Ashley Reynolds
Mr. Wichmann
English III
30 March 2015
The Catcher in the Rye
Holden Caulfield is a young boy traveling in and out of schools with a questionable mind.
He particularly posses a negative mindset towards the world and the people in it. In the novel
Catcher and The Rye, J.D. Salinger utilizes past events to reflect Holden Caufield's present state of being to express how he must contend with different aspects of the past contributing to his negative approach towards life.
Holden attended many different schools and always fluked out of them besides English class. Through his traveling escapade between schools he encountered many different roommates and teachers. Holden typically dislikes many of the students including Stradlater, his current room mate at Pencey. Holden was requested by Stradlater to write an essay for him about something very detailed such as a house. Caulfield decided to write about something very personal to him; his brother Allie's baseball glove. In the end result he created a wonderful essay but Stradlater comments, "You always have to do everything backasswards. No wonder you're flunking the hell out of here. You don’t do one damn thing the way you're supposed to" (Salinger
41). Holden was attempting to do a favor for his room mate but results in insult and ends up tearing his essay apart leading Stradlater with nothing in hand. This event still deeply effected
Holden and ultimately contributed to his hatred towards other "phonies" at Pencey.
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Caulfield decided to call up his girlfriend Sally Hayes whom effect his present attitude in a lonely, solemn way. Sally is a girl he was not too much in love with but wrote how he confessed to her that they should run away and get married. He regretted his statements in the end and concluded that he was truly a crazy man after her rejection seemed feasible. Erberhard
Alsen states, "Sally tells Holden that his plan is an unrealistic fantasy because if he didn't get a job they'd both starve to death; besides they're still practically children, and they still have time to do all those things after he goes to college." Ever since he would write about how lonely and depressed he felt towards many occurrences. Drinking his emotions away at bars, he attempted to find a girl or even a guy to keep him company due to his loneliness that Sally made worse.
Holden would call Sally "the queen of the phonies" ( Salinger116) because in his eyes it seemed all she cared about was herself and her appearance. ultimately Sally left Holden with the impression that he will be always alone, but he still held women in a soft spot in his heart.
With Caulfield feeling lonely and melancholy the only person he thinks the most of and misses besides his brother Allie is his young sister, Phoebe. Holden acquires and extreme want to see sally to "shoot the bull" with her and enjoy her company. He goes to the extremes to sneak into his own home before the day he is supposed to come out from being expelled at Pencey. He wakes Phoebe up and they talk to each other with excitement and understanding. Margaret
Dumais Svogun makes an observation that, "much has been made of the importance of Holden's younger sister Phoebe, who serves him as, among other things, an ideal of
