Preview

Catcher In The Rye Feminist Analysis

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
98 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Catcher In The Rye Feminist Analysis
The purpose of feminist criticism is to evaluate the ways in which men and women communicate with each other. The main goal of feminist criticism is to try and obtain equal rights for women. Through the lens of the feminist "The Catcher In The Rye" shows many characteristics of characters who are feminist and who express these characteristics are Holden, Jane Gallagher, and phoebe. Although there are characters who possess the qualities of a stereotypical woman, Holden's actions towards them make it possible to believe that these characters have potential to develop great qualities of a role model.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Catcher In The Rye Summary

    • 1259 Words
    • 6 Pages

    "The Catcher in the Rye" opens with Holden Caulfield at Pency Prep, his high school, where he has just been kicked out for failing almost all of his classes. Holden, as a lost and frustrated teen, goes to his room for his last night before planning to run away from Pency Prep for some "alone time" before telling his parent he was kicked out of another school.…

    • 1259 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    woman in the catcher

    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages

    There are a number of women in Holden’s life in “The Catcher in the Rye”. Women often appear in…

    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of the most important themes in "The Catcher in the Rye", is the tendency people have to judge one another. The narrator, Holden Caulfield, is not only judgmental of the people he meets, but of society as a whole. Throughout his experiences, he criticizes the phoniness and shallowness that he encounters in the world around him. One sees, that while Holden spends much of his time judging the actions and intentions of others, he never recognizes his own faults.…

    • 556 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    He sees adults and friends who succumb to these norms, and he outwardly looks down upon them and call them phonies of society. As an author, J.D. Salinger created Holden Caulfield as a character to challenge the expected norms of this time period, and as a whole, the novel addresses the challenge of accepting societal norms and diverging from norms to create a different lifestyle. For Holden, although many other reasons attribute to his refusal to accept society, he mainly believes that the 1950’s American Dream culture valuing marriage, family and education is not one that he wishes to be associated with. It is also crucial to note that by the end of the novel, Holden ends up in a mental institution, the location from which he narrates Catcher in the Rye. This element of the novel is crucial to our understanding of Holden as a character; he seems to have rejected the values and views of the post-war era so intensely, he is literally unable to function and has been…

    • 1991 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    "Bishop Long takes his spot back at the podium. He speaks haltingly, starting out slow. "I know all about it... I know all about what you're up against..."…

    • 709 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    We as Americans reminisce on history to see and understand the advancements we have accomplished and the same can be said of not only the advancement of women but also the image of how women are portrayed. Although in today’s day and age, their figures and beauty are scrutinized but also exploited. For instance in both Tennessee Williams motion picture, “A Street Car Named Desire” and Lorraine Hansberry A Raisin in the Sun you are able to see the evolution of the not only the portal of women but also the advancements they accomplish.…

    • 508 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Good people... are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure”. This quote from William Saroyan means that wise people acquire their insight from experiences, especially unsuccessful ones. I agree with the quote and the idea of people being knowledgeable because of the hardships and journeys they had endured. The two novels Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger both support the idea of gaining wisdom through experience.…

    • 545 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Everyone has had a dream job since they were small, it might have changed over time but it was always something they loved. In “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger we meet Holden whose dream job is to be a catcher in the rye. Holden states that in his dream job he would “catch everyone if they start to go over the cliff- I mean if they’re running and they don’t see where they’re going I have to come out of somewhere and catch them.” (Salinger, 173)…

    • 529 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Three seconds remain in the tied basketball game. The point guard shoots and scores right before the buzzer sounds off. I bet for a long time, that player worked hard in the gym to practice and perfect his shooting for game time situations like that. It just goes to show that nothing great can ever be achieved without hard work. Holden Caulfield from The Catcher In The Rye, however, does not quite understand this saying. In the story, Holden does not apply himself to his education at Pencey Prep, which results in his expulsion from school. Throughout the story, Holden, as well as a few other characters, represent the terms expressed in Freud’s Theory of Personality known as the id, superego, and ego.…

    • 774 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The novel starts out with Holden telling the reader the flashback of three days he spent alone in New York City last winter. He was kicked out of Pencey Prep, the latest in a long string of exclusive boarding schools, and wanted to leave the school before his parents found out. Before Holden leaves, he is warned by his teacher that he is heading down a bad path, foreshadowing his later troubles. As Holden leaves his dorm, he shouts “Sleep tight, ya morons!”, and cries, although he doesn’t know why (Page 52) . Throughout the book Holden often has reactions like this, hating people but still wanting to be close to them. He takes the train into New York City, and heads for a hotel after being too scared of talking to his parents to call his little…

    • 1330 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Imagine what it feels like to be a teenager. Is a teenager considerate and open minded? The novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger talks about a teenager named Holden Caulfield who tells his story about a school named Pency Prep in Pennsylvania, away from his sister and parents. Throughout most of this book, Holden explains his inner thoughts regarding everyone he knows, and most of them are judgmental. Holden is considered to be a typical American teenager in this novel. First of all, teenagers like to express their thoughts. In Sylvia Plath’s article “Sylvia Plath at Seventeen”, she begins saying,“As of today I have decided to keep a diary again―just a place where I can write my thoughts and opinions when I have a moment. Somehow I…

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Catcher in the Rye is a book set in the 1950’s. The time period was a highly racist time which effected the book greatly. The main protagonist is Holden Caulfield who is also the narrator of the novel. Ackley, Stradlater, and Jane Gallagher are a few of Holden’s peers. The trio and the rest of his family & peers affect him deeply. Some people believed that Holden was “his own worst enemy’.…

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The genuine joy Holden gets from watching Phoebe is a striking image of his fantasies of innocence and his collapsing psyche. For a moment Holden sees the joy that he envisions all the children of his rye field are like. Within Phoebe’s happiness Holden is transfixed and distraught, because the sudden realization that he is transitioning to a world he does not feel equipped for triggers the end of his ambivalence. As the carousel spins so does Holden’s reality, he loses sense of even further sense of himself. The Catcher in the Rye is a bildungsroman, but it is unique in how Holden not only resists growing up, but also he ends the novel more unstable and lost than he started off as. A quest or journey is supposed to lead to a literal or metaphorical…

    • 481 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Harper Lee writes To Kill A Mockingbird staying true to the sexism that took place during the period of the 1930s. At this time, how women were viewed was a paradox. While women were seen as pure, perfect, and dainty, they were also highly disrespected by men, labeled as dumb, and forced to work in the home and bear children. This paradoxical treatment of women was convenient for men who desired to control women and maintain their submissive demeanor. This mistreatment was highly integrated into society and Harper Lee gives both antagonists and protagonists moments in which they disrespect or otherwise criticize femininity. Jem, Scout’s older brother and young boy growing into adolescence, frequently comments on Scout’s gender, at one point…

    • 1687 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is about a young Holden Caulfield’s growth into maturity. Caulfield begins the novel as an inexperienced boarding school student attending Pencey Prep, a private boarding school located in Pennsylvania, who is struggling academically and socially. After getting kicked out of yet another boarding school, Caulfield travels to New York City before going home. After staying in New York for the time period between when he got kicked out and when he can return home Caulfield learns the struggles of living in the adult world. As he experiences New York, it opens his eyes to the painfulness of growing up and he wants to escape it. A major theme in this story is keeping innocence, which is portrayed through Caulfield’s theory about the catcher in the rye, his need to protect his sister, and the red hunting hat.…

    • 1037 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays