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The paper is going to take Holden Caulfield as an example of general adolescents, and analyze their behaviors and minds during growth. Through ‘the beat generation’ after World War Ⅱ in America, this paper begins to discuss rebellion of this young generation and make an analysis of the reasons how this personality formed during growth. And after rebellion, it comes to the ‘epiphany’, which means suddenly grow up in minds, that is a big step during young people’s growth.
2 Literature Review
J.D. Salinger became one of the most significant post-World War Ⅱ American novelists after his publication of the Catcher in the Rye in 1952. He gained high reputation and also immediate acceptance from not only young Americans but also young people all over the world. The Catcher in the Rye was definitely considered as a classic but also a controversial one. It was a hit to the American society with exposing the real thoughts and behaviors that the adolescents may had. There were many praises as there were many criticisms. Although there were critical opinions about the novel for his writing style or the colloquial languages, it was still a landmark book with sustained popularity. From Alfred Kazin, Salinger is “everybody’s favorite with that audience of students, student intellectuals, instructors, and generally literary, sensitive, and sophisticated young people who respond to him with a consciousness that he speaks for them and virtually to them, in a language that is peculiarly honest and their own, with a vision of things that captures their most secret judgments of the world.” (1963:19)
The novel is written for adolescents like Sanford Pinsker (1990: 20) noted the Catcher in the Rye as “a ‘formative book’ for young people in 1950s, one of those novels to be tested against experience”. Harold L. Roth found that Salinger’s novel “may be a shock to many parents who wonder about a young man’s thought and actions, but its affections can be a salutary one. An adult book very frank and highly recommended”. Other critics were less enthusiastic about it. In New Public, Anne Goodman said that “the book as a whole is disappointing. It is a brilliant tour-de-force, but in a writer of Salinger’s deniable talent one expects something more.” Ernest Jones admitted that the Catcher in the Rye was a case history of all of us, but he said that though the book was always lively in its parts, the Catcher in the Rye as a whole was predictable and boring. Though controversial, the novel immediately appealed to a great number of people, and it was a hugely popular best-seller and critical success.
The novel is similar to the Adventure of Huckleberry Finn and it has the same significance to become a classic. Holden was a contradictory character who refused school education and disgusted others’ phony actions, instead, he spoke foul language, smoking, drinking alcohol, fighting, and even calling prostitutes; on the other hand, he had a pure and innocent heart. Xu Jin believed that
“Holden is a victim of American society.” Chen Hui (1999:66) and Wang Wanbin (1999:66) though “Holden is a symbol of the beat generation, carrying their dissatisfaction towards hypocritical people with histrionic gestures. And he would never become complicit with the prevailing group in society and consequently his icon is standing against the U.S. education system and school.”
Language features are also a point to critic. According to statistics, there are 237 “Goddamn”, 58 “Bastard”, 31 “Christ sake” from Holden in the novel. Many parents were worried about the bad influence from these foul languages. Zhang Hechuan (1995: 38) pointed out that “in this novel, Salinger use ‘damn’, and ‘goddamn’ for 350 times and the ‘hen’ for 238 times. These languages manifested that Holden is not satisfied with his living world full of corruptions, hypocrisy and threatens. He was depressed and there were too many things to complain in this world. They wish to speak foul language to purging emotional impulses. If Holden’s expression is made of elegant words carefully chosen, there are not a living young people anymore. Holden’s foul language, bold performance shows his human nature, so that the reader has liberation from the oppression of civilization.” Critical reviews agreed that the novel accurately reflected the teenage colloquial speech of the time.