Alienation in Catcher in the Rye

Alienation in Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye authored by Salinger J.D., is a story about Holden Caufield’s disillusioned exit from learning institutions that don’t support, nurture, or inspire him. His departure forces him to spend sleep-deprived and painful nights in New York City streets. Salinger’s novel has a wider public appeal, especially in the educational cycles because touches on real life issues encountered by learners and teachers in the modern American education system.

All the people that interact with Holden including friends, classmates, New Yorkers, and teachers are fraudulent individuals that disguise their ill intentions and crooked agendas in artificial conventions. Holden’s idealistic personality is evident in his naivety, worldly tricks and use of lies to shield him. However, the protagonist is preternaturally sensitive, Therefore, decadence and cruelty he witnesses in learning institutions and New York horrify him.

The protagonist alienates himself via pursuit of innocence and freedom. On several occasions, he resists teachers’ efforts to instil wrong values in him through education as per the existing flaws in the system. In fact, he asserts his relatively untarnished personality through non-confirmative vernacular style. Holden becomes vulnerable to suicide because of loneliness in life that results from personal alienation.

Salinger’s Reasons for Alienation in the Modern World

The theme of alienation was prevalent in the United States during the Post-War era when Salinger's book was first published. There was economic prosperity and cultural consensus in post-war America. However, a new form of fear gripped the society when communism threatened to shake the foundations of the United States. Therefore, most writers and intellectuals like Salinger sought to address and safeguard the American values and freedoms of staunch citizens like Holden. Through the protagonist, Salinger endorses alienation as a working strategy to safeguard American values still viewed as relevant by a small section of the entire population.

Critics of the past century were mainly concerned about possible conformity of America's majority. There were bewildering suburbs that were designed uniformly while business centres were swelling with mass-market commodities. Corporate bureaucracies bewildered, thus threatening to foster homogeneity. Americans became desperate for other’s approval. Resultantly, people were unable to think or act independently, hence Holden’s reference to them as “phony.” (Salinger 243).

Salinger’s Solutions for Alienation

Salinger’s proposes through his story that there is a need for a complete overhaul of America’s education system to accommodate and promote American values. Woes experienced by the protagonist are traceable to learning institutions, where teachers abandon learners like the protagonist. In the long-run, a generation of isolated youth become a threat to the society by engaging in activities such as vandalism, violence or truancy. An outcome like this can be prevented if there is a concerted effort by the relevant authorities to re-evaluate the learning programs.

Holden's story is marked by misfortunes, bad luck and deterioration of health because the author intends to paint a clear picture on the ensuing results when teachers and leaders fail to act as per expectation to salvage and mend ways of stray behaviours (Salinger 243). Notably, schools are nurturing centres where wayward children get useful lessons that can be applied in their future life. It is a different case if the system betrays learners like it did to Holden, thus leading to a catastrophic chain of events to the less fortunate.

Feminism Theory

Salinger's depiction of alienation and isolation hinges on the protagonist's negative view towards women. Female subjects are portrayed as sex objects and subhuman savages that cannot reason or make judgements at the same level of their male counterparts. However, it is worth noting that the book was first released in the mid-20^th century when women were yet to launch personal struggles against gender inequality. Specifically, Holden describes in detail how one prostitute offered to provide her services freely. Eventually, he disagreed with her idea as he was focused on alienating himself with disruptions and impure acts introduced via America's social and moral decay. According to him, the United States was quickly falling into a trap of promiscuity and social injustice. The protagonist had no other option other than to deviate from the mainstream ideas and values. In fact, he ended up as a pacifist atheist, then considered as abominable.

Currently, Holden’s ideas seem to be resonating in the society. Most of the laws that infringed his rights as an independent thinker have been repealed. Today, the American society has inched closer to granting freedom of association, education and worship to all people irrespective of their social or ethnic background (Salinger 76).

Work Cited

Salinger, J D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Paw Prints, 2008. 1-252. Print.