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Catcher In The Rye Existentialism

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Catcher In The Rye Existentialism
Many people describe places by their emotions. Existentialists are subjective people instead of objective. This means that they believe in facts and not emotions from others. Many have different emotions than others about a same place in the world. People connect places that they have traveled to different emotion that they have felt towards a certain place. In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger writes about the adventures of teenager Holden Caulfield after he flunks out of his prep school. He travels around New York and tries to enjoy the time he has until he has to go home to tell his parents that he flunked out of school. He travels around town, meets new people, and meets with people that he knows. In the novel, the main …show more content…
For instance, when Holden is watching his sister Phoebe ride the carousel he “felt so damn happy all of sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. [He] was damn near bawling, [he] felt so damn happy,...” (Salinger 213). The image that Salinger describes of Holden’s sister riding around on the carousel makes Holden happy. Society says that people have to grow up, but Holden does not want Phoebe to grow up. The emotion happiness is important because Holden is comforted in Phoebe riding the carousel. He sees that she is still a child, but he needs to grow up and think about his …show more content…
For example, when Holden decides to move west, he describes what he would do when he leaves New York with Sally and says, “[people would] let me put gas and oil in their stupid cars, and they'd pay me a salary and all for it, and I'd build me a little cabin somewhere with the dough I made and live there for the rest of my life” (Salinger 199). He wants to leave the city and to live by himself. He does not want to be part of society and to be influenced by it. In addition, Holden continues to talk about moving west with Sally and if they have “any children, [they would] hide them somewhere. [They] could buy them a lot of books and teach them how to read and write by [themselves]” (Salinger 199). Holden and Sally will ostracize their children in the cabin from society. Holden does not want to integrate his children with society. He wants them to grow up outside of society. Holden wants to create his own ethnic rules and traditions without being influenced by

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