Help summarizing essay? (on "The Catcher in the Rye")?

Question

I misheard my English teacher about the thesis being at the end of the last paragraph and didn't know he meant the last sentence of the first paragraph and now my first paragraph's a run-on and I'm not sure how to summarize what it is I'm exactly writing about, what I did was experiment with recurring themes and motifs in an effort to reveal Holden's character and psychological problems with quotes represented in the book (I know I need to quote more.), please help! >.> and thank you..

Run-on: J.D. Salinger’s 1951 classic, The Catcher in the Rye, is a coming-of-age novel about psychological and moral treatise. It is written through the course of two days (most likely December 18 & 19), starting after the story’s protagonist, Holden Caulfield’s expulsion from the elite Pencey Prep and leading up to the events that land him in a psychiatric facility.

1st paragraph (I know it's ridiculously long. >.>): Throughout the novel, it is common objective Holden’s alienation is what ultimately drives him over the edge, and consequently in a psychiatric facility (though it is not clearly stated in the book). Holden seems to be excluded and victimized by the world around him, once telling Mr. Spencer (Holden’s English teacher from Pencey) he felt trapped on the “other side” of life. “Game my ***. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right—I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.” – Holden Caulfield (Chapter 2) Further into the novel, we perceive his alienation as a defense mechanism, and possibly Holden’s source of what little stability he has in his life and his isolated proof that he is better than everyone else and therefore above interacting with them. In truth, these interactions often overwhelm and

confuse him. It is well worth noting, Holden’s red hunting hat seems to be a motif for his need of isolation vs. his need of companionship. He always mentions when he’s wearing it, usually advertising its uniqueness and unusual appearance, perhaps reflecting his desire to be different from everyone else around him. At the same time, he is rather self-conscious about it, and he often does not wear it going round the people he knows. Holden desperately seeks human contact and love, though his protective walls of cynicism prevent him from such interaction. It is both the source of Holden’s strength and problems. As in Chapter 17, his loneliness drives him into his date with Sally Hayes, but his need for isolation causes him to insult her and drive her away. Internally, he even admits a hatred for Sally, while externally telling her he loves her. Similarly, Holden longs for the meaningful connection he once had with Jane Gallagher, but is too frightened to make any real effort to contact

contact her, often deluding himself with some last-minute excuse. He depends upon his alienation that simultaneously destroys him.

2nd paragraph: According to most analyses, The Catcher in the Rye is a bildungsroman, a novel concerned with the moral, psychological, and intellectual development of a central character and coming of age. Curiously, Holden makes an unusual protagonist as he is resisting the process of maturity itself. In Chapter 16, as his thoughts about the Museum of Natural History demonstrate, Holden fears change and is overwhelmed by complexity. “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would

still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.” – Holden Caulfield (Chapter 16) Like the statues in the museum, he wants everything to be easily understandable and eternally fixed. He is frightened because he is guilty of the sins he criticizes in others, and because he can’t understand everything around him. But he refuses to admit this fear, revealing it only in a few instances throughout the course of the book “’Sex is something I just don’t understand. I swear to God I don’t.’” (Chapter 22)

3rd paragraph: “Phoniness” is one of Holden’s favorite-used concepts, a catch-all for describing the superficiality, hypocrisy, pretension, and shallowness, that he sees in the world. Holden sees adults as inevitable phonies who are unaware that they are phonies. Phoniness, for Holden, stands for everything that is wrong in the world around him, providing excuse for him to withdraw to his cynical isolation. Though oversimplified

, Holden’s perceptions are not entirely accurate. He can be a highly insightful narrator, and he is very aware of the superficiality of those around him. Throughout the novel, Holden encounters many characters who do seem affected, pretentious, or superficial—Sally Hayes, Carl Luce, Maurice and Sunny, and even Mr. Spencer stand out as examples. Some, like Maurice and Sunny; potentially dangerous. Holden expends so much energy searching for phoniness in others, he never directly observes his own phoniness. His lies are generally pointless, cruel, and needless, to say, even noting he is a compulsive liar. “’I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable to say I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible. So when I told old Spencer I had to go to the gym to get my equipment and stuff, that was a sheer lie. I don’t even keep my goddam equipment in the gym.’” Holden Caulfield

(Chapter 3) He’d like us to that he’s a paragon of virtue in a world of phoniness, but that simply isn’t the case. Although he’d like us to believe that the world is a simple place, and that virtue and innocence rest on one side of the fence while superficiality and phoniness rested on the other, Holden is his own counterevidence. As the novel progresses, Holden begins to realize his own phoniness, and how he is ultimately becoming someone he hates.

4th paragraph: Holden is also known to have recurring suicidal thoughts. “What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would’ve done it, too, if I’d been sure somebody’d cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn’t want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory,” “Anyway, I’m sort of glad they’ve got the atomic bomb invented. If there’s ever another war, I’m going to sit right the hell on top of it. I’ll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.” Holden Caulfield

(Chapter 14 & 18) In Chapters 21-23, when Holden sneaks back home to see his younger sister, Phoebe, before he calls on Mr. Antolini, Phoebe asks him if there was one thing he liked a lot. In response to Phoebe’s question, Holden thinks about the nuns who went round collecting dough in straw baskets, and James Castle’s suicide, and Holden responds Allie. Because Allie died a martyr, Holden holds in great admiration for him. The fact that he finds comfort in dying for a cause supports his recurring suicidal thoughts. The only reason he doesn’t commit suicide is because it would negatively affect Phoebe, contradicting his cause and making him a corruptor of innocence. He instead answers that he likes both Allie and his conversation with Phoebe. The two things he can think of that are innocent because neither of them is a phony. Allie died as a child and so his innocence is preserved and Phoebe is too young to have been affected. Also, in his conversation with Phoebe, Holden tells her he

wants to be the “Catcher in the Rye,” inspired by a misinterpretation of the song “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye,” he imagines “all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around—nobody big,” the only “big” person being him who would catch the children when they started to go over the cliff, and into adulthood, where he believed them invariably dead, and whom he constantly grieves.

Conclusion: The ducks in the pond’s perseverance in inhospitable environment also contemporize to Holden’s understanding of his own situation. They prove that some vanishings are only temporary, the change and disappearance made traumatizing and acutely aware by Allie’s senseless death, Holden knows the ducks come back in the spring, and that change isn’t permanent, but cyclic. Finally, the pond itself contemp with Holden because it is “partly frozen and partly not frozen” and it is in transition between two states, just as he is in transition

between childhood and adulthood, and just as he is between himself.

>.>

Answer 1

Rather than writing this long treatise, try to consider this brief observation and get more from the link I have attached:

Theme Analysis

J. D. Salinger presents an image of an atypical adolescent boy in The Catcher in the Rye. Holden is much more than a troubled teen going through "a phase." Indeed Holden is a very special boy with special needs. He doesn’t understand and doesn’t wish to understand the world around him. In fact most of the book details his guilty admissions of all the knowledge he knows but wishes he didn’t. Though his innocence regarding issues of school, money, and sexuality has already been lost, he still hopes to protect others from knowing about these adult subjects.
Holden, unlike the usual fictional teenager, doesn’t express normal rebellion. He distrusts his teachers and parents not because he wants to separate himself from them, but because he can’t understand them. In fact there is little in the world that he does understand. The only people he trusts and respects are Allie, his deceased brother, and Phoebe, his younger sister. Everyone else is a phony of some sort. Holden uses the word phony to identify everything in the world which he rejects. He rejects his roommate Stradlater because Stradlater doesn’t value the memories so dear to Holden (Allie’s baseball glove and Jane’s kings in the back row). Even Ernie, the piano player, is phony because he’s too skillful. Holden automatically associates skill with arrogance (from past experiences no doubt) and thus can’t separate the two. Even Holden’s most trusted teacher, Mr. Antolini, proves to be a phony when he attempts to fondle Holden. Thus the poor boy is left with a cluster of memories, some good but most bad.

http://www.novelguide.com/thecatcherintherye/themeanalysis.html


good luck

Answer 2

i wager. i got here across out that I even ought to ask from my brothers what i somewhat want. i have not the different "adult men" in my existence, except pals and those adult men are "impressive". thanks. ?D