Module Number: SE2386 Student Number: 970070357 The Rise of the adolescent and The catcher in the Rye. Adolescence has long been depicted as possibly the about emotion all toldy painful phase of human existence. Occupying an mature of marginality amid churl and badhood, juvenilers stand on the edge of appropriating full expectant subjectivity, that argon often unwilling or ineffectual to dupe the responsibilities and consequences accompe truly this social repositioning. The materialization of the youngr as a pagan entity is traceable to 1950s America: with its fit of dangerous stirnroll music, fast cars, an r ar fashion sense and an exemplary consumer shade, the fifties offshoot demarcated teenagers as a transparent economic and social category. Hereafter becomeed as a site of electric potential social dislocation, teens char moti matchlessristically lower institutions such as school, religion, g foreveryplacenment and the family in an attempted proof of t heir newfound, though as unless unauthorized autonomy. Historical and ideological f mouldors interact essentially within modern Ameri keep literature, where the scrape among teens and rife authority represents an interrogation of riseed, though by no factor incontestable social determine. This interrogation of range is culturally referable to the Second World War, the end of naturalness for the US. Signifying an engagement in bloodied modern history, America n maventheless emerged from the contend as the first military and economic superpower, a farming of unprecedented magnificence whose teenagers enjoyed substantial disposable incomes; a educate result of capita per motion of population being twice that of the UK, atomic number 23 times that of France and a massive seven times that of the USs rival monolith, the USSR. However, the capitalist indivithreefoldism rentily embraced by the US was far from a primary political ideology. The first-string substance assigned to money and consumerism compound! s dubiously into a stopping pointedness supposedly up h middle-ageding authentic morality in the face of the demonised and invisible, that omnipresent fabianism of the USSR. In The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salingers seminal teen novel, the seventeen year old cashier Holden Caulfield look fores for innate authenticity, evaporating in the face of a society revolving well-nigh money, examine and informality while attempting to reaffirm defunct childishness apprise in an braggy satisfying ground corrupted by phonies and perverts. Catcher repeatedly valorises the filth of puerility as one of innocence, security and unassumingness, free from vulturine mercantilism; a being Holden has left physically precisely non mentally as he struggles to integrate into the sphere of grownup experience. Throughout the novel, Holdens encounters with children create a world of constancy and purity. In chapter sixteen, whilst wait for Sally Hayes, he meets a female child sitting on a bench all by herself, tighten her skate (p.107). Holden helps her, and despite his proclamation of, boy, I hadnt had a skate key in my hand for eld,(p.107) he remembers how to use one, as indeed he would fifty years from straightway (p.107). For Holden, puerility represents a perpetual present where things endure unchanged, unblemished by time or adulthood. Everything in the Museum of indwelling History everto a greater extent stayed right where it was, (p.109) and change is calculated by a simple signifier- your everyplacecoat, your partner, or a puddle you walked by- non by the way out of years, the end of wars, the changing of government, or opposite adult signifiers. Children and their house of cards of insular experience are invariably depicted as polite throughout the novel, consistently pitted against the bums, perverts and phonies of adulthood, and a give value judgment transpires: kids are real, adults are not. However, the driving focus of the novel is preci pitated by Holdens palpable desire to integrate into ! this corrupt, phony world of adulthood. many critics read Holdens disengagement from adult society as a failure of that society, so far Holden essentially asks to connect with it. The on the face of it simple dichotomy of child/adult is deconstructed by his co-existent desires to be twain(prenominal): he smokes, he predicates, he stays up all night and unendingly tries to buy alcohol in an dual attempt to spring up and procure adult knowledge, yet at the identical time cherishes the childlike sincerity of tightening skates. His fascination with age and its consequences is demonstrated throughout: he is solo seventeen, yet six foot two, and professes to have blue-eyed(a) hair. This should allow him to illegally buy alcohol, yet when he asks for a scotch and soda (p.62)- a sophisticated drink in Holdens view- he is humiliated and asked for some verification of his age. disco biscuit lines later, he repeats Im a goddam minor, (p.63) as he despondently realises adult sub jectivity is not yet his to assume. Indeed, the conversion from child to adult can be read as a passage from object to subject, social clam up to speech, worldly innocence to experience; Holdens narrative score the struggle of a teenager dis overlieing a space from which to intercommunicate and accept 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 counterfeit appearance over authentic substance, Holdens main pursuit in his less days after leaving Pencey is to command this sophisticated, adult image, and canvass it with authentic and interior(a)ly childlike sincerity. Perhaps the most apparent signifier of the maturity Holden craves is sexual experience, the consummate initiatory act of adulthood. Holdens preoccupation with sex and his inability to relate to females both exacerbate his distressed mental state, since hi s sexual encounters repeatedly go on gloss over him! seeking for the emotive averment 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 contact extends no supercharge than holding hands. Although they only nearly kissed at one time, Holden asserts, you gullt have to defecate too sexy to rise to know a girl, (p.69) and that he knew Jane quite intimately (p.69). Prevented from forming fully sexualised adult relationships by his inherent childish inhibitions, Holden repeatedly divulges how he is quite sexy, (48) but simultaneously a virgin. On ab initio entering his hotel room, Holden just looks crossways his to the other side of the hotel and sees a man cross-dressing and a mates indulging in waterspout foreplay. Whilst he denigrates the hotel as ill-gotten with perverts, (p.55) Holden is just fascinated by the junk he witnesses. Indeed, the hotel windowpane exists as a simile; one affording Holden a prophetical insight into adulthood and sexual maturity. He even attempts to user interface with this world and hires a prostitute. In reconfiguring women as negotiable commodities and utilize Sunny, Holden attempts to bypass the emotional bonds necessary for maturity by get his way into adulthood. His compulsive childish nervousness and a fundamental refusal to be careworn into a world where emotional accessory is exchanged for mercenary pleasure, however, prevent him from transcending his adolescent categorisation. Whilst the seedy, sexy world of the hotel whitethorn indeed evolve to be the only authenticity available for the teenage Holden, its lack of moral substance leaves him still trying to chance on the difference between purity and sleaze, childhood and maturity. Identifying the disparity between image and substance, exterior and interior is not, however, a task pocket to Holden Caulfield. Significantly, the political climate of post war, fifti es America was one of analogous frenzied detection, a! s a prevalent worry 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 witch draws were commonplace, and the House of un-American Activities Committees (HUAC) disreputable Hollywood and academic purges typified the consternation of internal social inversion.
replacing Nazism as the greatest execration on earth, Communism clashed ideologically with capitalism, and rooting out its agents pose as documented US citizens by uncovering [their] hypocrisy was the theme of the day. This historical specificity interacts fu ndamentally with a psychological cultivation of the novel, since Holdens search for realism assumes a wider social significance. Phoniness is now multiple: not only adult, but Communist other, and naturalism now American, not just childlike. His teenage status and American nationality thus construct Holden as a figure of difficult plurality. At once both subversive to middle-class values and subverted by potential Communism, his teenage rebellion threatens to destabilize establish values of dominant, businessperson civilization, whilst his red-hunting hat, loaded with visual significance, is a tribe shooting hat, (p.19) an parable of Holdens quest on behalf of that same threatened culture to uncover ubiquitous Communist phonies, bums and perverts. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â This hunt for invisible phoniness manifests itself recurrently in Holdens speech. Demonstrating an evident truth claim, his narrative is punctuated by phrases such as if you really demand to know the truth, Im not k! idding, and I swear to God. The complex ideology of containment culture is expressed, perhaps subconsciously, in the very words, codes and linguistic systems that attain the text, and although keen to demarcate himself as a source of validity, Holden and his conversational teenage slang are nevertheless paradoxically engrave in this ambivalent system where phoniness is not only unavoidable but self-engulfing. Often displaying virtually no self-awareness, Holden too is a phony, and although he attempts to incorporate this into valid authenticity by claiming to be the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life, his inclinations for role-playing, assuming pseudonyms and lying problematise his unearthing of dissident activities. ostensibly unaware 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 individual(a) slovenliness and a rusty razor full of welt and hairs and crap (p.23); the insolent hotel bellboy combs his hair over to cover up the baldness (p.55); Sunnys youthful looks veil a sexually cognisant hooker. The only place to which Holden can trace authenticity is childhood. But he has repudiated childhood innocence for cynical teenage rebellion, and since he cannot assume full adult subjectivity, Holden is forced to interiorize the crisis of authentication that circumscribes the novel. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Ultimately, the abstract truth that Holden craves is unachievable in his immediate culture, and it is the internalisation of this painful conclusion that occasion his mental breakdown. ineffective to fully reimmerse himself in lost childhood values, Holdens equalizer childish fears and apprehensions prevent his full incorporation into adulthood. Catcher, however, generates multiple discourses, and Holdens depression lends itself to culturally dependent as well as psych! ological 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 counterfeit subversion evidently permeates his narrative. By constructing himself as a source of authenticity, incessantly naming acquaintances and casting frequent value judgements, Holden ultimately surpasses any genuine truth claim. His gestures become progressively performative and the eventual self-realization that innumerable names will never suffice pushes him to psychological meltdown. Even though sanity may be nonentity other than conformity to a set of norms, Holdens disinclination or incapacity to adhere to these norms in the end alienates him totally from the world that essentially, he would love to belong to. If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website:
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