Catcher in the Rye Essay Example for Free

Catcher in the Rye Essay The story takes place in Manhattan and is about a young boy named Holden Caulfield, it is about the learning experience that takes place and how an immature child tried to come to terms with multiple problems. In J. D. Salinger’s bildungsroman, Catcher in the Rye, Salinger utilizes the symbols, the red hunting hat; Allie’s catching mitt, and the ducks in central park to portray the theme that it is impossible to preserve natural innocence. Salinger utilizes the symbol of the red hunting hat to portray Holden’s loss of innocence and travel into adulthood. Firstly, when Holden is first mentioning the hat, â€Å"It only cost me a buck. I wore it, I swung the old peak way round to the back-very corny, I’ll admit but I liked it that way. † (17) Holden is talking about how he bought the hat and just wears it to express his own personality and recognizes that he likes to wear it in different ways. When he is explaining why he purchased the hat, he is trying to make people understand, he is constantly looking for acceptance from his peers and others, yet at the same time he tries to push people away by wearing the hat. This helps show that Holden is on his path to trying to figure out how he can stop the inevitable loss of innocence. Secondly, while walking down the street in the cold Manhattan weather, â€Å"My ears were nice and warm, though. That hat I bought had earlaps in it. And I put them on-I didn’t give a damn how I looked. Nobody was around anyway. † (53) As Holden is walking down the street, all he cares about is what he is feeling at that moment, just trying to stay warm and comfortable not caring about what others think. One can infer here that Holden doesn’t care too much about what others think, while this could be a facade to what he really feels inside, he tries to portray himself not caring about what others think and just wants to be happy. This continues to portray his path down the loss of innocence because as he starts to realize other people’s thoughts matter, he understands that he must give a little for the acceptance of others. Finally, towards the end of the novel when Holden angers Phoebe, â€Å"She wouldn’t answer me. All she did was, she took off my red hunting hat-the one I gave her- and practically chucked it right in my face. Then she turned her back on me again. It nearly killed me. † (207) Phoebe is angered by Holden’s immaturity and his lack of caring for others and crushes Holden’s last spirits toward innocence. With ties to the last person in the world crumbling, Holden begins to finally question his stance on life and must decide whether or not he is going to try and salvage the last relationship or completely isolate himself. Holden realizes that by his sisters actions and her disregard of the hunting hat, that he must grow up and this starts a chain reaction within him that could be a cause of his breakdown but it is unknown, Holden finally comes to terms with this loss of innocence and realizes that there is nothing that he can do to stop it. Allie’s catching mitt is also used in the portrayal of the loss of innocence in Holden and the characters around him. We are first shown the mitt when Holden is doing the composition on the catchers Mitt, â€Å" He had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere†¦he wrote them on it so that he’d have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up to bat. He’s dead now. † (39) This is the first time the reader sees Holden tear up and let some of his emotions get the best of him, he is talking of his dead brother Allie who meant a lot to him. One can infer that this was one of the more important relationships that Holden had and the loss of this relationship causes Holden to feel a series of symptoms and change the way he interacts with people. With the death of his brother Allie, Holden experiences for the first time, the lost of a loved one, one of the few people that he makes attachments with and this causes him to try and preserve the innocence within other children and even adults that he meets on his journey. The next time we see the glove, Holden is recollecting his past memories of Jane, â€Å"She was the only one, outside my family, that I ever showed Allie’s baseball mitt too, with all the poems written on it. † (77) Jane was another person who Holden allowed himself to get close to; he shows this by showing Jane his brother’s mitt. Holden is trying to get Jane close to him so that he can have someone in his life that is pure and cares about him, by showing her the mitt; he is revealing a part of him that no one outside of his family knows about. He sees the innocence in Jane and wants to try and preserve it; he wants to get close to Jane to keep her out of the adult world and not allow her to be corrupted by the world around her. The final time the glove is mentioned, Holden is having a flashback on when D. B. ants to prove a point, â€Å"â€Å"He made Allie go get his baseball mitt and then asked him who was the best war poet, Rupert Brooke or Emily Dickenson. Allie said Emily Dickenson† (140) This is one of the only times we see Allie alive and the whole family, besides Phoebe, together. Allie’s innocence is portrayed through the glove, when D. B. asks him which WWII author was better, one that was in the war or one that never saw a day in the war, Allie answers with the latter. This can be int erpreted as Allie seeing how the other author was not corrupted in the war and her work was more pure.

Destruction in Erich Maria Remarques All Quiet on the Western Front :: All Quiet on the Western Front Essays

Theme of Destruction in Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front Everyone knows what war is. It's a nation taking all of its men, resources, weapons and most of its money and bearing all malignantly towards another nation. War is about death, destruction, disease, loss, pain, suffering and hate. I often think to myself why grown and intelligent individuals cannot resolve matters any better than to take up arms and crawl around, wrestle and fight like animals. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque puts all of these aspects of war into a vivid story which tells the horrors of World War 1 through a soldier's eyes. The idea that he conveys most throughout this book is the idea of destruction, the destruction of bodies, minds and innocence. The author starts off his book with a note highlighting the meaning of this book. It is as follows: This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.(Intro) Right after reading this paragraph, I knew that none of this book was to be comical or heroic. It was not going to be one of those stupid stories romanticizing war and making heroes out of men who killed more of the enemy than anyone else; this book was about destruction. These few lines before chapter one set the whole tone for the rest of the book. Glory does not exist in this story, only death and sadness. The story takes place through the eyes of a German infantryman named Paul Baumer. He is nineteen and just joined up with the German army after high school with the persuasion of one of his schoolteachers, Mr. Kantorek. Paul recalls how he would use all class period lecturing the students, peering through his spectacles and saying: "Won't you join up comrades?"(10). Here was a man who loved war. He loved the "glory" of war. He loved it so much as to persuade every boy in his class to join up with the army. He must have thought how proud they would be marching out onto that field in their military attire.

Blake’s Poetry is multivocal, allusive and intertextual rather than directly expressive

â€Å"Blake's Poetry is multivocal, allusive and intertextual rather than directly expressive; philosophic rather than immediately intelligible.† With this assertion as a point of departure I will present a critical discussion of the two poems, ‘The Lamb' and ‘The Tyger' from ‘Songs of Innocence' and ‘Songs of Experience' respectively, paying attention to both form and content. The two poems offered here from ‘Songs of Innocence' and ‘Songs of Experience' clearly support the statement that Blake's poetry is multivocal, allusive and intertextual. Both ‘The Lamb' and ‘The Tyger' seem to be alluding to certain social norms and perceptions of the time when they were written and the two of them both clearly express different feelings or opinions of the forces at play in the world around us. The two poems are clearly inter-related as they both seem to offer contrasting opinions of the nature of beings and their creators, and because of the direct reference made to the lamb in the poem ‘The Tyger'. Upon closer inspection of the poem ‘The Lamb', we see, in lines 5 to 8, Blake offering an almost serene description of a lamb. Describing the lamb in terms of its tender voice which makes all the vales rejoice, its soft woolly coat being that of delight, and its feeding â€Å"by the stream & o'er the mead† (Watson 1992: 133). Blake uses very soft and mostly monosyllabic words to create a very sombre and tender mood in this poem. The mild tone of the poem adds much to the beauteous image of the lamb that is being created. Throughout the description of the beauty of the lamb the question is also being posed of who created the lamb, as is evident in the opening two lines of the poem â€Å"Little Lamb, who made thee?†/†Dost thou know who made thee?† and by asking who gave the lamb all its beautiful qualities. The second verse of the poem offers an answer to the question of who created the lamb. The creator, God, is alluded to as an answer by saying that he calls himself a lamb and that he became a little child. Watson (1992: 133) presents the facts that â€Å"the God who made the lamb is called a lamb Himself, because He was crucified (‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain')†, and that â€Å"He became a little child at the incarnation.† Referring to the creator as ‘meek and mild' continues the serene feeling within the poem that was created at the description of the lamb, and adds to the already blissful view of the lamb because of the fact that they share a name. By looking at the social circumstances of the time when this poem was written, a time of great social and political revolution, where views of authority and people's own self-worth were changing, it becomes possible to give an interpretation of the poem ‘The Lamb' based on these social circumstances. The idea of the lamb and the child both having a name that, at different times, were used as a reference to Jesus Christ could be seen as an allusive way of Blake trying to express the fact that all creatures were created in God's own image of himself. This point serves to enhance the fact that all people, animals and other earthly beings all have equal self-worth within the world. So at a time when people were revolting against the Catholic Churches control over them this poem could be seen as an attempt to highlight the fact that all people are equal and deserve to be treated as equals. If God created all living creatures in his perfect image of himself, which is a Christian beli ef, then all people should be granted the same status as each other. In contrast to ‘The Lamb' we find its counterpart from ‘Songs of Experience' – ‘The Tyger'. In this poem, as in ‘The Lamb', there is a question of the â€Å"unseen power behind the tiger† (Watson 1992: 146). The difference behind the questioning in this poem is the mood that the questions create. The mood is not peaceful and serene as it is in ‘The Lamb', but rather the questioning here almost gives the reader a feeling of anger and aghastness at the thought of the same creator who created the lamb creating a creature so fearful as the tiger. The continued use of the word ‘dare' leaves the reader feeling as if the whole creation of the tiger was a shameful act. Lines such as â€Å"On what wings dare he aspire†, â€Å"what the hand, dare seize the fire†, and â€Å"what immortal hand or eye/dare frame thy fearful symmetry† all help to create and complement this feeling. From the following verse the reader is left with the sense that even the stars were angered and upset at the creation of the tiger: When the stars threw down their spears, And water'd heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee? The image of stars throwing their spears and letting their tears fall in heaven, the place where the creator, God, is believed to reside upon, leads perfectly up to the question â€Å"did he smile his work to see?† Here the question is posed as to whether the creator was happy and satisfied at his creation of the tiger. Then, in the very next breath, the question is offered as to whether it is the same creator who created both the lamb and the tiger. Thus leaving the reader thinking how it can possibly be that a divine creator can create two such opposite creatures in this world. Turning back to the social context of the time when the two poems were written it is possible then to read two contrasting lines, one from each poem, as direct metaphors for society itself. Firstly, from ‘The Tyger' – line 2 – â€Å"in the forests of the night†, and secondly, from ‘The Lamb' – line 4 – â€Å"by the stream and o'er the mead†. The possibility exists that Blake was expressing his fear of the existing society in ‘The Tyger' by describing it as a â€Å"forest of the night†, which creates very dark, almost dangerous images of the existing society where one would not find much hope of serenity. The contrasting line from ‘The Lamb', where society can be compared to a stream and a mead can be seen as Blake expressing his hope for society becoming a place as peaceful and beauteous as a stream or a mead. The tiger then can be related to the people who have control over society at this time. Those people who have ‘twisted sinews of the heart' and who's ‘dreaded grasp' instil ‘deadly terrors' into the people who they attempt to control. The revolution then can have its metaphor in ‘The Lamb' where the fears of the people can be replaced by the hope of a life where the ‘vales rejoice' at the ‘softness' and ‘tenderness' of a ‘delightful' life. In ‘The Lamb' Blake is perhaps expressing a child like innocence at the thought of living life in the perfect image that God has created for man. Moving on to ‘The Tyger' Blake might be showing us that with experience our views of the world around us and the way that we exist within it are much harsher than what a child would dream it to be. These two poems are both written in the form of a lyric and are done so in order for Blake to express his immediate thoughts and feelings at a specific point in time. The fairly short length of the poems and the simple rhyming schemes, coupled with the contrasting choice of words in each respective poem add to the immediate effect of the feelings, images and moods created within the poems. The inter-relatedness of the two poems gives the reader a very complete feeling of the mood surrounding the time when they were written. Blake's poetry is clearly philosophic in all concerns and cannot be seen as directly expressive or immediately intelligible. The allusiveness and inter-relatedness of his poetry is clearly expressed in the two poems ‘The Lamb' and ‘the Tyger' form ‘Songs of Innocence' and ‘Songs of Experience' respectively. These two poems present two contrasting views of a world and a creator that we are all inextricably tied to but all experience under different social and political conditions and are all able to understand and experience completely differently.

The Individual in Judaism and Hinduism - 1736 Words

Through the Bhagavad Gita and the Book of Job we see the similar ways that different religions affirm that the individual can’t have the same level of knowledge as the divine. We also, however, see that while Hinduism offers an explanation for this knowledge disparity, and offers a path of empowerment that allows the individual to strive for the knowledge level of the divine, Judaism simply deems that we are insignificant beings when compared to God, and that we can’t ever achieve nearly the same amount of knowledge as God. The Book of Job tells those who consider the bible to be a holy text, namely Jewish and Christian people, the story of Job. His story tells us that we, as individual human beings, are lesser beings than God and can’t know as much as God. At the end of the story, after hearing God mention the greatness of his creations, Job finally breaks and admits that he was wrong to question God, as Job, an individual human being, has a limited amount of knowledge compared to God. While God is pleased with this response from the previously dubious Job, he is not happy with Zophar, Eliphaz, and Bildad for claiming to know why God acted in the manner in which he did while they were consoling Job. God relents however, and forgives them after Job prays for them. God is so delighted with Job for withstanding all of the punishments Satan had put forth upon him that he rewarded Job with two times more of everything he had lost, including his children. This ending to theShow MoreRelatedChristianity, Hinduism, And Islam1054 Words   |  5 PagesAlthough the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam may see things differently, they basically hold the same values and codes. To Islam, the Prophet Mohammad’s teaching is a â€Å"complete and final revelation†. On the other hand, according to the bible, Christianity believes that Jesus Christ is the true lord and savior will grant you the access to heaven in the afterlife. Judaism is founded by Abraham, and it is the base from which both of the other two religions.While Hinduism focuses on one ultimateRead More Appreciating other Religions Essay684 Words   |  3 Pagesthat allow human beings to search for the meaning of life and the purpose of their existence. These common practices set the foundation for such beliefs to have validity. Every individual must wonder why he/she exists on earth. Questioning about the purpose in one’s life and whether or not there i s meaning allows an individual to seek a supernatural, Supreme Being or some form of deity. Technically, religion is essentially the passing of stories, embedded with morals and values as well as being a wayRead MoreThe Religion Of The Holy Trinity1665 Words   |  7 Pagessoul for human. So the entire religion relies or centers on reality that mankind remains between the two universes of matter and soul. The physical world is considered some portion of God s creation and is, in this manner, naturally great until an individual abuses it.The Bible is the roused, mistake free, and uncovered expression of God. Absolution, the custom of turning into a Christian, is important for salvation — whether the Baptism happens by water, blood, or longing. God s Ten CommandmentsRead MoreWorld Religion: Christianity the Most Widespread Religion in The World1473 Words   |  6 Pagessomething or someone of a higher power. There are about five billion people who believe in a higher power (Tiemann 526). There are six world religions that have followers all around the world. 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Buddhism, which stems from Hin duism, offered an escape from the caste system, providing an escape from suffering with equalRead MoreBuddhism s Belief Of God1419 Words   |  6 PagesBuddhism hope to its adherents is to have a state of life in the afterlife where each individual can find his own way. They identifies their existence as god-like beings, who do not believe in an omnipotent creator God. Each individual discover and walk their own path. Nonetheless, Buddhism is not divine it just points the way to Nirvana. In the Buddhism religion they do not personally believe in God or a divine being. They do not worship, pray, or praise a divine being. Though the religion doesRead MoreThe Role Of God And The Religion1214 Words   |  5 Pageswith the Hindu ideas on god. Very similarly to Animism, Hinduism has many different beings that they people worship. These beings are called brahma and take over 300 million forms with people being able to pick and choose which ones they believe in, and which ones they donâ €™t. The brahma are merely faces of the one god though, who is known as Brahman. This isn’t just another god though, this is all reality. The understanding of god in Hinduism is that everything is god, and god is everything. Brahman