Catcher in the Rye Essay

Submitted By jessbeaton
Words: 631
Pages: 3

The Cather in the Rye Reflection Holden Caulfield, the main character of the novel, is a young boy who shows many traits that could point to him having psychological problems. A majority of the novel so far has been things that are going on within Holden’s mind. It is interesting to see how far in different directions his mind wanders. One minute he is talking about how nice it is talking to his younger sister Phoebe and then next he is telling the reader how Jane Gallagher, a childhood friend, likes to keeps all her kings in the back row when she is playing checkers. Many times when he goes off on these random rants he tends to exaggerate things which gets very annoying. For a teenage boy Holden is very depressed and tends to isolate himself from others his age. He moves from one thing to another very quickly because nothing ever seems to please him because something always goes wrong. He does not mind being isolated from his classmates when he is forced to leave the school because he never really seemed to like them. Holden did not care what his classmates thought of him because when they got annoyed with him for doing things like forgetting their fencing equipment on the subway and acting very immature he did not care. Currently he is alone in New York doing his own thing, living for the day, and talking to anyone who will listen. Since he doesn’t know any of the people he associates with in New York he tends to become a pathological liar. After he tells one lie he just keeps going with it. Holden’s worst psychological trait is that he tends to end up in his fantasy world on most of his rants. Holden’s psychological problems are so clear that one can assume that he is telling his story to a psychiatrist. Though Holden is a very different kind of teenage he still shares a few things in common with people his age. One example of this is the reason he doesn’t want to go home is because he doesn’t want to get in trouble with his parents. He had recently been kicked out of his school and he wants to wait until they hear the news and they calm down before he returns home. Like a