Catcher in the Rye- Holden

I think that in the book the Catcher in the Rye the main character is Holden Caulfield. I think Holden is the main character because he is the narrator of this book. Throughout the book we see things as Holden sees them and we learn everything through him. When we are introduced to Holden, he is sixteen years old and has been recently kicked out of school. Holden was expelled from school because he failed, but he is still seen as intelligent. The way Holden tells this story is very cynical because he hates the ugliness of the world so much it is intolerable. At some points in this book Holden displays just as much superficiality as everyone in this world that he was originally mad at. Holden has to pick between returning to school and saying goodbye to his sister Phobe to go and travel the world. He faces this conflict for some time before he decides the best thing to do is to return to school. I think that Holden has a very interesting way of viewing things, for example the way he views the museum. When he goes to the museum he notices how nothing ever changes, everything is always the same. He thinks about how the people who go to the museum change every time, but the exhibits are always the same. Every time the people in the canoe are always paddling, but every time you come back you are different. He notices that the people in the canoe were always doing the same thing and that they always looked exactly the same, but when every time you go you look different and you have changed. This reminds me of when I was little and we would take field trips with school to the Lincoln Museum. Every time we went, Abraham Lincoln looked exactly the same but I was the one who had changed. I would have grown up, and changed both physically and emotionally, but good old honest Abe was always the same.

Bibliography

Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 2001. Print.