How does Salinger create the theme of Individuality

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How does Salinger create the theme of Individuality?

                                                                Cameron Bloomfield

        In J. D. Salinger’s book, Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, is very much an individual. Not because of a brilliant charisma or charming confidence, as if he can afford to act the individual because of the masses that follow him, but because he alienates himself from the majority of society.  

Throughout the book we examples of reason how Holden is an individual. Towards the beginning of the book, after Holden has found out he is to be expelled from Pencey, he visits Mr. Spencer, his History teacher. In his chat with Mr. Spencer, or ‘old Spence’ as Holden refers to him, he says to Mr. Spencer that he ‘feels trapped on the other side’ of life. In this extract alone, one can find two examples of Holden as an alienated member of his current society, Pencey. The first is that he feels trapped. This shows Holden admitting that he is excluded and victimised by the world around him. The second is a possible reason why he may be considered a ‘loser’ in Pencey. He has gone to talk to his History teacher out of choice as a social thing rather than anything to do with his studies. The conversation does turn to Holden’s recent History test and reveals that Holden is lazy and an extreme under-achiever. This inability to achieve could be yet another reason why he is an individual (negative). He can not joke with his peers about his poor grades and this lack of conversation does not help his feeling of being ‘trapped on the other side’.

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Holden’s loneliness, a more concrete manifestation of his alienation problem, is a driving force throughout the book. Most of the novel describes his almost manic quest for companionship as he flits from one meaningless encounter to another. Yet, while his behavior indicates his loneliness, Holden consistently shies away from introspection and thus doesn’t really know why he keeps behaving as he does. Because Holden depends on his isolation to preserve his detachment from the world and to maintain a level of self-protection, he often sabotages his own attempts to end his loneliness. For example, his conversation with Carl Luce ...

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