NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
The Book Catcher in the Rye is a novel written by J. D. Salinger based on a boy and what he goes through in just three days. The book begins as Holden Caulfield tells what has happened to him previously. Curiously he does not say were he is at the moment. He is a teenager growing up in 1950 s New York.
He is expelled from his prep school once again. In an attempt to deal with this he leaves school a few days before the end of term, and goes to New York to take a vacation before returning to his parents home. The book is told as a monologue describing Holden's thoughts and activities over three days, during which he describes a developing nervous breakdown, encouraged by his immense depression, impulsive spending and generally odd, erratic behavior, before his eventual nervous collapse. At the beginning of the book Holden is passing his last few days at Pencey prep school in Agers town, Pennsylvania. It is a Saturday and the school is playing the last football game of the season against Saxon hall. Everybody was watching the game, you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn t win.
Of course Holden was not at the game he was just walking around on his own. He was seen as a loner just wandering around. He had no real friends at Pencey, he always found a way to criticize everyone. For example, his next room neighbor Ackley is a loner like Holden, but Holden prefers to be on his own rather than spending time with him.
Holden did not think very highly about Ackley. He was one of these very, very tall, round shouldered guys- he was about six four- with lousy teeth. The hole time he roomed next to me, I never once saw him brush his teeth. They always looked mossy and awful, and he dam near made you sick if you saw him in the dinning room with his mouth full of mashed potatoes and peas or something. Besides that, he also had a lot of pimples.
Not just on his forehead or his chin, but all over his whole face. And not only that, he had a terrible personality. He was also sort of a nasty guy. He was not good friends with his own roommate Stradlater either. In his opinion Stradlater was the same as Ackley and the only difference was that he cared about his appearance and looks. Holden had been expelled from school again but the reason behind him being expelled for poor grades could clearly not be his intelligence.
Throughout the book he clearly demonstrates that he is an intelligent person. The problem is that he does not think that he is intelligent so he does not want to try in school. Maybe he did not want to try so that his parents could not compare him to his dead brother Allie, who is regarded by Holden as being a wonderfully intelligent person. There is one example at the beginning of the third chapter where he is talking about books and which he enjoyed reading. He says l m quite illiterate, but I read a lot. He puts himself down by saying he is illiterate but he reads complicated books and he has smart opinions on them.
This clearly shows his intelligence. When he is on the train and he comes across Mrs. Morrow he pretends to be someone else to entertain himself and forget about his own life. He says his name is Rudolf Schmidt and he starts telling her how wonderful her son was when Holden really thought her son was the biggest bastard that ever went to Pencey.
He also tells her that he is out of Pencey early because he has to have an operation on his brain tumor. Mrs. Morrow really believes all of Holden's lies and in a way plays along in his game. In the book he calls lying shooting the old crap as if it was a recreational game. If Holden came across someone that did this to him he would immediately judge them and call them a phony.
Holden's attitude to people is always very negative. He finds something wrong with every person and somehow always finds an excuse to call him or her a phony. In the book the only people who he does not see as phonies are his dead brother Allie and his sister Phoebe. For the rest he does not get along with anyone. He keeps isolating himself to the point that his loneliness starts his mental breakdown. When he gets to New York and he goes to the hotel bar called The Lavender Room where he sits on his own observing everyone and criticizing them obviously calling them phonies.
He gets depressed by the way everyone is acting pretending to be something else. At the bar he is the youngest person and he tries to fit in and pretend that he is older. In a way he is also being a phony but he does not realize it. He feels that he is the only one not pretending to be someone else so he alienates himself by sitting on his own.
Holden has a very strange attitude towards society, he feels there is a lot of unfairness in the world. He thinks all adults are phonies and that it is important to protect children from becoming phony adults. He thought religion is vital and he believed in Jesus but he did not believe in the rest of it. Holden feels very guilty about both his parents and Phoebe, which helps lead to his depression and eventual breakdown. He feels he is not good enough for his parents because he is not as smart as Allie, D. B.
or Phoebe. Even though he is intelligent he thinks that he will never be like his brother Allie so he does not try in school. This lead him to getting expelled of several schools which would have definitely upset his parents. He also feels guilty about Phoebe because he thinks that he is not a good enough brother for her. He feels that he has to protect her from growing up and becoming a phony.
In general, I think that Holden s breakdown came from a combination of things that all lead to both the mental and the physical side. I think the biggest reason was Allies death that clearly had a big effect on Holden. He felt that Allie raised people s expectations of him and he thought he could never compete with him. Over the course of the book he gradually becomes both mentally and physically weak leading to the breakdown. Overall Holden could not cope the pressure of growing up and becoming an adult.
Free research essays on topics related to: prep school, holden, brother allie, dead brother, three days
Research essay sample on Brother Allie Dead Brother
