Catcher in the Rye Lit Analysis

1. This is a story of a boy named Holden Caulfield. He has been kicked out of another school for failing almost all of his classes. He runs off to Manhattan early and goes to check into a hotel, at the same time he is judging everyone by the way they live their life and hold themselves. He holds a very cynical point of view. He thinks everything sucks just like every teenage person does. He likes to get strippers and hookers, mind just like a teenage boy. He is a complete dick to his former girlfriend as they go ice skating and see a play. Holden calls a ton of people, although he acts like he hates everyone.
2. The theme is that teenagers are hopeless emotional wrecks. They look at everything like life is terrible and that nothing will get better and that showing emotions are a bad idea. He's trying to say that growing up sucks and that's why he is the way he is.
3. The tone of the book is almost a monotone story being told where everything is thrown at you with no rhyme or reason really in a cynical point of view often. It doesn't technically give you an easy recognizable beginning middle end, it almost just flows through itself.
4. tone-the whole thing is told in a straight forward tone.

foreshadowing-In the beginning he has several references that lead the reader to believe he is in a mental hospital or some sort of institution.

irony-His big thing is hating all of these "phonies" yet throughout the novel he is seen lying several times leaving him to be in the category of a "phony."

metaphor-My favorite metaphor out of the book is when Holden is talking to his classmates mother on the train and he thinks to himself that the son is as sensitive as a toilet seat.

symbolism-His red hat has multiple meanings to it but one of them is that it matches the hair color of his sister, giving him something to remind him of her.

flashbacks-He thinks back to when Allie died and has an emotional breakdown within the flashback.