The Catcher In The Rye:An American State of Mind

This analysis will seek how the novel and its author reflect and influenced 1950s American culture, including its encounter on future generations.

The Catcher In The Rye had an long impact on a generation of y erupth in the 1950s. The descriptions by H honest-to-goden of a phony or dumb humanity of adults that made staying young an ideal severalize of development galvanized a generation of youth who felt the same. The 1950s would span the counter-hero in films, rebels like James Dean and Marlon Brando who often acted in a juvenile manner while seething contempt and cynicism at the adult sphere and strong society around them. Salinger's books would revive a generation of youth to reject the superficial and material values of an adult culture where you could not win unless the grace was stacked in your favor. As John Romano argues in the probe Salinger Was Playing Our Song: "As a class, those who were young and literate in the Eisenhower and Kennedy years can be said to buzz off receives such images with utter credulity and in a state of mind resembling awe. Some of us founded not only our literary taste but also a portion of our identity operator on Holden Caulfield: we were smart kids in a dumb world or sensitive kids in a phony unrivalled, and Salinger was playing our song" (1).

We see the contrast between the innocence of childhood and the maturit

Holden was extremely popular with jejune culture in the 1950s for many other reasons illustrated in the book. One of these is his liberal use of profanity peppered through his public lecture and thoughts. Another is the fact that he broke rules that most teens were prohibited from doing due to parental supervision, such as his habit of to a great extent smoking until "they" make him quit, "I'm quite a heavy smoker, for one thing?that is, I used to be. They made me cut it out" (Salinger 5). So, too, Holden mocks many of his elders he finds for lack of a batter word, lame. With old man Spencer Holden becomes lost in thought over a lagoon and its ducks in Central Park. When he comes out of his revery he informs us: "I'm lucky, though. I mean I could arrive at the old bull to old Spencer and think about those ducks at the same time. It's funny. You don't have to think too hard when you jaw to a teacher" (Salinger 13).

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