Ａｎａｌｙｓｉｓ ａｎｄ Ｉｍｐｌｉｃａｔｉｏｎｓ ｏｆ Ｈｏｌｄｅｎ’ｓ Ｂｅｗｉｌｄｅｒｍｅｎｔ ｏｆ Ｇｒｏｗｔｈ ｉｎ Ｔｈｅ Ｃａｔｃｈｅｒ ｉｎ ｔｈｅ Ｒｙｅ

ＭＡ　Ｗｅｉｙａｎ

Abstract: The purpose of the paper is to analyze Holdens bewilderment of growth, discuss the reasons why the youths become so snobbish, and provide some implications to nowadays adolescents.

Keywords: Holden; bewilderment; implication

中图分类号： H319文献标识码: A文章编号：1672-1578（2009)5-0011-02

1 Introduction

The Catcher in the Rye was a landmark book in America, which soon became a popular reading for students in high schools and colleges. In reality many students and teachers were affected by the book. Holden Caulfield, a Sixteen-year-old boy, the narrator of the novel, is expelled from his school. Unwilling to go home, Holden decides to take a room in a hotel in New York for a couple of days. During these days, he met different people, and most of the time, he is depressed. Then he wants to be “a catcher in the rye”, who would stand in a field and keep children from going over the edge of “some crazy cliff”. Adolescence is critical, which is the period of time that Holden is going through and one of the most important stages of human development. Although many have written on this phase of growing up, few have done so with such an awareness of the intensity of suffering and depression. Holden Caulfield stands for American youth after World War II. His story has great impacts on the adolescents and the adults in that generation. At that time many students imitated Holdens typical behaviors and appearance. This present study will investigate the causes and implications of Holdens bewilderment in order to provide some implications to nowadays adolescents.

2 Holdens bewilderment of growth

Adolescence is fairly a new period for teenagers, who are going to become a sexual being, to have new sorts of relationship and to support themselves. Holden, who is a typical adolescent, has great bewilderment towards death, sex, and peer group.

At the age of thirteen when Holdens little brother, Allie died, Holden has firstly suffered greatly emotional breakdown. That night he sleeps in the garage and “…I even tried to break all the windows... It was a very stupid thing to do. Ill admit, but I didnt even know I was doing it, and you didnt know Allie.” These sentences implicate Holdens deep love for his little brother, and reflect he blames himself for not saving Allies life. It is the first time Holden recognizes the fragility of life. The second death Holden has to confront is the death of his classmate, James Castle. After being insulted by other students, the boy commits suicide. Holden says what he really feels like he is committing suicide. For Holden, unfortunately, there is no one to instruct him how to cope with death, and how to recover from the sorrow. This is Holdens bewilderment towards death.

Chris Becket proposes that boys and girls get different message about sex in adolescence; boys must have sex in order to prove themselves. In this novel, Holdens bewilderment in growth towards sex can be seen from his curious fondness, and great interest in opposite sex. In the hotel, he asks for prostitutes twice, while he fails to make relation with them, for he dares not to have real sex. He considers that sex belongs to the adult in his mind. At the adolescent stage, boys are eager to learn about sex. Holden admits he knows nothing about sex, which makes him curious on sex.

In America the main role of the peer group is to train young people the art of sociability, which is a key skill. Holden values his peer group. He tries to win their approval. Thats why Holden senses other peoples needs, negotiates his way into and out of interpersonal situations with teachers, classmates, brothers and sisters. Holden has a classmate, named Dick, who is embarrassed by his cheap suitcase. Holden finds this, and he tries to protect Dicks feelings, so he hides the case under a bed. Unfortunately, Dick misunderstands him and tries to fight against him. In this novel, we can see the outstanding aspect of Holdens treatment and activities to the peer group is just the way he treats his brothers and little sister. Holden values them the same, and he also holds long imaginary conversations with his dead brother. Holden has close relationship to his brothers and sister, which is a sharp contrast to the relation with his parents.

3 Causes for Holdens bewilderment

Holdens bewilderment is not only caused by his typical adolescent psychology, but also by family, school and social factors.

3.1Family responsibility

Family is a shelter for people, which plays an important role in cultivating childrens personality physically and mentally, especially for adolescents. Unfortunately, Holdens parents care less for the children. In Holdens eyes, his mother does not love them. And his father hardly appears. His father is a lawyer, who has a good reputation and a lot of money. When his little sister Phoebe knows that Holden has flunked, she says repeatedly that Mr. Caulfield will “kill” Holden, and Holden himself also reckons that his father will hit the ceiling if he knows he is at home. From the bottom of his heart, he wishes to be caught by his family.

Holden is greatly in need of being guided by his parents as an adolescent. Yet he feels little affection from his family, thus it is not surprising that Holden has severe mental conflicts. It is strange that his father is well educated but reluctant to educate Holden himself. He sends his children to expensive institutes and cares nothing. All his parents care is only earning money but not their children. Not only Holdens parents, many other parents fail to care and educate their children, for they pay no attention to their kids, even when they are walking in a very dangerous way. Holden feels angry with these parents indifference to their children, thus he begins to be the catcher in the rye to protect the children himself.

3.2School responsibility

Holden has attended three schools: Whooton, Elkton Hills, and Pencey. In Holdens eyes, none of them is a good place to study. Mr. Hass, headmaster of Elkton, is the phoniest bastard in Holdens eyes. Hass earns this label in the following way:“Old Hass went around shaking hands with everybodys parents……It makes me so depressed. I go crazy. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills. (Salinger, 1958:18) Even when Holden fails four subjects in the examination, Hass tells him that life is like a game and one should play it according to its rules. Holden feels disgusting on these words. Another two teachers Holden use to represent his two famous schools. One is Mr. Spencer, who is a symbol of all the stupid teachers at Pencey. Mr. Spencer is the oldest teacher; however, his old age represents not wisdom but spiritual blindness and physical corruption. Spencer is both foolish and phony, who pays no attention to his students needs. As a teacher he fails to communicate with his students, and he always interrupts others. The second typical teacher is Mr. Antolini who is Holdens English teacher at Elkton Hills. Different from Mr. Spencer, Mr. Antolini is intelligent and nice. Mr. Antolini is sympathetic and caring about students. At first Holden thinks Mr. Antolini is a good teacher. But one night Holden wants to get help from Antolini before he has fallen. When Holden is asleep on the couch, in the middle of the night, Mr. Antolini makes a homosexual advance towards him, which takes Holdens respect to him.

School should be the place for children to develop their unique personality. However, Holden was deep depressed by the teachers and the schools, and the teachers in these different schools bewilder Holden.

3.3Social responsibility

Society plays a role as a natural teacher who gives guidance to sensitive adolescents during their crucial period. From beginning to the end in the novel, difference shows everywhere between what Holden would have the world be and the worlds reality. The society viewed as commercialized, materialistic and great pressure on Holdens innocence, which makes him be afraid of doing the same things everyday just like his father. And the only way to rebel against the society for Holden is to escape. Thus he wanders in New York streets for almost three days, but ends up by growing up and learns to compromise with the society, which depresses Holden.

What the society provides people with limits only to material, but no spiritual food. Holden seems to exist in a world almost entirely composed of leisure pursuits. We hardly ever see him in a context of anything that might be called work, which in his case would be academic study. The Edmont Hotel in New York may be a so-called civilized place, but full of perverts. In the day there is civilization, as soon as the dark falls every ugly thing may happen. That means people at different ages who staged in society are experiencing very serious spiritual crisis. It is such an ugly society that Holden is trying to escape from.

4 Implications

There is really much similarity between Holden and contemporary adolescents in China. Since China adopted the opening-up policy, great changes have taken place, more peaceful political environment, with booming economy. Unavoidably that has produced a violent impact on Chinese moral senses. People have more channels to earn money, so they are busier; people have more freedom to choose their livings style, and more couples divorced and are divorcing; children enjoy more material supplies, but they suffer loneliness. Especially the adolescents growing up with loneliness nowadays, have got more psychological bewilderment to overcome, for they have more pressure than ever before from parents and the society. As the society becomes more competitive, the adolescents have to bear the heavy burden of studying hard for their bright future. Therefore, they need more care from society, from school, and from family. In recent years, the criminal rate of adolescents has risen romantically, which is a serious reminder that even in such an affluent society, adolescence is no longer a carefree group and that the whole society should pay more and more attention to adolescents, helping them to adjust themselves to adulthood life successfully. Through the detailed analysis of Holdens bewilderment, this article attempts to find out the causes of adolescents bewilderment and then draw adults attention to guide the growth of adolescents.

References：

[1]常耀信.美国文学简史[M].南开大学出版社,1990:420.

[2]Salinger J. D. The Catcher in the Rye[M]. New York: Penguin Book, 1958:42.

[3]Chris Beckett. Human Growth＆Developments[M]. London: Sage Publications Ltd, 2002:126.

作者简介：马威艳（1980-），女，辽宁沈阳人，锦州渤海大学外语系助教，获大连海事大学硕士学位，研究方向为英语语言学，英语听力教学。