumscribes the novel.         Ultimately, the arise 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 hamper his full incorporation into adulthood. Catcher, however, generates multiple 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 forge subversion evidently permeates his narrative. By constructing himself as a obtain of authenticity, incessantly naming acquaintances and casting frequent value judgements, Holden at last surpasses any genuine truth claim. His gestures become increasingly performative and the eventual(prenominal) self-realization that innumerable name will never reply pushes him to psychological meltdown. Even though sanity may be nonentity other than complaisance to a set of norms, Holdens disinclination or idiocy to adhere to these norms eventually alienates him wholly from the world that essentially, he would heat to belong to. If you want to get a full essay, instal it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com

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