Major Themes
Painful Experience vs. Numbness
Perhaps the greatest theme of the novel involves the relationship between the pain of actual experience and feeling one's feelings, on the one hand, and on the other hand the equally devastating numbness that comes with shutting down one's emotions in order to avoid suffering. After the death of Allie, Holden esntially shuts down, forcing himlf to lo all attachments to people so as never to be hurt again. He repeatedly mentions how important it is not to get attached to anyone, since this will lead to missing them once they are gone. By the end of the novel, he has spiraled so far down with this theory that he has become afraid to even speak to anyone. Phoebe is perhaps the only reminder that Holden still has the capacity to love. When he looks at her, he cannot help but feel the same tortured love that he felt for Allie. Nevertheless, the surges of the feelings leave him even more bereft. He knows he must leave Phoebe to protect himlf, but when she shows up to accompany him on his journey, ultimately he puts his love for her first and sacrifices his own instinct to flee in order to return home.
Holden, it ems, is in the throes of an existential crisis. To a great degree he is numb to the pains and joys of life. Unable to come to terms with his brother's death, he has no one to show him the kind of parental or brotherly love that he himlf gave Allie. Whenever someone does end up showing him even a hint of such love (such as Mr. Antolini), Holden ends up being disappointed.
Love and Sex
中餐文化At his core, Holden is a deep, nsitive soul, at bottom unable to sublimate his feelings into numbness. He envies someone like Stradlater, who can simply pick up girls whenever he likes, and who treats x as a casual pleasure. To Holden, however, x is deeply discomforting. He cannot have it with girls he likes, and he cannot manage to numb himlf enough to treat girls casually. Numbing himlf to love, it ems, is Holden's greatest challenge. He feels too deeply about the world, about people, to truly shut down. When he finally does fall in love with Jane Gallagher, he soon discovers that Stradlater has a date with her, which confirms his suspicion that everything he loves even
tually deteriorates. He leaves Pencey with some hope of inventing a new identity, but he cannot break out of his being. Even in the prence of a prostitute, he cannot think of having x, only of having a conversation in the hope of feeling some glimmer of human affection with her. All Holden wants to do is talk, but he cannot find someone who will listen. 苗阜王声相声大全>拿来主义课文解析
摄影散文
Loss of Innocence
Holden must face that fork in the road of adolescence when one realizes that maturity entails a loss of innocence—that greater knowledge of onelf and others and the circumstances all comes with a price. In Holden's ca, he cannot bear to accept the death of Allie, the death of pure innocence that had no good reason to suffer or die. In Holden's eyes, Allie is truth, while everyone el is “phony.” Innocence goes with idealism and a certain inability or unwillingness to bear and accept the harsher reality. Holden cannot bear to hold onto his innocence becau innocence brings its own harms; people continue to disappoint him. Thus the cost of maturity is much less; innocence has been q
uite painful, too. Innocence has been problematic: the prostitute demands more money for nothing, the man who takes him in ems like a pedophile, and the cab drivers berate him as stupid when he asks simple questions about the birds in the park. While Allie’s memory can help him prerve his innocence, this is not enough, for he cannot find real love in the outside world.
Besides, losing Allie has brought tremendous pain. Holden also has the common adolescent experience of perceiving that time in school learning mundane lessons feels petty when his entire soul is in flux as it comes to grips with reality. When the entire world around him appears phony, where can he go to grasp hold of some reality, some stable truth? Without an explanation why Allie was taken from him, there appears no reason behind the world's events, and in this respect Holden’s maturity involves a deep loss of innocence such that he perceives that the reality of the world is its very irrationality.
Phoniness vs. Authenticity
Holden labels almost everyone a “phony,” excepting Phoebe, Allie, and himlf. In Holden
's eyes, a “phony” is someone who embraces the world’s mundane demands and tries to make something out of nothing—that is, just about everyone who studies in school or who puts on airs in order to do a job or achieve a goal. The fact that no one is acknowledging how trivial and fleeting life is, compared with the grand things we tell one another about reality—how difficult it is to truly love and share onelf with people knowing that all, like Allie, will eventually die—caus him to burn with frustration, even rage. Holden understands on some level one of the most profound truths of mortal life: the superficial matters little becau it will not last, yet it is made to em so much more important. Meanwhile, all around him, he must watch superficial people win honors through their artifice. He thus holds his deepest contempt for tho who succeed as phonies: Stradlater, the Headmaster, and all the boys who treat school as if it is a club to be ruled by Social Darwinism. All Holden wants is some authentic living, to hold on to someone like Phoebe or Allie who knows nothing of the world’s superficiality and therefore is not tainted by it, but he is afraid to make it too real out of the justified fear of one day losing them forever.
什么是态度长兴县Life and Death
A key part of Holden’s emotional life involves his reaction to Allie’s death. People live for a while, but all too soon we all die. Allie did not choo it, but Holden thinks about James Castle, a skinny boy who jumped out the window at school and fell to his death. Holden himlf entertains thoughts of a similar suicide. The decision to numb himlf to his feelings about life is a decision to shut himlf down emotionally so much that he is no longer truly living. It is a decision, however, that remains fundamentally impossible for Holden. When he thinks about James Castle, he cannot bear to imagine James just laying there amidst the stone and blood, with no one picking him up.
茉莉花功效Holden might e some romance in suicide and some comfort in the idea that it ends internal pain, but death does em wor, the ultimate loneliness. He en the effects of death on the living as well. He thus cannot do to Phoebe what Allie has done to them already.
