Catcher In The Rye Conformity

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel about Holden Caulfield, a 16-year-old teenager growing up in 1950’s New York. After being expelled from Pencey High, Holden goes off on what seems to be a three-day journey to New York City. During this time he goes through an emotional roller coaster. Holden’s feelings about society, conformity and sexuality are clearly exposed throughout the novel. It’s a novel that deals with complex issues that almost every adolescent experiences in their life; issues of identity, sexuality, belonging, and alienation. At the time the book was published adults looked it down upon, even though it was originally written for adults, not adolescents. Due to its profanity, sexual subject matter and rejections of traditional…show more content…
Post WWII America had an increasing number of delinquent teens. It wasn’t until the war that parents began to slowly drift from their child’s life. Fathers were off at war and mothers were too busy helping the war effort. You know what they say, “when the cats are away, the mice will play,” and that’s exactly what teens began to do. They got a taste of true freedom and they loved it. “The advent of World War II created discipline problems for the thousands of suddenly less-supervised youth on the home front, problems leading to a national outbreak of juvenile delinquency,” (Barson, Heller, 22). Adolescents began to rebel. Whether it was at home or out on the streets, teens began to realize that they too had a voice and they were free to do as they pleased, even if it meant rebelling against their own parents. This is seen in Catcher in the Rye many times. “Between the emotional incapability of Holden’s mother, the neglectful consumerism of his father, and the couple’s reliance on the third party institutions such as boarding schools and psychiatrists to raise their child, the Caulfields embody the failing of parenting at large during the postwar period,” (Kirkwood, 23). The first sign of delinquency was when he tells the reader that he has been kicked out of school, for the third time. This clearly shows how Holden could care less about his education and lacks motivation to aspire to…show more content…
With the list of books that was provided to us, I was able to have a broader idea of what specific words to look up in the library catalog. I will admit that at the beginning of this assignment I was completely stumped, and I still somewhat am, but nonetheless I did attempt to do as much research as possible so the assignment would go as smoothly as possible. I used two of the books that were recommended to us and both were extremely helpful. “Teenage Confidential An Illustrated History of the American Teen,” was the first that I checked out and it was the one that gave me the most information about the media and how much it really influenced teenage “delinquency” and “rebellion.” One specific online article that I found the most helpful was “Holden’s Lousy Childhood: Poor Parenting and the Rise of Post War Delinquency.” This article went into depth with “Catcher in the Rye” and compared it to everyday things that were going in life. For example, Kirkwood states, “The difficulty Holden’s mother experiences in accepting the death of her son Allie, sets her up as an example of parents of the postwar period struggling to readjust themselves to the new conditions they must