On The Correlation Of Personality Structure Between Salinger And His Fictional Character

The Catcher in the Rye, a novel of Jerome David Salinger, was published in 1951, which is the only published work of J. D. Salinger. On account of this book, J. D. Salinger has become one of the most renowned writer after WWII, and this novel turns out to be the very influential literature work in postwar America. The Catcher in the Rye explores the inner world of a sixteen-year old teenager, Holden Caulfield, who is wandering in New York after being dismissed from school. By describing the inner world of the protagonist in the novel, Salinger presents the loneliness and depression of the teenagers, living in the post-war era, which arouses a strong sense of resonance among the readers, especially the ones who have gone through the similar experience of WWII. Moreover, because of the similarity of the living background, the novel is regarded as an autobiographical novel of Salinger.Under the frame of the Freudian theories, this paper is going to analyze the correlation on personality structure between the author, Salinger, and the created image by him, Holden Caulfield. Firstly, it seeks for the similarities between the author and his character based on the classic article of Freud, Creative Writers and Daydreaming, and then this paper mainly interprets the character, Holden, from the perspective of personality structures. At the end, this paper explores the Salinger’s death instinct in his character, Holden, which again can prove the relationship between Salinger and Holden. That is, in some way, Holden is the embodiment of Salinger’s inner world and can cast the author himself.This paper consists of the following five parts:The introduction briefly introduces J. D. Salinger and his work, The Catcher in the Rye, and offers the literature review on this book home and abroad, then it provides a general introduction to the relevant Freudian theories.Chapter one is devoted to the relationship between Salinger and Holden based on the Freudian theory of the source of the art or literature. In psychoanalytical terms, Freud investigates art and literature from its source. To Freud, the literature comes from fantasy or daydream of the author, which is his or her fulfillment of unsatisfied wishes. So following Freud’s way of thinking, Salinger created this character, Holden, to fulfill his wish, which relates to the author’s personal life experience. Therefore, by studying the process of the creation, the author’s hidden motivations and textual connotations will be better discovered.Chapter two and Chapter three adopt the theories of three structures of personality to interpret the psychical world of Holden. Because of his weak ego, he always struggles between his id, which is aroused by the phony adults’ world, and his superego, stimulated by the pure children’s world. Throughout this novel, Holden never stops seeking for his identity until the end of this story, becoming a catcher in the rye.Chapter four examines how the death instinct is demonstrated in the author, Salinger and the image of Holden, by connecting the general background of that era and Salinger’s personal war experiences to deeply understand the bond between the two, as well as the author.Based on the foregoing four chapters, the conclusion offers a summary of the thesis, which sheds lights upon the interactive relationship between J. D. Salinger and Holden Caulfield.