The Catcher in the Rye Blog 3

There are multiple universal themes addressed in The Catcher in the Rye.  These themes include the challenges and pain of growing up, the shallowness of the world, and alienation as a form of self-protection.  These three reoccurring themes are in the center of Holden’s identity crisis.  The painfulness and challenges of growing up are what stops Holden from ever going out of his comfort zone.  He seems to be afraid to realize his own problems to even start fixing them.  School just does not seem that important to him because real life is still a long way off.  “Holden fears change and is overwhelmed by complexity. He wants everything to be easily understandable and eternally fixed, like the statues of Eskimos and Indians in the museum. He is frightened because he is guilty of the sins he criticizes in others, and because he can’t understand everything around him. But he refuses to acknowledge this fear” (Sparknotes 1).  This difficulty of growing up is tied to his view of the fakeness of the world.  Holden sees almost everyone as being “phonies”, especially if they are an adult.  Because he does not understand them or make any effort to understand them, he feels separated from everyone else.  Holden tended to find the superficiality in other people’s eyes, but forgot to check his own.  In many ways he was a hypocrite for even mentally accusing others of falseness.  This theme ties into the final theme of alienation.  Because Holden refused to get attached to anything in the adult world, he alienated himself in order to try to protect himself.  “As readers, we can see that Holden’s alienation is the cause of most of his pain. He never addresses his own emotions directly, nor does he attempt to discover the source of his troubles. He desperately needs human contact and love, but his protective wall of bitterness prevents him from looking for such interaction.” (Sparknotes 1).  By alienating himself, Holden tried to stabilize the little part of himself he thought he knew.  By doing so, he only ended up lonesome and depressed without anyone to turn to. 

"The Catcher in the Rye." SparkNotes. SparkNotes, n.d. Web. 13 Aug. 2012. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/catcher/context.html.

Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and, 1991. Print.