A Different Theme in Coming of Age

     Through the time we spent reading the novel, “The Catcher in the Rye”, I noticed some key themes that make this book a coming of age novel through a different perspective than what we’re used to seeing in coming of age. The main theme we can probably see a lot with Holden and his attitude towards everything he faces in life, his distaste for almost everything around him, is really just his way of isolating himself from the rest of society. It’s almost like alienating himself out of fear, his way of brushing everything off and blocking out everything he deems as “phony” is really a way of protecting himself from the fear of becoming phony in the first place. One thing he says to Mr. Spencer that signifies this is that he feels like he is on the “wrong side in the game of life”, as a sense of not belonging anywhere and is too scared to grow up and essentially find his way in a world where he doesn’t even belong in. I strongly believe that Holden has bottled up emotions, which wall himself inside his own fear and refuse to let him interact with others because he deems these interactions as overwhelming to him through his actions and words.

    In the first portion of the novel as well, when Holden takes a cab and gets off the train station in New York, he wonders "where the ducks all went when the lagoon froze over". To the viewer, this seems like an obvious change that any bird which migrates will take, to develop and mature, and to help grow over the course of their lives, and Holden knows that this change is similar to changes he is forced to go through within his own life. Holden's feelings of wanting to stay in the stage of innocence he had as a child and not grow up only grow stronger when he's talking to Phoebe, and he reminds himself of his own childhood when explaining how he'd just be the catcher in the rye. "That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.", which is referencing the games he used to play with other children in the fields when he was younger. These memories and flashbacks make it extremely hard for Holden to let go of that innocence he's based his mindset to keeping forever, and what makes it harder for him was having a lack of support of people in his life to help him realize coming of age is just another part of life.

    I found this pretty different as usually in a coming of age novel, the protagonist subconsciously matures and finds their meaning, while Holden is actively resisting it for the majority of the story. It definitely was a great read to follow and I found the book quite interesting for this reason.

Comments

  1. MitchellFebruary 17, 2021 at 1:35 PM

    It's actually good to hear that this aspect of Holden's narrative--his relentless and at times almost blasphemous complaints about certain aspects of American society--still has the capacity to sound new and even provocative. Holden's character (Salinger's literary creation) was something entirely new in the American literary scene when the novel was first published, but it has since become enormously influential, and therefore somewhat familiar--there are many malcontented, cynical, depressed narrators of YA novels published every year, and they get a lot of mileage out of complaints about the conformist nature of American culture. But I never want to lose sight of how radical some of Holden's opinions would have been at the time: he criticizes football, movies, and car culture, which are basically the holy trinity of American Secular Religion.

    ReplyDelete
  2. CadiFebruary 18, 2021 at 7:35 PM

    It's interesting to think about this novel in a way that simply points out its broad incorporation of coming of age themes rather than specifically how the main character comes of age. The majority of the novel is almost an anti-coming-of-age novel in that Holden's actively avoiding coming of age, but his rejection of growth only sets him up to realizing that his ideals are unrealistic and leads to a twist where the true coming of age nature of the story is revealed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JonathanFebruary 19, 2021 at 6:48 PM

    Yeah it's interesting to see him resist coming of age, and his unique ways of coming to terms with it. The process of maturity is a huge focus of this novel, Holden doing whatever he can to condemn what he sees as adult traits and wanting to keep children from ever coming of age as well. People have also been talking about how the ducks moving on from the lake is representative of accepting change and moving away from what you grew up in, and the fact that Holden doesn't understand why the ducks would leave is cute.

    ReplyDelete
  4. RowanMarch 10, 2021 at 7:58 AM

    It's definitely interesting to think about how Holden's resistance to the path that is laid out for him is what we are shown as his coming of age, but I don't think that means that Holden doesn't necessarily grow and change. It's kind of hard to know because the book takes place over such a short time span but this does seem like a really impactful set of experiences and I think that being resistant to societal ideas of maturation could sort of be a form of coming of age in its own weird way.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Main Motifs in Black Swan Green

  Throughout the novel, Jason Taylor has always seemed to push himself to be the person he’s not, however, his coming of age highlights the fact that you can only really be yourself. For the majority of the novel, the reader follows Jason’s narrative, learning about the established social hierarchy at school through names. In fact, a main motif of the book is the emphasis on distinction of kids through their names, which serve as their place in the social world of school. These are distinguished through students using either first names, middle names, last names or insults towards each other to serve the purpose of separating them on a social level. For example, Moran is called Moron for no reason other than the fact that the spelling is similar. Jason applies this name rule to himself in many ways as well: Hangman, which is indicative of his stammer, Maggot when he feels down and useless, Unborn Twin who is an imaginary perception/sidekick of Jason’s essentially and Eliot Bolivar,...
Read more

The Giver - Essraa A

     On the topic of "coming of age novels", one that pops into a lot of people's minds is The Giver , a widely known novel to many students. The plot features 12 year old Jonas confronting the antagonizing force of his dystopian society, and ultimately coming of age through breaking through the controls and limits set by others on his life and everyone else's in society.       The novel takes place with Jonas, the protagonist of the story, living in this futuristic society with his parents, who have been assigned roles in society, and his 7 year old sister, Lily. An important part of the novel’s progression comes from the upcoming “Ceremony of Twelve”, where once any member of society hits the age of twelve, they are given a new role and expected to follow through with it as a member of society. The most important and highest role of honor, “Receiver of Memories” has been given to Jonas, as he’s noticeably unique from the rest of the people aroun...
Read more