Hunter Zawada
Mrs. Richards
ETS4U
3 April 2017
Essay Title In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger perfectly captures a teenage boy’s struggle with adolescence. The story is told through the perspective of Holden Caulfield, a boy who walks to the tune of a different drummer than the rest of the world. Throughout the novel, Holden takes the reader through just a few days of his life, revealing his scattered character as a teenage boy. Over the course of his journey, there is a subtle, yet important pattern of struggles that evidently affect Holden and ultimately shape him as the person he is at the end of the book. Three major struggles that Holden battles against include expectations from family and school, relationships with other …show more content…
In the teenage years, young people begin their quest for identity which is often a messy, sometimes jumbled path. This is where one will strive to find his or her personal path to success, and this journey is where an internal battle will begin to erupt and cause teens to become disoriented and confused. Holden’s major internal conflict revolves around his inability to deal with the death of his younger brother Allie. His parents never put him through any counselling or professional help, so Holden's feeling of loss and inadequacy eat at him from the inside. Because he is constantly at battle with this internal conflict, external conflicts because to stem as the result. For example, when Holden says that he will write a paper for Stradlater, he chooses to write about Allie’s baseball glove and then goes on to explain all about the glove and what makes it so special to him. He then says “It was a very descriptive subject. It really was. He was left handed. The thing that was descriptive about it was the poems he wrote on the glove. You'd have liked him. He was such a great, terrifically intelligent kid” (21). Holden is clearly not capable of letting go of the past. He lives constantly trying to tell himself how wonderful things were, but in reality things were not great. Holden’s inability to face his future with confidence creates conflict wherever he
Mrs. Richards
ETS4U
3 April 2017
Essay Title In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger perfectly captures a teenage boy’s struggle with adolescence. The story is told through the perspective of Holden Caulfield, a boy who walks to the tune of a different drummer than the rest of the world. Throughout the novel, Holden takes the reader through just a few days of his life, revealing his scattered character as a teenage boy. Over the course of his journey, there is a subtle, yet important pattern of struggles that evidently affect Holden and ultimately shape him as the person he is at the end of the book. Three major struggles that Holden battles against include expectations from family and school, relationships with other …show more content…
In the teenage years, young people begin their quest for identity which is often a messy, sometimes jumbled path. This is where one will strive to find his or her personal path to success, and this journey is where an internal battle will begin to erupt and cause teens to become disoriented and confused. Holden’s major internal conflict revolves around his inability to deal with the death of his younger brother Allie. His parents never put him through any counselling or professional help, so Holden's feeling of loss and inadequacy eat at him from the inside. Because he is constantly at battle with this internal conflict, external conflicts because to stem as the result. For example, when Holden says that he will write a paper for Stradlater, he chooses to write about Allie’s baseball glove and then goes on to explain all about the glove and what makes it so special to him. He then says “It was a very descriptive subject. It really was. He was left handed. The thing that was descriptive about it was the poems he wrote on the glove. You'd have liked him. He was such a great, terrifically intelligent kid” (21). Holden is clearly not capable of letting go of the past. He lives constantly trying to tell himself how wonderful things were, but in reality things were not great. Holden’s inability to face his future with confidence creates conflict wherever he