| J.D. Salinger, a respected American author, wrote The Catcher in the Rye which has become looked upon as a masterwork. The story spans the period between when a sixteen-year-old middle school student named Holden Caulfield, left his school to wander around New York for three days. This novel employs the conscious stream writing style to explore the innermost world of a teenager. The author shows sharp insight in dissecting the complicated psychology of juveniles. From the external environment to the internal mentality, the spiritual world is vividly portrayed to us. On the one hand, influenced by the environment, he collapses and loses; on the other hand, he is unsophisticated, sensitive and kindhearted. Existentialism takes individual unreasonable consciousness as being the most real existence. From this base, existentialism respects the character and freedom of all human being. Even though man is meaningless and lives in a meaningless world, he is able to make a difference by making his own choice and taking responsibility.This thesis contains six parts. The first part of this thesis will introduce J. D. Salinger, the American author and his most famous work, The Catcher in the Rye, together with some of the worldwide research done on this Salinger’s masterpiece. Whilst looking at this area of research, the author of this paper discovered that the theory of existentialism had been used by some scholars who had addressed the book from the social or religious aspect, which is insufficient persuasion for this author. Therefore, this thesis maintains a new existentialist interpretation of the protagonist Holden Caulfield to serve as a fresh and refreshing perspective on the literary canon of J.D. Salinger.The literature review forms the second part and introduces existentialism and some of its proponents with their thoughts. Some typical existential works and theories will be presented, especially the theories that are employed in this thesis such as "alienation""absurdity""Dasein""authenticity". These are emphasized.The third part mainly analyzes Holden Caulfield’s alienation from others and from himself. As an individual, on the one hand, Holden Caulfield suffers the unpleasant requirement of being a "normal" person who is always under the "look" of others (alienation from others) and on the other hand he tries to do something spontaneously, that even he himself could not explain, in an attempt to cater to social requirement (self-alienation). The fourth part attempts to explain Holden Caulfield’s suffering from "absurdity" fulfilling the tragic analysis for him. Holden Caulfield is not a special character in this novel. On some level Holden Caulfield is you, me, him and her. He is everyone because none of us can rid ourselves of what he suffers---absurdity.The fifth part focuses on the Holden’s authentic and inauthentic existence in the world. According to Heidegger, the authentic being should be future-oriented, which means the "being-over-there "and is always ahead of itself. Man is "not-yet-being", or "what-he-is-not" or just a pure possibility. Existentialists insist that the future is prior to the past because it is the future that invokes the present. Our protagonist Holden Caulfield is not satisfied with his inauthentic past and present. The whole novel is the process of our protagonist’s attempt to get rid of his inauthenticity and searching for his authenticity.The final part is the conclusion. It looks as though the thinking, from the purely philosophical point of view, could indicate a strong connection with the theories of existentialism, but there is no direct evidence to be found which demonstrates that there was any direct influence from the theory of existentialism on the actual construction of The Catcher in the Rye. This thesis employs existentialism to provide a new understanding for The Catcher in the Rye to give some enlightenment on the human existence and suggestions to the future academic research in existentialism and The Catcher in the Rye. |
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