What is holden caulfield like

He is attracted to the trappings of adulthood: booze, cigarettes, the idea of sex, and a kind of independence.

But he despises the compromises, loss of innocence, absence of integrity, and loss of authenticity in the grown-up world. He seems best at the rites of passage smoking and drinking that are themselves artificial if not self-destructive.

Despite his limited experience, his attitude toward women is actually admirable and mature. He stops making sexual advances when a girl says "No. In his confusion, he sees this behavior as a weakness that may even call for psychotherapy. His interactions with the prostitute Sunny are comic as well as touching, partly because they are both adolescents trying to be adults. Although Sunny is the more frightening of the two, neither belongs there.

Holden is literally about to crash. Near the beginning as well as the end of the novel, he feels that he will disappear or fall into an abyss when he steps off a curb to cross a street. Sometimes when this happens, he calls on his dead brother, Allie , for help. Part of Holden's collapse is due to his inability to come to terms with death. Thoughts of Allie lying in his grave in the cemetery in the rain, surrounded by dead bodies and tombstones, haunt Holden.

The number of readers who have been able to identify with Holden and make him their hero is truly staggering. Something about his discontent, and his vivid way of expressing it, makes him resonate powerfully with readers who come from backgrounds completely different from his. It is tempting to inhabit his point of view and revel in his cantankerousness rather than try to deduce what is wrong with him.

The obvious signs that Holden is a troubled and unreliable narrator are manifold: he fails out of four schools; he manifests complete apathy toward his future; he is hospitalized, and visited by a psychoanalyst, for an unspecified complaint; and he is unable to connect with other people. We know of two traumas in his past that clearly have something to do with his emotional state: the death of his brother Allie and the suicide of one of his schoolmates.

In almost every case, he rejects more complex judgments in favor of simple categorical ones. Holden is a virgin, but he is very interested in sex, and, in fact, he spends much of the novel trying to lose his virginity.

He feels strongly that sex should happen between people who care deeply about and respect one another, and he is upset by the realization that sex can be casual. Thus, the caul in his name may symbolize the blindness of childhood or the inability of the child to see the complexity of the adult world. Ace your assignments with our guide to The Catcher in the Rye! On his second night, he has an irresistible impulse to go to Central Park and see what the ducks are doing. In his avidity to find them, he pokes in the grass around the lagoon, to see if they are sleeping there, and nearly falls in the water.

No ducks. This Phoebe is one of the most exquisitely created and engaging children in any novel. They are all about an attractive girl detective named Hazle Weatherfield.

As befits an author, Phoebe has numberless notebooks. Before Holden wakes Phoebe, he has a look at her notebooks and her schoolbooks. Holden wakes Phoebe. She hits him with her fist. This accusation, in which Holden recognizes that there is a fundamental truth, also depresses him. He tries desperately to justify himself. He enumerates things and people he does like—his brother Allie, for instance. Phoebe replies sagely that it is easy to like people who are in Heaven.

Holden, miserable, cannot marshal all his likes. There was, he remembers, a frail boy who was so bullied by some thug schoolmates that he jumped out of a window to escape them.

A teacher, Mr. Near Phoebe, Holden begins to feel better. They turn on the radio and dance. Then, when Holden is about to leave, she gives him her Christmas money. She was sitting way up in bed. She looked so pretty. Everybody, says Holden, accuses him of acting twelve years old. It is his self-communings that are tragic and touching—a dark whirlpool churning fiercely below the unflagging hilarity of his surface activities.

It is the vision of an innocent. He has a hunger for stability. It was the reason Keats liked the suspended attitudes of the figures on the Grecian urn.

And yet there is an exhilaration, an immense relief in the final scene of this novel, at the Central Park carrousel with Phoebe. One day, he will probably find himself in the mood to call up Jane. He may even, someday, write a novel.