Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951。 This novel uses many images to reveal the reality of American society。 In this paper, a finite number of images will be selected to explore the epitome of American Dream in the novel, to reflect the disillusionment from the refusal to American Dream, as well as to show the belonging after the disillusion of American Dream。

2。 Literature Review论文网

The Catcher in the Rye is distinguished for its great literary structure and deep worthwhile meaning as well as great moral and psychological insights。 Once published, it attracts many critics。 They wrote many critical essays respectively on the discussion and research on their exploration of the American Dream from the perspective of traditional literary criticism。 For example, WH Sun wrote The Theme of American Dream and Its Research in The Catcher in the Rye。 (Sun 90-92) YQ Huang had an article Holden’s Personality and Its Causes in The Catcher in the Rye。 (Huang 25-27) Jin Hengshan analysed some images in the article The Symbolic Meaning of Containment in The Catcher in the Rye: The Contradiction in Holden and Its Solution。 (Jin 87-95) Shui Caiqin also had a paper Symbolism in The Catcher in the Rye to expound the images in The Catcher in the Rye。 (Shui  82-85) However, very little articles combine the specific images with American Dream in The Catcher in the Rye。 So this paper wants to try to do some research on this aspect。

3。 The Epitome of American Dream 

In the wake of developments in science and technology, the unprecedented prosperity of economy and the great abundance of material life, great changes have also taken place in the connotation of American Dream: moral idealism was completely reduced to material hedonism, and even worse。 The life that “sit in the office, earn a lot of money, and drive a limousine Cadillac” (Salinger 14) has become an ideal of ordinary people, since they lost the spiritual pursuit that their ancestors assiduously seek from the begining of the emigrant to America。 That spiritual pursuit judiciously combined the ideal with the reality。 Ultimately, they become the slaves of the matter。 This shocking reality is completely revealed in The Catcher in the Rye。 This paper will show the glittering facade but heavily damaged reality in American society from the two typical representatives : Pencey Prep and New York。

3。1 Pencey Prep

Pencey Prep is the most typical epitome of the illusive American Dream。 It is a school for the children of rich parents, and in the community it has an excellent reputation。 However, the real impact of American dream is clearly felt in the American educational system。 The school advertises in magazines and it says: “Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men。” (Salinger 2) However, in 1950s the United States was in a state of false peace, in which the modern large-scale production made people as robots work on the assembly line。 Pencey Prep is a typical production line for robots。 In accordance with the American social norms, it implements the hypocritical educational policy: the purpose of education is not the development of true and good nature, and the focus of education is not on the cultivation of human dignity, independent personality and creative thinking。 It is paranoid to train students into “ideal” citizens who have no original opinions and conform to the mainstream of social and cultural norms。文献综述

Pencey Prep clearly shows the reality of American society after World War II: those tender feelings in the traditional culture have disappeared, replaced by hypocrisy and indifference。 The headmaster, Selma, is a hypocritical prig。 He often expels the students after giving them only a few warnings or talking to their parents, but never pays attention to the communication with the students; the teachers are also stupid, hypocritical, despicable and vicious, such as the history teacher Mr。 Spencer。 In the face of Holden’s fail to history exam, he just blindly preaches at Holden and repeats the fact, but he does not fundamentally find the primary cause of the problem。 His repeated torture to Holden’s spirit has reached the end of Holden’s forbearance, and ultimately forces Holden to flee in panic。 Among the students in Pencey Prep, there are a lot of thieves and hypocrites。 The more aristocratic the school is, the more thieves are inside。 And what the students do is just studying so that they can learn enough then to be smart enough, eventually achieving the aim to buy a Cadillac some day, What’s more, they have to pretend to be sad if the football team loses。 In addition, all they do is talking about girls, liquor and sex, and everybody has their own small organization。