An Analysis Of Holden In Cages From The Perspective Of The Sane Society

In 1951,The Catcher in the Rye,was published in North America,and its author J.D.Salinger became famous overnight and was hailed as the unique contemporary literary genius.At the same time,this novel was regarded as one of the modern canons by American literature.The background of this novel was the United States which had already become a powerfully political,economic and military country after the Second World War.Even though people at that moment enjoyed a rich material life,they suffered from spiritual wasteland to a large degree.The luxury and dissipation life made the protagonist Holden detest the phony world.Erich Fromm,a famous representative of the Humanistic Psychoanalysis,combined Marxist Humanistic Theory and Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory,and announced that a society could have a character and be sick just like a human being.Thus,men could have neuroses and insane character,and a society could have social neurosis and the insane social character as well.The coexistence of the spiritual wasteland and the phony world made the generation in the fifties be labeled as the Beat Generation,and also became cages for Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye.These cages made Holden feel repressed,lonely and anxious.Therefore,to maintain his sane character,Holden must break cages which were caused by the insane social character.Hence,on the basis of the theory of the Social Character and Relatedness with Love,the dissertation aims to analyze Holden's struggling in cages of the insane social character and breaking cages with love through his three-day wandering in New York.This dissertation contains five chapters.The introduction is about J.D.Salinger,The Catcher in the Rye,and literature review on this novel.The second chapter introduces Erich Fromm's theory of the social character and the relatedness with love,and the third chapter aims to analyze Holden's struggling in cages of the insane society from three aspects—the acquisitive society,the phony world and the alienated interpersonal relationship.The fourth chapter analyzes the explicit way of Holden's breaking cages of the insane society from three aspects in sequence—motherly love,erotic love,and brotherly love.The fifth chapter draws a conclusion that Holden broke cages of the insane social character by establishing the union with his sister Phoebe in this phony world and feeling innocence and love which resided in his heart long time ago.Holden not only changed his depressed mental state,but also changed the way to look at the world.From the novel to the reality,this paper also encourages people to establish the sane social character by brotherly love and to relate this society through love.