Fifth Assignment

The project of The Catcher in the Rye, I think, is to describe the life of a teenager which some of us can relate to. The character isn't made to seem like an amazing guy like in a fairy tale. We know his flaws and some of us relate to them. It helps us see that we are all somewhat alike, we are all trying to find ourselves and fit in to society. We make many mistakes before we do, but we always learn from them.

I think there is two main conflicts in this story. Character vs self and character vs society. During our teenage years we try to determine who we are, and many of our problems start with ourselves. We are finding who we are and we struggle to do so. We'll have problems with ourselves physically and mentally and we try to overcome them no matter how hard it can be. These problems we have with ourselves are related to society because we are trying to fit in or be different from everyone else. It's not easy, and this book tells us that.

Throughout the book we see how Holden admits to being a liar and not the best influence on anyone. But we also see him as this boy trying to find himself. After the death of his brother things have been hard. He has been kicked out of schools, he drinks and smokes, and he feels lonely. All of these problems Holden has contribute to the project of the book. We see how he has problems with himself and he admits them, and we see how he doesn't really fit in with other people and he dislikes or judges most of the people he knows or meets.

Holden describes a hat in the beginning of the story which he continues to talk about throughout the book. Other people who have seen him with the hat make fun of him and tell him its a really unique hat. I think that this hat symbolizes how different and unique Holden is in this book. It makes the reader see that he is slowly finding himself. There is a few metaphors that contribute to the conflict of character vs society. Some of the things Holden says to other people to describe them are not literal but they help us see how liberal he is and how he speaks his mind, but at the same time we see how judgmental he can be.