the catcher in the rye literary analysis essay

The Catcher in The Rye

Introduction of the catcher in the rye, summary of the catcher in the rye, major themes in the catcher in the rye, major characters in the catcher in the rye, writing style of the catcher in the rye, analysis of literary devices in the catcher in the rye  , related posts:, post navigation.

A Summary and Analysis of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most influential American novels published in the mid-twentieth century. Upon its publication in 1951, J. D. Salinger’s only full-length novel became something of a cult, helping to inspire the Beat Generation and powerfully capturing a moment in American cultural history.

Salinger had worked on the manuscript for a number of years: he had drafts of The Catcher in the Rye in his backpack when he fought at D-Day in 1944.

But why did The Catcher in the Rye become such a cult classic, and why does it remain so widely revered and studied? Before we offer an analysis of the novel, here’s a brief recap of its plot.

The Catcher in the Rye : plot summary

The novel is narrated by sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, who has been expelled from his elite school, Pencey Prep, for not doing any work. He visits his history teacher, Mr Spencer, at his home where the teacher is unwell. However, Mr Spencer annoys Holden when he wants to go through the body’s mistakes so he can learn why he has failed.

Holden then goes back to his dorm room, where another student, Ackley, and Holden’s roommate Stradlater turn up. Holden learns that Stradlater has a date with a girl he had fallen in love with the previous year, but agrees to write an English composition for his roommate so Stradlater has his evening free to go on the date.

However, later that evening when Stradlater returns from his date, Holden grows jealous, and the two of them fight, with Holden losing.

Although he is supposed to remain at the boarding school until the end of term, Holden decides to take off immediately, travelling to New York on the train with the mother of one of his classmates; he entertains her (and himself) by making up outlandish stories about how popular her son is at school. Then he checks into a hotel in New York, because he wants to avoid going home and telling his parents he has been expelled.

He visits a nightclub, and, back at his hotel room, arranges for a prostitute named Sunny to come to his room. But when the virginal Holden reveals he just wants to talk to her, she leaves, returning with her pimp, who demands more money from him before attacking him, while Sunny takes money out of Holden’s wallet.

To cheer himself up the next day, Holden phones a girl he knows named Sally Hayes, and, even though he considers her a phoney, they arrange to see a play at the theatre. It is while he is on his way to meet Sally, while purchasing a record for his sister Phoebe, that Holden hears a boy singing ‘If a body catch a body coming through the rye’.

After the play, Holden and Sally go ice skating, but Holden scares Sally away by suggesting they go and live in the woods.

Next, Holden meets Carl Luce, an old schoolfriend, for a drink in a bar. Once again, Holden ends up annoying someone, this time by taking an unusual level of interest in Carl’s love life. Holden gets drunk and goes to Central Park, before going home to see Phoebe, avoiding alerting his parents to the fact he has returned. Phoebe works out that Holden is home because he’s been expelled from school, and Holden tells Phoebe his dream of being ‘the catcher in the rye’ (of which more below).

Holden escapes the family home when his parents arrive back at the house, and goes to visit another former teacher of his, Mr Antolini, who taught him English. Antolini is worried about Holden and, like Mr Spencer, wants Holden to focus and make something of himself. He does, however, let Holden stay the night, though things take a dark turn when Holden wakes up to discover Mr Antolini patting his head and interprets this as an inappropriate advance. He leaves, passing the rest of the night at Grand Central Station.

The next day, he decides to leave society and go and live in seclusion in a log cabin. When Phoebe hears of his plan, she wants to go with him, but Holden refuses to let her. He takes her to the zoo and buys her a ride on the carousel to make it up to her, and the two share a happy moment. The novel ends with Holden confiding to us that he has met with his parents and agreed to start at a new school in September. The brief holiday, the youthful rebellion, is over.

The Catcher in the Rye : analysis

The opening lines of the novel see Holden Caulfield, and Salinger through him, signalling a departure from and rejection of the kind of nineteenth-century Bildungsroman novel charting one young character’s journey from childhood into adulthood. Caulfield also doesn’t want to join the ranks of adulthood – he views adults as more ‘phoney’ and suspicious than most children – and instead wishes to preserve the innocence of childhood, as the novel’s title makes clear (of which more in a moment).

But if Caulfield turns away from the Victorian novel embodied by Dickens’s David Copperfield , Salinger’s novel does look back to a different nineteenth-century literary tradition – but an American one rather than British.

As critics have often remarked, The Catcher in the Rye shares some useful parallels with Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the novel which Ernest Hemingway named as the start of American literature.

Like Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield (his very name containing a number of faint echoes of Twain’s character’s name) narrates his own story in his own idiom, using a colloquial and down-to-earth tone to document his retreat from the society around him.

But whereas Finn heads into the free world of nature, Caulfield retreats further into the city, burrowing into New York with its vices and dangers. He wishes to seek out the real city – not the ‘phoney’ world he has inhabited until now.

At the same time, Caulfield is more of a romantic than a realist: he dreams of escaping the modern city in favour of a simple, honest rustic life, a cabin in the woods (a very Walden -inspired dream), and the love of a good woman. Like the Romantic movement – seen in the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge – he privileges childhood innocence over the fallen world of adulthood, and seems to think it’s a shame that anyone has to grow up at all.

And this is the explanation behind the novel’s title: Caulfield’s (largely imaginary) take on a line from a Robert Burns poem, ‘ Comin’ thro’ the Rye ’, which prompts him to envision a field of rye near a cliff, where his job would be to catch any children playing in the field and straying too close to the cliff-edge – hence The Catcher in the Rye .

But his idyllic vision of perpetual childhood is founded on a misunderstanding: Phoebe points out to him that he has misremembered (or rather, misheard) the line from Burns’s poem, which actually asks, ‘Gin [i.e., if] a body meet a body / Comin thro’ the rye’, rather than if a body catch a body, which is how Caulfield heard the line rendered when he heard the boy singing it earlier that day.

When he visits Phoebe’s school to say goodbye, he is charmingly but also puritanically offended that a swearword has been scrawled on the walls, corrupting the innocence of childhood. The problem with Holden’s character – which, thanks to Salinger’s masterly control of the teenager’s voice, is engaging and authentic – is that he thinks all adults are somehow lesser than children, and his belief in the primacy of childhood leads him to reduce adults to ‘phonies’ and teachers who don’t understand him.

In his two encounters with his former teachers – whom, suggestively, he seeks out himself, implying that on some level he wants them to set him on the right path to maturity – he views the first as annoying and the second as a possible sex predator. His innocence is appealing but also, as innocence is always in danger of being, founded on an overly simplistic view of the world.

The late, great literary critic Frank Kermode once described The Catcher in the Rye as having a ‘built-in death wish’, and a Freudian analysis of Salinger’s novel might analyse Caulfield’s desire to flee from adult society with its responsibilities and challenges into an earlier childhood stage of innocence as symptomatic of his unconscious desire to return to the womb. He appears to envy his dead brother, Allie, to an unwholesome degree.

And that title, The Catcher in the Rye , is emblematic of the novel as a whole, since Holden’s fantasy of catching children before they fall off a cliff might be analysed as a symbol of his desire to prevent himself, and other children, from falling off the cliff off childhood into the abyss of adulthood, with all of its phoniness and, yes, responsibilities.

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6 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye”

Plus Holden’s outlook is relentlessly middle class and it remains relatively unchanged by his experiences in the course of the novel. Catcher deserves some credit for being a groundbreaker, but there is not a great deal of difference between Holden and Jimmy in Robert Gover’s One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding, and while Misunderstanding is clearly aimed at a more popular audience, I would not rate Catcher as significantly superior in literary terms.

It’s about 45 years since I read Catcher in the Rye, so probably about time I revisited it. My one strong memory is that, although Holden might be supremely irritating, he redeemed himself by his kindness to his little sister. I think most 16-year old boys would die rather than be seen out with a younger sister.

It was the first visceral novel for me–where I felt like the main character Holden did not just jump off the page but very nearly put his arms around me and tried to strangle me. Back then mostly found Holden scary or specifically disturbing in how volatile he was especially toward women. Still I liked Salinger’s master of prose and read all of his work. Cut to years later, I read the prequel via the internet “An Ocean Full of Bowling Balls.” And I know Salinger did not want it released but I think it adds a lot of context especially where the character of Kenneth/renamed Allie is concerned–I think it could have saved Salinger a lot the questions he became tired of answering/addressing re: theories about Holden–was Holden the embodiment of him–back in high school I would have said yes. After the reading the prequel I say no. And just my opinion, but I think the novel took on on a dark stigma–our class read it after the shooting of John Lennon and a lot of this that became also associated/iconic and distracting from the original story — I think that could have been avoided if he released the prequel, but again that is just my opinion.

Notwithstanding an entirely different culture I grew in, the book hit me with the force of a comet, perhaps because I was the same age as Holden’s when I read it, and that was such a long time ago. The analysis is extensive even though it is brief and I realise it has hit the core.

Fascinating to think that in reality the author, Salinger, took in a much younger, naive woman as his lover and then discarded her a short time later. Was it old JD that really didn’t want to face adulthood and all the responsibilities that go with it, including moral, legal, and ethical ones? Don’t admire him or his works at all.

Is childhood’s innocence phoniness aborning? In most cases it’s ignorance leading into experience. Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is a much cleaner treatment of the theme and Joyce’s “Araby” much more nuanced. Holden is every bit the phony he criticizes.

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Themes and Analysis

The catcher in the rye, by jerome david salinger.

From youth to isolation and mortality, there are a myriad of themes in J.D. Salinger’s only novel, 'The Catcher in the Rye.'

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

From youth to isolation and mortality, there are a myriad of themes in J.D. Salinger’s only novel, The Catcher in the Rye . These themes touch on the most important parts of the protagonist,   Holden Caulfield ’s personality and tortured mental state. It is a desire for youth, fear of aging, appreciation for death, habitual isolation, and desire for a company that bog down the young man’s mind and help make The Catcher in the Rye the much-loved novel that it is today .  

The Catcher in the Rye Themes

Throughout the novel, the reader is given examples of Holden’s preference for children over adults and youth over aging . He has a persistent fear of growing old and finds all the adults in his life to be fake and annoying. This can be seen through his interactions with the teachers and the way he shrugs off and even grows angry at their advice.

Additionally, Holden’s behavior should be read as a consistent rejection of maturity and the process of aging. He consistently gets kicked out of school and when he’s annoyed he gets angry and rejects other people. Or, most obviously, there is his desire to run away from his life, a solution that solves no problems.  

Isolation  

Holden feels as though it’s impossible for him to find someone he relates to, aside from Jane who he met years before the novel started. Everyone around him is shallow, irritating, and distasteful. This is in part due to the consistent circle of similar peers he ends up in. Despite the different schools, he’s been to, they’ve all been for the upper class, rich kids. These kids act in a particular way and take advantage of their privilege.  

Mortality  

Death is a topic that’s always on Holden’s mind. It is a consent part of his life, from when his younger brother died of leukemia before the novel began. There was also a past memory of a suicide he witnessed at one of his schools. A young boy, cornered in a room by bullies, jumped out the window rather than be attacked. Holden doesn’t fear death, at least when he sees it through the eyes of this student. He admits to respecting this boy’s choice. A reader should also consider the time period in which the novel is meant to take place, the 1950s, post-WWII. Death was something ever-present and on everyone’s mind.  

Analysis of Key Moments in The Catcher in the Rye  

• Holden is kicked out of Pencey Prep  
• He confronts Ward about his date with Jane. They later get into a fight.  
• Holden storms out of school and takes the train to Manhattan.  
• He encounters the mother of one of his school mates on the train.  
• Holden tries to find someone to have sex with and fails.  
• Eventually, Holden goes to a jazz club and sees one of his older brother’s ex-girlfriend
• The elevator operator sends a prostitute to Holden’s room, it doesn’t end well.  
• Holden imagines committing suicide
• He makes a date with Sally Hayes, they go to the movies and ice skating. Holden gets annoyed and leaves  
• After getting drunk, he annoys another acquaintance, Carl Luce.  
• He sneaks into his own house to talk to his sister, Phoebe.  
• With nowhere to sleep, he goes to Mr. Antolini’s house but leaves after feeling uncomfortable.  
• Holden decides to run away and meets phoebe for what he thinks is the last time.  
• He takes her to the zoo and pays for her to ride the carousel. He cries.  
• The novel ends with Holden narrating his present. He wishes he’d never told his story.  

Style, Literary Devices, and Tone in The Catcher in the Rye

Salinger makes use of several literary devices in The Catcher in the Rye. These include slang, narrative point of view, and symbolism. The first, slang, is a prominent feature of Salinger’s writing in this novel. As well as one of the main reasons the novel was rejected by critics when it was first published. Holden uses words like “flitty” to refer to gay men, frequently curses, and uses colloquialisms such as “pretty as hell” . These words stand in stark contrast to the “phony” adult world Holden is so opposed to.  

Salinger provides the reader with Holden’s first-person perspective in the novel. In a sarcastic and judgmental tone, he tells his own story, looking back on the past. This means, considering holden’s state of mind at the time and in the present as he’s speaking, that he’s an unreliable narrator. A reader shouldn’t trust that everything Holden says is the truth or is a fulsome depiction of events or people. There is also a stream of consciousness elements in the novel. His words and thoughts run together, one after another as if there is no pause between him thinking something and saying it.  

Symbols in The Catcher in the Rye  

Allie’s baseball glove  .

Tied intimately to the themes of youth and mortality, the baseball glove symbolizes the love he has for his younger brother and the anger he felt at his death. There is a distressing scene in the novel in which Holden’s roommate, Ward, speaks dismissively about a composition Holden wrote in regard to the glove. The glove is covered in poetry handwritten in green ink. These words are Holden’s way of making sense of the world and calming himself in times of terrible stress and anger.  

The Ducks in Central Park  

Holden repetitively asks cab drivers in New York City about the ducks in central park. They are a temporary feature of the park as they will, when the water freeze, fly away. He worries about where the animals settle when they’re not there. They symbolize his anxiety, fear of change and the passage of time. They can also be connected to Holden’s larger desire to leave his world behind. The ducks do so regularly and he can’t seem to escape at all.  

The Red Hunting Hat  

One of the many moments of bright color in the novel, the hat symbolizes the most confident parts of Holden’s personality. He wears it to feel good and he likes the way he looks in it. It is at its most important at the end of the novel when he gives it to his sister, Phoebe before she goes to ride the carousel. Holden cries at the sight of her experiencing joy and wearing his hat.  

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About Emma Baldwin

Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

About the Book

J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger was a pioneer of the American short story. He is remembered today as the author of The Catcher and the Rye , as well as Fanny and Zoey , and numerous other stories about the troubled Glass family.

Salinger Facts

Explore ten of the most interesting facts about Salinger's life, habits, and passions.

Salinger's Best Books

Explore the seven best books Salinger wrote.

Was Salinger Criticized?

The criticism of J.D. Salinger’s writing is centred around his major literary achievement

Maybe there’s a trapdoor under my chair, and I’ll just disappear. J.D. Salinger

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The Catcher in the Rye

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The Catcher in the Rye , novel by J.D. Salinger published in 1951. The novel details two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from prep school . Confused and disillusioned , Holden searches for truth and rails against the “phoniness” of the adult world. He ends up exhausted and emotionally unstable. The events are related after the fact.

From what is implied to be a sanatorium, Holden, the narrator and protagonist, tells the story of his adventures before the previous Christmas. The story begins with Holden at Pencey Prep School on his way to the house of his history teacher, Spencer, so that he can say goodbye. He reveals to the reader that he has been expelled for failing most of his classes. After he visits Spencer, he encounters his roommate, Ward Stradlater, who asks Holden to write an essay for English class for him while he goes on a date with a longtime friend of Holden’s. Having agreed, Holden writes about the baseball glove of his younger brother, Allie, who died of leukemia . When Stradlater returns, he tells Holden that the essay isn’t good, and Holden gets angry when Stradlater refuses to say whether he had sex with his date. This causes Holden to storm out and leave Pencey for New York City a few days earlier than planned for Christmas break. Once he arrives in New York , he cannot go home, as his parents do not yet know that he has been expelled. Instead, he rents a room at the Edmont Hotel, where he witnesses some sexually charged scenes through the windows of other rooms. His loneliness then causes him to seek out human interaction, which he does at the Lavender Room, the hotel’s nightclub. After interacting with some women there, he goes to another nightclub, only to leave after seeing his elder brother’s ex-girlfriend. When he gets back to the hotel, he orders a prostitute to his room, only to talk to her. This situation ends in him being punched in the stomach.

The next morning, Holden calls Sally Hayes, an ex-girlfriend of his. They spend the day together until Holden makes a rude remark and she leaves crying. Holden then meets up with a former schoolmate, Carl Luce, at a bar, but Luce leaves early because he becomes annoyed by Holden’s immature comments. Holden stays behind and gets drunk by himself. After he leaves, he wanders in Central Park until the cold drives him to his family’s apartment. He sneaks in, still not prepared to face his parents, and finds his 10-year-old sister, Phoebe. She is upset when she hears that Holden has failed out and accuses him of not liking anything. It is at this time that Holden describes to his sister his fantasy of being “the catcher in the rye,” which was inspired by a song he heard a little boy singing: “If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye.” Phoebe tells him that the words are “If a body meet a body coming through the rye,” from a poem by Robert Burns . (Burns’s poem, “Comin thro’ the Rye,” exists in several versions, but most render the lines as “Gin a body meet a body / Comin thro’ the rye.”) Soon they hear their parents come home after a night out, and Holden sneaks away. He calls his former English teacher, Mr. Antolini, who tells Holden he can come stay at his apartment. Holden falls asleep on Antolini’s couch and awakes to Antolini stroking his forehead, which Holden interprets as a sexual advance. He immediately excuses himself and heads to Grand Central Station , where he spends the rest of the night. When he awakes, he goes to Phoebe’s school and leaves a note telling her that he plans to run away and asking her to meet him at a museum during lunch. She arrives with a packed bag and insists on going with him. He tells her no and instead takes her to the zoo, where he watches her ride the carousel in the pouring rain. This is where the flashback ends. The novel closes with Holden explaining that he has fallen “sick” but is expected to go to a new school in the fall.

The Catcher in the Rye takes the loss of innocence as its primary concern. Holden wants to be the “catcher in the rye”—someone who saves children from falling off a cliff, which can be understood as a metaphor for entering adulthood. As Holden watches Phoebe on the carousel, engaging in childlike behaviour, he is so overcome with happiness that he is, as he puts it, “damn near bawling.” By taking her to the zoo, he allows her to maintain her childlike state, thus being a successful “catcher in the rye.” During this time, however, watching her and the other children on the carousel, he has also come to accept that he cannot save everyone: “If they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off.”

Holden’s name is also significant: Holden can be read as “hold on,” and Caulfield can be separated into caul and field . Holden’s desire is to “hold on” to the protective covering (the caul ) that encloses the field of innocence (the same field he wishes to keep the children from leaving). Holden desperately wants to remain true and innocent in a world full of, as he puts it, “phonies.” Salinger once admitted in an interview that the novel was semi-autobiographical.

The Caulfield family was one Salinger had already explored in a number of stories that had been published by different magazines. Holden appeared in some of those stories, even narrating one, but he was not as richly fleshed out in them as he would be in The Catcher in the Rye . The novel, unlike the other stories of the Caulfield family, had difficulties getting published. Originally solicited by Harcourt, Brace and Company, the manuscript was rejected after the head of the trade division asked whether Holden was supposed to be crazy. It was then that Salinger’s agent, Dorothy Olding, approached Little, Brown and Company, which published the novel in 1951. After Little, Brown bought the manuscript, Salinger showed it to The New Yorker , assuming that the magazine, which had published several of his short stories, would want to print excerpts from the novel. The New Yorker rejected it, however, as the editors found the Caulfield children too precocious to be plausible and Salinger’s writing style exhibitionistic.

The Catcher in the Rye ’s reception was lukewarm at first. Many critics were impressed by Holden as a character and, specifically, by his style of narration. Salinger was able to create a character whose relatability stemmed from his unreliability—something that resonated with many readers. Others, however, felt that the novel was amateur and unnecessarily coarse.

After publishing The Catcher in the Rye , Salinger became a recluse. When asked for the rights to adapt it for Broadway or Hollywood , he emphatically declined. Despite Holden’s never having appeared in any form subsequent to that in Salinger’s novel, the character has had a long-lasting influence, reaching millions of readers, including two particularly notorious ones. In 1980 Mark David Chapman identified so wholly with Holden that he became convinced that murdering John Lennon would turn him into the novel’s protagonist. The Catcher in the Rye was also linked to John W. Hinckley, Jr. ’s attempted assassination of U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan in 1981. The novel remained influential into the 21st century; indeed, many American high schools included it in their curriculum. The novel has been banned numerous times because of its salty language and sexual content.

The Catcher in the Rye

Background of the novel.

Salinger didn’t ever graduate from any university. He attended a fiction writing class at Columbia in 1939. This was the impulse that strengthened his writing skills, appearing in The Catcher in the Rye . He was enlisted in the US Army and fought on different war fronts. It was the time when he worked on the early drafts of this novel.

There is a focus on mental illness, which shows this problem worsening after the second world war. It shows the anger of the young and their dissatisfaction with their society. Along with gaining acclaim from the reader, this work has been the target of unjust criticism. It was rejected by the first publisher, but Salinger soon found another publisher, and it was published.

The Catcher in the Rye Summary

Holden tells him that the incidents he is describing are about the time when he was sixteen, and now he is seventeen. Holden explains his behavior that sometimes he behaves like mature people while sometimes he behaves as if he is thirteen years old. Spenser continues his criticizing, and Holden keeps listening. He tries to fulfill Spenser’s expectations by coming up to say what he expects from him.

Chapter III

Chapter vii.

He thinks about Jane and Strad silently lying in bed. He can’t bear the silence. He wakes him up, and they argue. He leaves his room and can’t stand his silent dorm and thus leaves for a cheap hotel to stay. He wants to spend a few days there before he can face his parents.

Chapter VIII

He considers talking to Jane on the phone but gives up this idea. He then remembers a stripper’s phone number and calls her. She refuses to come there because he sounds younger.

Chapter XII

Holden takes a cab, and it drives through the empty streets. He is desirous to talk to Phoebe but can’t. He then asks the driver about Central Park’s ducks, and he tells him that he doesn’t know about it. He tells him about the fish there that survive getting their food through pores when the lake is frozen.

Chapter XIII

Chapter xiv, chapter xvi, chapter xvii, chapter xviii, chapter xix, chapter xxi, chapter xxii, chapter xxiii, chapter xxiv, chapter xxv, chapter xxvi, the catcher in the rye characters analysis, holden caulfield, phoebe caulfield.

She, for some reason, doesn’t like her middle name and thinks about coming up with a new one. She likes dancing, writes diaries, and is the perfect embodiment of the joyous childhood that Holden imagines. Holden has named her ‘Old Phoebe,’ and he much loves her endearing ways. Phoebe is the only person Holden trusts.

Allie Caulfield

D.b caulfield.

D.B is Holden’s elder brother. He has served in the second war and has been through trauma. He is a talented person and serves as a writer in Hollywood. He is not clearly described in the novel, but there are traces of his personality scattered in the novel. He is a caring brother and wants to know what bothers Holden.

Mr. Antolini

Sally hayes, mr. and mrs. caulfield, jane gallagher, lillian simmons, themes in the catcher in the rye, alienation and identity.

Entering adult life, the majority of teenage persons face problems fitting into society. They feel alienated, as shown in the case of Holden. They feel estranged because standards and lifestyle in adult life are much different from what they have. They can’t identify themselves with anybody because, at this age, individual and idiosyncratic personalities begin to develop. It is the age when people either become unique or take the color of the society, and this cruciality is discussed in this novel.

Sex and Women

Coming of age, madness, depression, and suicide.

In this novel, the narrator treats religion in the same way as he does education. It is considered significant in human life because it comes to the rescue of an individual when there is none to support. It teaches how to behave in certain situations. Like education, it is in the hands of those people who forge things for their own purposes. He wants to change this situation and desires that it should be used for the purpose, which is its motive. He wants religion to be taken out of the control of phony people.

The Catcher in the Rye Analysis

Point of view, significance of the title.

The reader comes to know about the title’s origin when the child outside the church is singing a mysterious song. Holden likes this song very much and sings the lines to his sister, and she corrects him. Before the correction, it is easily understandable that it relates to Holden’s desire to stay stuck to his childhood. These lines are from Robert Burns’ poem, which can be related to the story simply by asking the question that is ‘is casual sex, okay?’

Significance of the Ending

Setting of the novel.

The temporal setting of the novel is a bit tricky. It can be either 1948 or 1949. We can know it from Allie’s death date, which is 1946, this story tells that is about two years later when he was sixteen. It can be further confirmed by his references to his birthday, and this creates ambiguity, but, surely, either of the two is the temporal setting. But the message which the author wants to give is about the generation that grew during the war and suffered from trauma.

Writing Style

Literary devices in the novel.

Ducks are used as a symbol in this novel. Holden is eager to know what happens to them when winter comes. It is an indication of the fact that he, as a teenager, is eager to know about things that are happening around. The ducks may also represent innocence.

There are many literary and historical references in this novel. The most important of all is its title, which is a borrowing from Robert Burns, a famous Scottish poet. Other significant literary references are to Beowulf , The Return of the Native, Romeo, and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, Oliver Twist , etc.

More From J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye

J. d. salinger, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye , a novel about a teenager’s many frustrations with the world, 16-year-old Holden Caulfield constantly encounters people and situations that strike him as “phony.” This is a word he applies to anything hypocritical, shallow, inauthentic, or otherwise fake. He sees such “phoniness” everywhere in the adult world, and believes adults are so superficial that they can’t even recognize their own insincerity. And though Holden feels this skepticism…

Alienation and Meltdown

Early on in The Catcher in the Rye , it’s clear that Holden doesn’t fit in. After all, he decides not to attend his school’s big football game with the rest of his peers, a sign that he tends to sequester himself from others. What makes The Catcher in the Rye unique, however, is not the fact that Holden is an alienated teenager, but the novel’s nuanced portrayal of the causes, benefits, and costs of…

Women and Sex

In The Catcher in the Rye , J.D. Salinger uses Holden Caulfield ’s thoughts about women and sex to illustrate the young man’s naivety. More specifically, Holden’s romantic and sexual expectations reveal his tendency to idealize certain unrealistic notions. For instance, he thinks of Jane Gallagher as a perfect woman, despite the fact that he can’t even bring himself to call her on the phone. Having idealized her in this way, he looks down on…

Childhood and Growing Up

The Catcher in the Rye is a portrait of a young man at odds with the process of growing up. A 16-year-old who is highly critical of the adult world, Holden covets what he sees as the inherent purity of youth. This is why the characters he speaks most fondly about in the novel are all children. Thinking that children are still untainted by the “phony,” hypocritical adult world, he wishes there were a way…

Madness, Depression, Suicide

The Catcher in the Rye examines the fine line between everyday teenage angst and serious depression or unhappiness. Throughout the novel, Holden refers to himself as a “madman,” calls himself crazy, and frequently declares that he is depressed. At first, these statements seem somewhat trivial, since Holden tends to exaggerate. In addition, his claims about how much he dislikes his life sometimes seem rather undeserved, since he’s actually quite privileged. After all, he comes from…

'The Catcher in the Rye' Themes, Symbols, and Literary Devices

Innocence vs. phoniness, literary devices.

• B.A., English, Rutgers University

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is a classic coming-of-age story. Narrated by sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, the novel paints a portrait of a struggling teenage boy as he attempts to hide his emotional pain behind cynicism and false worldliness. Through the use of symbolism, slang, and an unreliable narrator, Salinger explores themes of innocence vs. phoniness, alienation, and death.

If you had to choose one word to represent The Catcher in the Rye , it would be "phony," Holden Caufield’s insult of choice and a word he uses to describe most of the people he meets and much of the world he encounters. For Holden, the word implies artifice, a lack of authenticity—pretension. He views phoniness as a sign of growing up, as if adulthood were a disease and phoniness its most obvious symptom. He has moments of faith in younger people, but invariably condemns all the adults as phonies.

The flip side of this is the value Holden puts on innocence, on being unspoiled. Innocence is typically assigned to children, and Holden is no exception, regarding his younger siblings as worthy of his affection and respect. His younger sister Phoebe is his ideal—she is intelligent and perceptive, talented and willful, but innocent of the terrible knowledge that Holden himself has gained with his extra six years (most notably concerning sex, which Holden wishes to protect Phoebe from). Holden’s dead brother, Allie, haunts him precisely because Allie will always be this innocent, being deceased.

Part of Holden’s torment is his own phoniness. While he does not consciously indict himself, he engages in many phony behaviors that he would abhor if he were to observe them in himself. Ironically, this prevents him from being innocent himself, which explains to some degree Holden’s self-loathing and mental instability.

Holden is isolated and alienated throughout the entire novel. There are hints that he is telling his story from a hospital where he is recovering from his breakdown, and throughout the story his adventures are consistently focused on making some sort of human connection. Holden self-sabotages constantly. He feels lonely and isolated at school, but one of the first things he tells us is that he’s not going to the football game everyone else is attending. He makes arrangements to see people, and then insults them and drives them away.

Holden uses alienation to protect himself from mockery and rejection, but his loneliness drives him to keep trying to connect. As a result, Holden’s sense of confusion and alarm grows because he has no true anchor to the world around him. Since the reader is tied to Holden’s point-of-view, that terrifying sense of being completely cut off from everything, of everything in the world not making sense, becomes a visceral part of reading the book.

Death is the thread that runs through the story. For Holden, death is abstract; he’s not primarily afraid of the physical facts of the end of life, because at 16 he can’t truly understand it. What Holden fears about death is the change that it brings. Holden continuously wishes for things to remain unchanged, and to be able to go back to better times—a time when Allie was alive. For Holden, Allie’s death was a shocking, unwanted change in his life, and he is terrified of more change—more death—especially when it comes to Phoebe.

The Catcher in the Rye. There’s a reason this is the title of the book. The song Holden hears contains the lyric "if a body meet a body, coming through the rye" that Holden mishears as "if a body catch a body." He later tells Phoebe that this is what he wishes to be in life, someone who "catches" the innocent if they slip and fall. The ultimate irony is that the song is about two people meeting for a sexual encounter, and Holden himself is too innocent to understand that.

The Red Hunting Hat. Holden wears a hunting cap that he frankly admits is kind of ridiculous. For Holden it is a sign of his "otherness" and his uniqueness—his isolation from others. Notably, he removes the hat whenever he is meeting someone he wants to connect with; Holden knows full well the hat is part of his protective coloring.

The Carousel. The carousel is the moment in the story when Holden lets go of his sadness and decides he will stop running and grow up. Watching Phoebe ride it, he is happy for the first time in the book, and part of his happiness is imagining Phoebe grabbing for the gold ring—a risky maneuver that could get a kid a prize. Holden’s admission that sometimes you have to let kids take risks like that is his surrender to the inevitability of becoming an adult—and leaving childhood behind.

Unreliable Narrator. Holden tells you he is "the most terrific liar you ever saw." Holden lies constantly throughout the story, making up identities and masking the fact that he’s been kicked out of school. As a result, the reader can’t necessarily trust Holden’s descriptions. Are the people he calls "phonies" really bad, or is it just how Holden wants you to see them?

Slang. The story’s slang and teenage vernacular are out of date today, but the tone and style were remarkable when it was published for the way Salinger captured the way a teenager sees and thinks about things. The result is a novel that still feels authentic and confessional despite the passage of time. Holden’s style of telling the story also underscores his character—he uses profanities and slang words very self-consciously to shock and to demonstrate his jaded and worldly ways. Salinger also employs the use of "filler phrases" in Holden’s story, which gives the narrative the feeling of being spoken, as if Holden were actually telling you this story in person.

• 'The Catcher in the Rye' Overview
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• The Meaning of the Title: 'The Catcher in the Rye'
• 'The Catcher in the Rye' Summary
• Role of Women (and Girls) in "The Catcher in the Rye"
• 'Comin' Thro the Rye'
• 'The Catcher in the Rye' Quotes
• How "The Catcher in the Rye" Finally Got an E-Book Edition
• Biography of J. D. Salinger, American Writer
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Catcher in The Rye Ending Analysis

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Introduction:, body paragraphs:, counterarguments:, conclusion:.

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Literary Analysis Essay: The Catcher In The Rye

The Catcher in the Rye Literary Analysis Essay Teenage years are difficult. Time tells this story of struggle again and again. The Catcher in the Rye is a classic novel showing the struggles a teenager goes through while transitioning into adulthood. The main character, Holden Caulfield, is a judgmental and temperamental boy who struggles to see the positivity in life. Throughout the story, Holden searches to find himself, as he feels forced to grow up. He holds onto aspects of his childhood and isolates himself so much that it is even harder for him to transition. J.D. Salinger uses the red hunting hat, the museum and cigarettes as important symbols in the story to convey the themes of transitioning from childhood to adulthood, loneliness, and isolation. Salinger uses the symbol of a red hunting hat to suggest and develop the themes of transitioning from childhood to adulthood, isolation and loneliness. Holden …show more content…

Holden enjoys certain aspects of adulthood. Holden likes to smoke, drink and have sex. These are all new aspects of adulthood that many children do not face. Holden is going through a transition stage in his life where he is figuring out who he is, and what he likes as a young adult while still grasping onto safer feelings aspects of childhood. Holden smokes cigarettes when he feels lonely. On page 97, Holden says, “I’d probably go down to the can and sneak a cigarette and watch myself getting tough in the mirror.” In this quotation, Holden implies that he is by himself and feels isolated from everyone because he says he would get tough in the mirror. This is the time that Holden chooses to smoke because he feels safer and isolated from everyone else. This quotation also suggests that Holden smokes to feel older because it is something he knows adults do even though he is not sure yet how to be an

The Catcher in the Rye: Holden Caulfield's Coming of Age Story

But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game” (8). Holden does not understand Spencer’s metaphor. Holden believes that life can only be a game if people are given advantages. From his point of view, he is one of the unlucky ones, but in reality he is on the side with the hot-shots, because he is given many advantages that others are not. Salinger emphasizes Holden’s immaturity in a very subtle way by having Holden’s authority figures always calling him “boy”. Both Mr. Spencer and Mr. Antolini call Holden “boy”. Of Spencer, Holden says, “I wished to hell he’d stop calling me ‘boy’ all the time” (12) and then later on, Antolini tells Holden, “You’re a very, very strange boy” (193). Both Mr. Spencer and Mr. Antolini recognize and acknowledge Holden’s immature behaviour in calling him “boy”. This only stresses the fact that Holden cannot seem to realize he is acting more like a child than a teenager. Holden’s red hunting hat is a very important symbol in The Catcher in the Rye. Holden uses this hat as a way to hide from society. He says, “That hat I bought had earlaps in it, and I put them on–I didn’t give a damn how I looked. Nobody was around anyway” (53). Holden thinks that wearing his red hunting hat makes him an individual, but in reality, he will only wear it when no one is around to judge him. It is his immaturity that makes him believe that he is being unique,

Catcher In The Rye Adolescence Quotes

Adolescence plays a major role in a teenager’s mind and how it affects the young, especially Holden, a boy who struggles with the limbo between adulthood and childhood. Holden is struggling with adolescence due to his failure in school and how his stubbornness and ignorance plays a major role in his personality. Also his struggle to protect the innocence of others and that of his teenage creates Holden’s journey in the novel. Salinger’s use of symbolism such as Holden constantly worrying about the ducks in the frozen lake, the red hunting hat, and the need to protect the innocence of his surroundings as the Catcher in the Rye to disclose how Holden is stuck between adulthood and childhood.

Holden Caulfield Symbolism

The novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger is a narrative which examines the growing process of Holden Caulfield, a rebellious, sardonic teenager. Initially, Holden is portrayed as a rash, somewhat physiologically disturbed adolescent rebelling in the face of society. However throughout the novel he undergoes a noticeable psychological change. Holden’s transformation through his experience in New York examines the nature of maturation and protection of the innocent. These themes are developed by the extensive use of symbolism. Through Salinger’s use of symbolism, Holden’s progression can be traced from his rash cynical outlook to his compassion and responsibility demonstrated at the end of the novel. Holden’s hunting hat, the character of

Catcher In The Rye Literary Analysis

In the Tribes of Palos Verdes and The Catcher In the Rye, both Jim and Holden struggle to find mental stability in their lives. J.D. Salinger expresses one of Holden's weaknesses in the statement,"I'm just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?"(15). When someone has a issue they often can’t say they have that problem and blame another reason for it. For Holden in The Catcher In the Rye, he blames his struggles on the phase he is going through.

Literary Analysis Of The Catcher In The Rye

In J.D. Salinger’s, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden’s digression about Alec “something” shows his hatred for the phoniness of the world, especially the awful fantasies that occur in movies. The digression begins with Holden complaining about a movie he saw at a Christmas program. The movie is about a duke named Alec “something” who loses his memory when fighting in the war. Alec comes home without knowing of his position as a duke, or that he is engaged. Alec ends up falling in love with a woman on the bus who is carrying the same copy of Oliver Twist as him. It is ironic that the couple is carrying Oliver Twist because this book relates to Holden’s life in many ways. After Alec falls in love, his previous fiancée shows up and tells him about his position as a

Catcher in the Rye Essay

Holden is terrified that he will have to face complicated issues varying from sex, to intimacy, to facing death, as he matures into an adult. Although he is constantly trying to remain in his childhood, he strives to fit in as part of what he sees as the adult world by creating plans to run away to a cabin or work out West on a ranch on his own, which would require a mature and independent mindset. He also attempts to fit in by ordering drinks at the bar, smoking cigarettes, and attempting to start conversations about sex with Luce. His mind proves to be pulling in quite compelling directions because although he is yearning to fit in as an adult, he is stuck on trying to preserve the innocence of children and society.

Catcher In The Rye Loss Of Innocence Analysis

While Holden tries to grow up he can never commit. Holden loves the idea of being forever innocent. To him adults are just kids that have lost all of their innocence. Because of Holden’s exposure to the death of his brother he feels like he didn't have the opportunities that other children get, which makes it that much harder for him. He hints at his idea of innocence by saying, "That's one nice thing about carrousels, they always play the same songs." (231).

The 1950's Society

Society is never perfect, there has never been one that has. Countless problems come from every society, some less than others. There is always good when there is bad, and what is bad to some may seem good to others. In the 1950’s many things deemed socially acceptable are not in today's standards. Even so, the author realized what was wrong with his society and used Holden and his experiences to reveal the problems occurring in everyday life and how disgusting they seemed to someone from a different point of view.. The Catcher in the Rye has a focus on addressing the problems of the culture in the society of the 1950’s, using examples of women, children, and people in general.

Literary Analysis Essay On The Catcher In The Rye

Marshall Gillette Mr. Pelster English 2 9 December 2016 The Inevitable Every person, at some point in their life, has to grow up. Eventually everybody learns to deal with the fact that they have to grow up. In The Catcher in the Rye , J.D. Salinger creates multiple images of how Holden, the main character, can’t deal with the reality of growing up, which ends up spiraling his life out of control. Life is all about learning to deal with changes, a skill that Holden has yet to learn.

As American society becomes more diverse with immigrants coming from far away lands, different cultures are being introduced into the ever growing melting pot of America. Due to this melting pot and realization that America is made up of many, not one, young adult protagonists have become more diverse in American literature. This diversity in young adult protagonists includes race, gender, class, and sexuality. However, despite the identities these protagonists are associated with, they all have the same inner conflict, knowing where one truly belongs. The inner conflict of fitting in and trying to belong to someone or something has been, and should be continued to be written about since many teenagers struggle with their personality and identity.

The Catcher In The Rye Literary Analysis

In J.d. Salinger’s novel the Catcher In the Rye there are many events that occur that can be interpreted differently. The different interpretations that can be interpreted could be the scenes about Jane’s stepdad, Holden’s childhood, Mr. Antolini, James Castle’s suicide, Holden’s sexuality and the ending of the book. When Stradlater tells Holden who his date is he gets really excited and anxious.

The Catcher In The Rye Essay

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield was a student at Pencey Prep, a private school. Holden had a fight with his roommate, Stradlater. Holden then decides to leave school early two days to be exact to explore New York before going back home to his family.

Theme Of Loneliness In Catcher In The Rye

Through his loneliness he has developed hatred towards adulthood, hence finds his transition so harsh. Holden always isolates himself from people, in general. He believes that he can ignore the phonies and stay pure and innocent like a kid, he will never have to step through maturity through his isolation. However, his loneliness has also caused a negative impact on his life, loneliness led him to being so self-absorbed that he does not realize that, growing up is not bad as it may seem. In the beginning of the book when we are first introduced to Ackley, Holden is ignoring him, “‘Hi,’ I said, but I didn’t look up from my book.” (20) The main and only reason Holden became lonely was when Allie passed away. After Allie’s death, Holden realizes that once you grow up there are so many problems you encounter. So, why not stay as a child. Since, kids are known to be carefree about what’s going around in the world. Hence, loneliness plays a major role in Holden’s life, which keeps him from stepping through his growth and experiencing the outside

Catcher In The Rye By J. D. Salinger: An Analysis

Between Holdens smoking and drinking addictions and his sexual fantasies, he needs to learn to enjoy the little things in life. J.D Salinger uses those motifs to symbolize that Holden is trying to grow up too fast, and is wishing his childhood away without thinking of the consequences of his actions. You need to cherish the memories while they

Essay On Catcher In The Rye

Approximately 1 in 5 youth aged 13–18, experiences a severe mental disorder at some point during their life. It is hard for mentally healthy people to know what it feels like getting flashbacks of the things you don’t want to remember It is hard for mentally healthy people to know what it feels like to let go of the past but the past continues to hold on to you. It is hard for mentally healthy people to know what it feels like to be inside a body that wants you to live, but with a mind that wants you to die. People with mental illnesses go through these experiences and everyday they’re stuck with their illness and for some of these people, it never goes away. The main character of Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, is a realistic

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The Catcher in the Rye

by J. D. Salinger

Discussion Topic

Themes and Thesis Statements for J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

In The Catcher in the Rye , major themes include the innocence of childhood, the phoniness of the adult world, and the struggle against growing up. Thesis statements could explore how Holden Caulfield's fear of change and desire to preserve innocence reflect his internal conflict, or how his perception of a hypocritical society contributes to his alienation and depression.

characters: Holden Caulfield

themes: Loss of Innocence

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Who are the experts? Our certified Educators are real professors, teachers, and scholars who use their academic expertise to tackle your toughest questions. Educators go through a rigorous application process, and every answer they submit is reviewed by our in-house editorial team.

College Professor, Professional Writer

B.A. from Swarthmore College

Educator since 2012

3,630 answers

Writer and educator with an MA in the study of English Literature.

What are some suitable themes for an essay on The Catcher in the Rye?

Loss of innocence and a desire for innocence are two possible themes to write on. You could also write about adulthood as death , adulthood as a loss of identity , or simply the fear of adulthood .

Cite this page as follows:

Bergman, Bruce. "Themes and Thesis Statements for J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye" edited by eNotes Editorial, 1 Mar. 2012, https://www.enotes.com/topics/catcher-in-the-rye/questions/themes-and-thesis-statements-for-j-d-salinger-s-3119986.

Educator since 2008

337 answers

I teach high school at a small private school in Seattle, WA.

Another option is to consider how Holden treats men and women differently. Who does he respect more? Who does he lie to more?

You could also discuss the symbols in the novel. These symbols include the hunting hat, the ducks, the baseball glove, the snowball, etc.

Morrow, Leah. "Themes and Thesis Statements for J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye" edited by eNotes Editorial, 10 Dec. 2008, https://www.enotes.com/topics/catcher-in-the-rye/questions/themes-and-thesis-statements-for-j-d-salinger-s-3119986.

One possibility is to write about Holden's attitude toward purity and innocence. Compare is wanting to be a "Catcher in the Rye" with Robert Burns' poem "Coming thro' the Rye". How does Holden relate differently to children and adults?

A second option is to write about "truth". Who does Holden lie to and why are his lies significant? Does he care about the truth?

Educator since 2009

16,815 answers

I currently teach middle school history and have taught at various K–12 levels over the last 13 years.

What are some possible thesis statements for The Catcher in the Rye?

I think that anytime a thesis has to be developed, it has to come from the writer.  It is so difficult to generate and defend a thesis statement in any paper.  I believe that it has to come from the writer themselves and from this, stronger writing can emerge.  With this in mind, topics can be given, but the selection of the thesis statement and the drafting of it has to come from you and you alone, in my opinion.

With this in hand, I think that a great topic for your inclusions might be to discuss what Salinger's work means in its assessment of life in the 1950s.  What might the work be saying about this historical context?  What aspects does it critique and how does Salinger himself reflect about this time period?  I think that this is one approach to take.  Another one would be to focus in on Holden, himself, and examine Holden in comparison to other characters in literature. It might be really interesting to assess how Holden would have functioned in other time periods and contexts.  For example, Holden's disdain for "phonies" and the trappings of social acceptance would have been interesting to see play out in the 1990s.  I think that this might be another area for you to pursue in the crafting of your thesis statement.

Kannan, Ashley. "Themes and Thesis Statements for J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye" edited by eNotes Editorial, 18 July 2011, https://www.enotes.com/topics/catcher-in-the-rye/questions/themes-and-thesis-statements-for-j-d-salinger-s-3119986.

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Professor of English.

What's a good thesis statement for J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye?

A thesis statement is simply a sentence that summarizes a thesis or the major claim one is making in a particular piece of writing. A good thesis is one which can be argued. In other words, the statement that Holden is a rebellious teenager would not be a good thesis as it is a statement with which it would be impossible to disagree. The problem with creating a thesis for this work is that as it is a standard school text and much literary criticism has already been written about it, creating a thesis that is original, rather than trite, is quite difficult.

One interesting approach might be to note that Salinger wrote the novel when he was serving as a soldier in World War II. Holden, although not a soldier, has experienced the death of his younger brother Allie , a name that is similar to the "Allies" the faction Salinger was fighting for in the War. Thus one might create a thesis statement revolving around how Holden's character is shaped by the same sort of post-traumatic stress disorder affecting the soldiers Salinger fought with as a result of the death of those closest to them.

Wofford, Lynnette. "Themes and Thesis Statements for J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye" edited by eNotes Editorial, 29 Jan. 2018, https://www.enotes.com/topics/catcher-in-the-rye/questions/themes-and-thesis-statements-for-j-d-salinger-s-3119986.

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I am currently an adjunct professor at Community College of Beaver County, which is located just outside of Pittsburgh, where I teach introductory early childhood education classes several evenings a week.

A good thesis statement must address the main point of the essay and present an idea that can be argued and proven throughout the remainder of the paper. Thesis statements appear at the end of the introductory paragraph and are determined by the kind of paper you are writing, which can either be analytical, expository, or argumentative. It is also important to remember that a thesis statement should be specific, not a general, undeniable statement. Thesis statements must make a claim that others can dispute. The following are examples of a few thesis statements concerning J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye :

1. Holden Caulfied's anxious, cynical personality is a direct result of experiencing extremely traumatic events at a young age.

2. Holden's aversion to society is a critique of America's obsession with entertainment and affinity for material wealth.

3. Holden's highly critical, jaded perspective of American society stems from his fear of becoming an adult.

4. Holden's numerous contradictions reveal his internal struggle to fit into a highly competitive, superficial society.

5. Holden exacerbates his problems by intentionally entering compromising situations, which leave him further isolated and alienated from those who truly care about him.

Further Reading

• https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html

Southern, Curt. "Themes and Thesis Statements for J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye" edited by eNotes Editorial, 8 Dec. 2017, https://www.enotes.com/topics/catcher-in-the-rye/questions/themes-and-thesis-statements-for-j-d-salinger-s-3119986.

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Other languages: Slovene and Spanish Bachelor's Degree in English Literature Master's Degree in Education Reading Endorsed ESL Endorsed

In order to write a good thesis statement for an essay, a writer must decide on the topic or theme that will be discussed. Also, consider the structure of the essay. Is it persuasive, descriptive, or argumentative? Once a theme is settled on, then a thesis statement can be written to guide the writer's pen. If the assignment asks for a student to write on Holden's personality, then that would certainly be the starting point and main focus of the statement. If the assignment is to discuss the relevance of the title to the storyline, then a different focus would be needed. The following list has a few examples with different themes that could be used to create possible thesis statements for persuasive/argumentative essays:

1. Holden Caulfield , Salinger's teenage protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye , experiences a mental breakdown over a period of one weekend and lives to tell about it.

2. J.D. Salinger's book The Catcher in the Rye epitomizes the characteristics of a twentieth-century teenage boy's experience of life on the run.

3. The Catcher in the Rye bluntly introduces the secret thoughts, feelings and experiences of a teenage boy bound for a mental breakdown during a few day's rampage in New York City.

4. The Catcher in the Rye shows readers the confusion, fear, and loneliness of a teenage boy caught between his past and present while being fearful for the future.

5. The Catcher in the Rye revolves around one teenage boy's discontent with society, his confusion about life's experiences, and his curiosity about adulthood.

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Bishop, Tina. "Themes and Thesis Statements for J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye" edited by eNotes Editorial, 1 May 2013, https://www.enotes.com/topics/catcher-in-the-rye/questions/themes-and-thesis-statements-for-j-d-salinger-s-3119986.

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