Comparing The Catcher In The Rye, By J. D. Salinger
426 Words2 Pages
In The Catcher in the Rye, the author, J. D. Salinger, shows the readers a snippet of the life of a boy who ran away from school, Holden. Salinger uses the idea of sex go show that physically escaping will not solve emotional problems. One example of this is Holden’s reaction to Stradlater’s implication that he had sex, or at least messed around, with Holder’s childhood friend. Holden gets angry at Stradlater, though he can’t pinpoint exactly why, and tries to hit him and ends up getting punched in the nose. After the altercation, Holden thinks, “I just kept laying there on Ely’s bed, thinking about Jane and all. It just drove me stark mad every time I thought about Stradlater parked somewhere in that fat-assed Ed Banky’s car” (page 55). Even after he had tries to physically punish Stradlater for his words, Holden still feels confused and sullen.…show more content… His emotion didn’t change because he tried to turn them outward, instead of facing them internally. Then, later in the book, Holder asks to have a prostitute in his room, in an attempt to lose his virginity. When she gets there, though, and takes of her dress, this is how Holder reacts: “I know you’re supposed to feel pretty sexy when someone gets up and pulls their dress over their head, but I didn’t. […] I felt more depressed than sexy” (page 106). Holden doesn’t feel sexy because he has no emotional connection to the prostitute. He wanted intimacy, but the prostitutes business like behavior was anything but. His internal dilemma could not be solved with exterior solutions. Holden also shows this need for connection when he is having drinks with Carl Luce. They are conversing about Carl’s current sexually partner when Holden says, “[…] I regard it as awuddayacallit- a physical and spiritual experience and all. I really