How old is holden caulfield in catcher in the rye

This accusation, in which Holden recognizes that there is a fundamental truth, also depresses him. He tries desperately to justify himself. He enumerates things and people he does like—his brother Allie, for instance. Phoebe replies sagely that it is easy to like people who are in Heaven.

Holden, miserable, cannot marshal all his likes. There was, he remembers, a frail boy who was so bullied by some thug schoolmates that he jumped out of a window to escape them. A teacher, Mr. Near Phoebe, Holden begins to feel better. They turn on the radio and dance. Then, when Holden is about to leave, she gives him her Christmas money. She was sitting way up in bed.

She looked so pretty. Everybody, says Holden, accuses him of acting twelve years old. It is his self-communings that are tragic and touching—a dark whirlpool churning fiercely below the unflagging hilarity of his surface activities. It is the vision of an innocent. He has a hunger for stability. It was the reason Keats liked the suspended attitudes of the figures on the Grecian urn.

And yet there is an exhilaration, an immense relief in the final scene of this novel, at the Central Park carrousel with Phoebe. One day, he will probably find himself in the mood to call up Jane. He may even, someday, write a novel. I would like to read it.

I loved this one. And, indeed, I read the novel as part of my tenth-grade English class. Thirty or so years later, my children read it as part of theirs. He is a sixteen-year-old boy having what we would call an adult mid-life crisis. Most often, Catcher in the Rye is associated with the difficulties of moving from childhood into the mature, sexual adult world. Holden is rich, urban, intelligent, talented, bouncing from prep school to prep school, from multiple ethnic and religious backgrounds, somewhat sexually ambiguous, and on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

We understand that much of this pain stems from the early death of his brother, Allie, from Leukemia. A suicide at one of his schools also is traumatic for him. But is Holden Caulfield really sixteen? A very attractive girl whom Holden has known and dated for a long time.

She is certainly more conventional than Holden in her tastes and manners. Read an in-depth analysis of Mr.

Luce is three years older than Holden and has a great deal of sexual experience. At Whooton, he was a source of knowledge about sex for the younger boys, and Holden tries to get him to talk about sex at their meeting.

Read an in-depth analysis of Carl Luce Mr. Antolini now teaches at New York University. He is young, clever, sympathetic, and likable, and Holden respects him.

Holden sometimes finds him a bit too clever, but he looks to him for guidance. Like many characters in the novel, he drinks heavily. The prostitute whom Holden hires through Maurice. She is one of a number of women in the book with whom Holden clumsily attempts to connect. Ace your assignments with our guide to The Catcher in the Rye! Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. He is universally recognized for his resistance to growing older and desire to protect childhood innocence.

Since the book's publication, Holden has become an icon for teenage rebellion and angst, and now stands among the most important characters of twentieth-century American literature.