《麦田守望者》主人公霍尔顿人物形象分析

《麦田守望者》主人公霍尔顿人物形象分析
《麦田守望者》主人公霍尔顿人物形象分析黑体小二号居中，单倍行距摘要霍尔顿是塞林格著名的文学作品《麦田里的守望者》里的小主人公，也是当时美国年轻人的代表人物。

显而易见，形象鲜活的霍尔顿给各个时代的读者都带来了深深地震撼。

本文将着重分析研究霍尔顿的个性特征。

主人公所处的现实社会是矛盾的、对立的。

“假模假样”是这部小说中的一个经典词语，也是主人公常用的词语。

本文将从霍尔顿矛盾性格对立的角度,对他的两方面个性特征进行分析，包括其个性中的反叛性以及其坚守纯真,追求幸福的崇高愿望。

同时探究主人公霍尔顿矛盾性格形成的成因，从社会环境和教育环境两个维度来解读，以期能探索其性格形成的根源。

为了让读者能够更深入的了解主人公和第二次世界大战后美国的社会现状，及作品背后蕴藏的深意，本文对霍尔顿这个具有代表性的人物形象作了深刻的剖析。

关键词: 纯真；
性格分析；
假模假样；
反叛Abstract Holden is the young
protagonist of the famous literary w orks “The Catcher in the Rye“, which is written by Salinger. At the same time, Holden also represents the youth of American at that time. It is obvious that the vivid image of Holden profoundly impacts all its readers. This thesis will focus on analyzing the personality characteristics of Holden. The real society in which the protagonist lives is contradictory and antagonistic. “Phony“ is a classic words in the novel, and it is also commonly used by the protagonist. It vividly described social hypocrisy and ugliness in the eyes of Holden. This article will analyze Holden’s contradictory character from two aspects, including the rebelliousness in his personality and his noble ideals of defending for purity and chasing happiness. Meanwhile, this paper also explores causes that formed Holden’s contradictory personality by analyzing social and environmental factors, aiming to find out the root of his character. In order to give the reader a deeper understanding on the protagonist, the social situation of the United States after in the Second World War, and the profound meaning behind the works, this article makes a profound analysis on the representative image of Holden. Key words: Purity; personality analysis; phony; rebel Contents 摘要ⅰAbstract ⅱContents ⅲChapter
One Introduction 2 1.1 Holden Caulfield 2 1.2 The Author and the Significance of the Novel 2 Chapter Tow Holden—the Innocent image in The Catcher in the Rye 2 2.1 Holden — A Young Man Loving Pure Childhood Time 2 2.2 Holden--A Patron God for Children 2 2.2.1 The Ideal Eden 2 2.2.2 A Catcher 2 Chapter Three A Rebel Resenting the World 2 3.1 A Rebel against Mundane Affairs 2 3.1.1 A Rebel against the School 2 3.1.2 A Symbol for the Rebel— Red Hunter Cap 2 3.2 Evading in the Revolt 2 3.3 Growing in the Revolt 2 Chapter Four The reasons of Contradictory character 2 4.1 The social environment 2 4.2 The education environment 2 Chapter Five Conclusion 2 Bibliography 2 Acknowledgements 21Chapter One Introduction 1.1 Holden Caulfield The hero in The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, was a middle school student, who was born in a rich middle-class family. He was only 16 years old, but he was taller than normal teenagers of the same age. He always wore a cap and trench coat every day. Holden did not like studying at school, and was expelled from school three times. Although he was expelled for failing four of his five subjects at the end of one semester, he didn＇t feel sorry. After fighting with his classmates, he didn’t dare to go home. Then he found a small
hotel to live in for one day. And he saw some men and women with disordered life there. There was a man who wore women clothes; each of his postures made Holden feel sick. He would hang out in clubs every time he felt bored. He was annoyed when returning back to the hotel. So he agreed with Maurice’s advice to work as an elevator worker, since Maurice would find a prostitute for him. But when the prostitute came, he felt nervous and scared, and finally had to give five dollars to the prostitute. The next day, Holden donated $10 to two nuns while wandering in the street. Holden went skating with his girlfriend Sally after watching a match. When he saw Sally’s insincerity, Holden felt bad. Holden didn’t want to go home or continue to go to school. Therefore, he decided to make a living in the west and pretended to be a deaf and dumb to live his rest life. But before leaving, he would like to see his sister. So he called her. Having waited for her for a long time, he saw his sister Phoebe arrived dragging a big suitcase full of her clothes. She was determined to go with her brother to the west. Finally, because of his sister’s persistence, he had to give up his plan to the west.
1.2 The Author and the Significance of the Novel The Catcher in the Rye is one of the greatest works of modern literature. The author, Jerome David Salinger, wrote this novel whiling
publishing some short novels. However, it had made significant impact on the society and literature of America. The Catcher in the Rye was popular among American teenagers, because it reflected their inside feeling. Critics believed it was the best “initiation novel”. They considered that the novel had some similarities with Huckleberry Finn, a masterpiece of Mark Twain. After it published, The Catcher in the Rye directly influenced creating novels of this kind. “I just wanted to be a catcher in the rye” is its symbolic image, representing the whole meaning of the novel. Salinger hoped to have such a dream that he could accompany the growth of children. Holden’hunter red hat, another profound meaning of the image, consistently existed through the whole novel. The hero would like to be “the catcher in the rye” and then he would be responsible for the safety of children and alert like a hunter. His hat stood for his ideal and responsibility and also the harbor of body and mind. Later he gave the hat to his most beloved sister hoping that she could approve with his thoughts and actions. Chapter Two Holden—the Innocent Image in The Catcher in the Rye 2.1 Holden — a Young Man Loving Pure Childhood Time It can be known from the novel that Holden did not like the hypocrisy of society, and looked forwards to chase the purity of childhood.
As long as purity is mentioned, it will make the pure world occur to our mind. In this novel, the pure world was demonstrated by the representative characters. The first one was Alley who was Holden＇s younger brother. He loved Alley for the reason that Alley was his brother as well as because his chasteness and wisdom. As Holden remembered, he slept in the carbarn at the time when Alley died. So he always thought that he should be responsible for Alley’s death. Because he was particularly sad, his fists fiercely broke the glass window. Additionally, he also had the mind that he would die, too. There is another detail that also could found he loved Alley very much: he had been keeping Alley’s baseball glove. As Stradlater＇s request Holden created an article whose content is concerning about the gloves. He often talked to Alley, and it seemed that his younger brother still stayed beside him. As Phoebe asked Holden about what kind thing and person he liked, it often easily made hime to has his cute brother in mind. He knew that Alley had died, but he was the symbol of purity in his heart. Holden exerted all his energies to conrcern with Phoebe when faced her. He looked forward to defend her innocent and pure heart. As he was swallowed by the hypocritical people as well as society, and even as he almost lost hope for everything, then he entered
Phoebe’s room. He told her that he was afraid he would not have an opportunity to see her any more before his death. At the time he made up his mind to go to the West, he said goodbye to Phoebe. He was almost insane when he found the obscene words on the her school walls. It was very has for him to imagine that if students see these kinds of words, what would appear in their mind. Phoebe had expressed her willing to company with him, but he refused frankly. He looked forward her keeping a positive and optimistic attitude towards her life. One time she just said a simple words “shut up”, which surprised him a lot. In Holden＇s mind, when encounter troublesome things, he would think the little girls wearing skating shoes wew very lovable. Here, the word “lovable“ was employed to describe the world in opposition to “hypocritical”. As to the meaning of “lovable“, it contained the quality of sincerity and innocent, and all of them were illustrated by children. Holden had encountered two nuns, both of them were quite nice because they put all their heart and soul to help others, which was different to his aunts who would not do good things. In addition, his aunt would never appear before the public without making up. However, the nuns were not do the same, so they were the symbol of adult＇s purity. What＇s more, there were
a lot of other things occured in his mind every now and then, for example his girlfriend Jane, Richard who spoke unconstrainedly in oral class, the changeless duck, the fish in lake, as well as the relic in museum, and even a hunter＇s red cap, all of which transmitted intrinsic signals in his sub-consciousness. In “Survey of Contemporary American Novel” proposed by Huang Tiechi who argued that the signals just keeps two information: the first one is that Holden loves purity and keeps chasing it, and also looks forward to keep innocence as children; the other is changeless and freezing things, and they all demonstrate his intelligence and dignity. (Huang, 2000: 7). 2.2 Holden--A Patron God for Children As Holden had fight against the ugly world, he felt quite tired, and he had disappointment about the corruption and mendacity in the society. He desired to run into the real Eden, at which place he could live with purity and honesty. 2.2.1 The Ideal Eden As to Holden, the ideal Eden was a pure and innocent place for children. Holden agued the world he lived in were full of wicked and brutal things, and the people were all lousy. Therefore, he preferred to isolate himself from the hated world and people. Different with the inveracious and wicked adult world, children＇s simplicity made him be pleased and comforted. To him, together with children
was very important to him, as well as his dream about childhood was significant to him. The children world was as clear as crystal, and it was a world filled with love, and warm could be found everywhere. Holden kept the ideal it s hould protect children from disturbing, so that they can keep the pure and real nature of human. It is the ideal Eden that made Holden to become a protector to protect the good nature of children. In the adult world, dismay and corruption were here and there. So, in Holden’s mind, the single thing that worth him to do is to make all his effort to protect children from not to be influenced, and try his best to maintain their innocent nature. “Anyway, I keep picturing 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, I mean-except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff-I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.”His biggest wish was to defend purity and children. He believed that people were naive and pure when they were children before decaying by adult. There was no doubt that the ideal Eden was equivalent
to a faultless Holy Land. 2.2.2 A Catcher Holden created by the author was test himself and his life concept again. Finally, Holden started to clearly make up his thoughts—a bit incoherently, it was true—concerning the thing he was willing to do in h is life. His hope is to be the “catcher”, who can defend children and their purity. He struggled to protect naive children from being disturbed by decadent adult world. He thirsted for philosophical meaning of his life, which keeps a primary moral aim overpassing the reality and practice. The task was as important as a savior. He didn’t mean to be sacrilegious intent, but his only hope was to keep human away from wickedness. The point of view of Holden was that all the unhappy features of a child were because he or her touch the adult world too early. Therefore, he longed for children to maintain purity, and never involving in adult world. Therefore, Holden preferred to become a catcher in the rye, so that he could save a lot of pure and naive children from the edge of cliff. It can be seen from the novel The Catcher in the Rye that the author assure us that Holden has the noble dream to seek for universal fraternity and spirit. He acted as a mutineer to the society, what’s more, he also manifested as a “catcher” protecting purity and children from the evil adult world. In addition, the purity that the children
owned was one of the most distinguished nature of human. Holden’s career was significant, because it was good for children as well as for the whole world. It was no doubt that Holden should get the greatest compliment to some extent. Chapter Three A Rebel Resenting the World 3.1 A Rebel against Mundane Affairs From the novel, it can be recognized that people had the right to obtain education right. For the purpose of achieving success, all people tried their best to pursue knowledge. He despised those around him, for example his father, his brother and others. Here giving an example to illustrate, “The father who is making a lot of dough and plays golf and plays bridge and buys cars and drinks Martinis and looks like a hot-shot.”. His brother was quite clever, D. B, he chose the way to Hollywood, and looked forward to earn money by creating scripts. In addition, Anto Nepali married a old woman who had a lot of treasure. Holden hated all things like those. Therefore, he started to fight against the real world, and hoped to have a wonderful life as he want. 3.1.1 A Rebel against the School In the first part of the novel, it described that Holden was weeded out of Pencey because he fail one course out of five ones. However, he hadn’t as the school’s stipulated time, in fact, he left school in advance, which was his
own way to revolt against the school. On his own initiative, he left school because of his own willing, but not because of outside driving. He was reluctant to make effort to learn, which clearly demonstrated he revolted against the educational system at that time. From some details in the story, they could also manifest Holden’s rebellion characters. Here giving an example, once he had visited his teacher Mr. Antolini, who compared and analyzed the difference between immature and mature man, and gave him the significant suggestions, but not suicidal suggestion.What was Holden’s response to the sincere advice? He had no interests in listening to suggestions of the teacher, since he only cared for himself. Holden didn’t accept the roles in the world by the constructive way, on the contrary, he rebelled against the school and the family, even the world with the immature attitude. Additionally, he displayed the revolt mood through the words of counter-legitimate and counter-cultured. For instance, it appeared frequently in his words “damn, goddamn, ass, old and so on.” These words appeared with extremely high frequency. It seemed as if Holden was degenerating. The implied meanings in these words are his attitude to the society, and they also expressed he was disgruntled and sad. His weird words and action made him out
of the standards rule of society. 3.1.2 A Symbol for the Rebel—Red Hunter Cap As to the red hat from a hunter, it was an unique symbol of the whole novel. The cap stood for Holden’s passive attitude and quality towards a lot of unhappy things in life. He bought it at the time he was repelled in school, and he had mentioned that if he did not want unhappy things to happen, he would wear it. The hunter cap had particular meaning in his dormitory. He said he knew it was hateful to wear the peak to back, but he liked to do it like that.After struggling with Stradlater, he displayed his behavior in an idiosyncratic way again. When he left Pencey, he wore the cap again and place the peak behind, which manifested his joyfulness and deliberateness. He often explained that he liked it that way, and highlighted that he just liked to do as that, from which it could be seen that demonstrated his choice explicitly, and also displayed that he rebelled against the social rule and norm. He made effort to express his wish by unnormal way. He looked forward to be himself, and had to manifest him in the hypocritical and insincere world. Generally speaking, the action of rebellion had agitative feature. It was no doubt that this kind of behavior had unique and particular meaning. Therefore, when recognizing the real society was impacted by decadent
things, Holden revolted at once. While, his defiance was too negligible, hard and slow to be caught in mire. The more he rebelled, the deeper he would be caught, until to be swallowed.
3.2 Evading in the Revolt There was such a description in the novel. Holden wandered outside for three days and nights, observing and found the adult world was filled with wickedness, insincerity and evil. He was sensitive, but was not recognized by the society. He did not wants to live lonely, and hoped to get understand from the noisy world, therefore he tried to employ adult communication mode to talk with other people. It was the fact that he was eager to be understood and loved. Holden still kept an overwhelming dream, like a lot of children as well as adult, and need to pay attention. Holden usually appeared in a lot kinds of public places, and used phone to invited peoples including taxi driver and strangers. However, the results are usual out of his expectation, because he was refused or had no common words. Here, giving an example from the novel to demonstrate. After leaving hometown, Holden met Mrs. Morrow. He used lie to make her laugh, but they were glad. The other example was about a prostitute. He called her, but never felt any sexual desire. In fact, his three days experience was the effort he made to try to be understood and to acquire communication. He
often looked forward to talk with people, because he was too lonely, and desired and catched all opportunities to communicate. With the more unpleasant communication, the more he was dissatisfied. He intended to revolt, however the fact was that he had no choice but to accept the world, but try to escape from it, however, he had to compromise once again. He even kept the mind that he was a man who could not hear and speak because he could not communicate with others in a long time. The world was repelling him, and there was full of loneliness in his heart, which alert him must be phony as others, as well as doing phony things. He made planed for his future life: he imaged he would do a work in gas station where he does not need to think about the type of work or nobody know him; where he does not need to hear and speak, but just get information from the customer’s piece of paper. So, it can be easily found that his decision and action had very closely relationship with the real life and world, despite he could not found hope in the society he lived in. Analyzing from this aspect, it could be seen that he accept and understand about the real world, and it was reasonless to escape from the society. He finally went to a distant place in silent. He had no other choice but to do like that. Holden＇s final purpose was not to keep away from people and
live in a distant place. The truth was that he experieced had fight between the idal and reality for the aim to find a suitable place. But, after encountering more and more failure, he recognized that no matter what he did, it would be no use. There was no such an ideal place in real world. Wang Lihong was a famous reviewer, and he once said Holden just had two choice, one was to accept the real society, the other was to be insane. In the real world, he had no choice but to accept the reality. Wang also gave an example to argue his point of view: Holden went back to school in Sept. and attempted to integrate i nto the society again. (Wang, 2006:180) As Wang＇s opinion, he chose to compromise totally. 3.3 Growing in the Revolt In his novel, J.D had created two lovely roles who were Holden and Phoebe, and they two were like angles. They possessed good qualities like kindness, honesty and courage. They had sympathy with others, and in particular, had the character of rebellion. They also get rid of the common norms of the society, and finally developed their own thought. His younger sister, Phoebe was the only one who Holden could talk about his ideal with. It was also Phoebe roused Holden’s heart by her loveliness and wisdom. Holden had experienced three days and nights seeking for communication, from which knew how to
revolt against reality as well as recognized the important meaning of growth. There was detail description in 25th chapter of his book: Holden sat on a bench, and after a while, he watched his little sister riding wooden horse and playing with other children. Meanwhile, the children revolved again along with music. And he thought that they all were making effort to get the gold ring, including Phoebe, he worried she may fall off, but he still kept silence and did nothing. . At the beginning Holden took care of Phoebe as parents, however he recognized that the best parents should allow kids to do something they want, and try to take adventure. Therefore, Holden believed it was important for children to attempt to tough new things, which may have some risk. After realizing that, he just watched Phoebe grabbing the golden horse by herself tightly, and did not disturbed her. Here, the character’s conflict was manifested, that is to say, he reluctant to accept the adult life, but he had to grow up and learned to be mature. He was not a child any more, and would be adult soon, even though he thought the adult world were decadent. If he want to grow up quickly, he had to take adventure with enough courage. Then, he made effort to know the world and to accept it. This was a very necessary course he had to learn. He finally knew that if there was happiness, there
was also sorrow, and the same as beauty and ugliness, which he learned from Phoebe. So, he believed that if the children wanted to grab the gold ring, adult should allow them to do and just keep silence; they may fallen off, but it was not good for adults to stop them . (Salinger，1951:211). Since then, he had been more and more mature. The merry-go-round was like life, as it revolved, the life also continued. Every body was revolved around the center axis. There was a academic article about this novel, and it made conclusion that Holden was not the only man who doubted and dissatisfied with real society, but if the jockey could follow the rules and adjust himself, then he/her would be safe on the wooden horse, in spite of everything outside. (Kong, 2001: 72) Time after time, Holden finally recognized that he longed for peace and solitude. Chapter Four The Reasons of Contradictory characters 4.1 Social Environment Holden met his brother’s ex-girlfriend when he drank in Greenwich Village and talked with his brother about who was a talented writer. His brother had published a good short story. But later he began to write some vulgar plays for Hollywood because of money. The ex-girlfriend pleased Holden and wanted to make up his brother. Holden felt disgusted and depressed about his brother, who was full of wit, submitted to the lure of money. No
ordinary people would like his brother’s ex-girlfriend nor would artists like his brother who worked for money. The whole society was full of materialism. Even the art was filled with the worship of money. Holden’s disgust and frustration showed his contempt of adult world which was mired in materialism. Holden met Sarne at the night of his traveling. He sympathized with Sarne who gave in herself to vice due to the burden of life. Sarne was confused, angry with him, beating him and even ransacking him. She was the image of a social victim. Though, she had accepted the rules of the society where people were only interested in their own interests without caring about others as much as themselves. Holden had sympathy for her. He once again felt the indifference of society and the distortion of human nature. Therefore, every time Holden approached to people, he could not build an effective communication with them. Holden was banished from the world before he refused the world. So he expressed himself in a distorted way. He was cynical, sarcastic, liking lying, speaking nonsense, teasing, and even insulting others. He often felt that he was a terrible liar, a madman, and a fool. After he gained insight of the distortion of the adult world and also his own spiritual distortions, it seemed that escape was the only choice for Holden. However reality let him know that
“you will never find a comfortable, quiet pl ace, because there is no place like this”. 4.2 Educational Environment The school where Holden studied had a high reputation in the educational field, which should provide a good education and healthy growth for students. On the contrary, there were a lot of unhealthy social trends. Everyone around Holden was “a hypocrite”. Reading books and learning knowledge were only to “get advanced in the society so that in the future they can buy a goddam Cadillac”. What students did was “talking about women, alcoho l and sex”. Obviously, such school was not an ideal place for Holden. He looked down upon those hypocrites who were senior students and hated those classmates who followed them, which made him unfit to the surroundings. No one could really understand his rebellious character. Andolini is one of the most important figures whom Holden visited after he left school. He used to be Holden’s teacher. Holden considered him as the best teacher he had in his life, and respected his brave and righteous deeds. Therefore, after Holden suffered a series of defeat, he came to Antonelli’s apartment with confidence and imagined to get understanding and consolation. But the teacher who once left him a good impression told his students: “the sign of an immature man is that he is willing to die bravely for his
cause”, and his mark a mature man with difference that he prefers to live humbly for his cause. It was clear that Holden was “immature” in his mind, and he himself was “mature”. From the perspective of the adult world, the advice Antonelli gave to Holden might make sense. But it couldn’t release Holden’s confusion. He was lonely and painful because he didn’t want to live humbly like most people. Even his most respected and trusted teacher educated him to be a person like that. He was very confused, very disappointed, especially when he woke up from his sleep and found that his teacher might be a gay. He then immediately found an excuse and escaped away from Antonelli’s house. All his hopes vanished; what the world gave him was only despair.Chapter Five Conclusion In the novel, the author showed us a subtle, rebellious and quite self-conscious teenager who found his own identity from the external society, however, in which he found him was inconsistent with the society in reverse. In the novel, Holden stood for a revolt to real society, and stood in the opposite position to combat mendacity and smuttiness. He was tired of and even and dismayed about the decadence and fraud. In the process of rebelling the already built life values in the adult society, he recognized the real meaning and significance of
life. As a representative young man, he loved and had a sensitive feeling for the modern world. Meanwhile, he was an adolescent, concatenating these in childhood and adulthood. Therefore, he manifested naivety, sincerity and honesty were needed. In his heart, Childhood was the most wonderful time in his life. What’s more, he desired enter a real Eden at that place all people could pursue naive and genuine life. His willi ng is to become “a catcher in the rye.” Without any doubt, it was a particular noble work for him. Generally speaking, in this novel, Holden was designed as rebellion to the society and dream pursuer at the same time. In a word, through depicting Holden Caulfield’s feeling to the society, the author vividly presented social problems at that time. At the same time, Holden is a typical adolescent of the time in America. No matter in the past or at present, his particular figure brings people to have a deep thought about their life and society. Bibliography Geismar,Maxwell. American Moderns:From Rebellion to Conformity. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998. Hassan, Ihab. Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary Novel. New Jersey: Princeton University, 1997. Salinger, J.D.. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston (Little, Brown and Company edition), 1951. Peter Shaw. New Essays on The Catcher in the Rye.。