Catcher In The Rye Essays - Fiction, Literature, Literary Realism

Catcher In The Rye The Catcher in The Rye Many people find that their dreams are unreachable. Holden Caulfield realizes this in J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. As Holden tells his story, he recounts the events since leaving the Pencey School to his psychiatrist. At first, Holden sounds like a typical, misguided teenager, rebellious towards his parents, angry with his teachers, and flunking out of school. However, as his story progresses, it becomes clear that Holden is indeed motivated, just not academically. He has a purpose: to protect the young and innocent minds of young children from the ?horrors? of adult society. He hopes to freeze the children in time, as wax figures are frozen in a museum. After interacting with Phoebe, his younger sister, Holden realizes that this goal is quite unachievable. Holden wants to be the Catcher in the Rye, then realizes it is an unreachable ideal. Holden begins his story misguided and without direction. After flunking out of the Pencey School, Holden decides to leave early. Before he leaves, though, he visits his teacher, Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer and Holden talk about his direction in life: Do you feel absolutely no concern for your future, boy?' ?Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure. Sure, I do.' I thought about it for a minute. ?But not too much, I guess,'? (14). After leaving Pencey, he checks into a hotel where he invites a prostitute up to his room. He gets cold feet and decides not to have intercourse with her, though. Later, Holden decides to take his old girlfriend, Sally Hayes, to the theater. After taking her to the theater, Holden formulates a crazy plan which entails running away with Sally, getting married, and growing old together. Sally thinks that he is crazy, and she decides to go home. During his stay away from home, Holden drinks and smokes, showing even more misdirection. However, when Hol den returns home and talks to his sister, Phoebe, his direction becomes clear. Holden wants to be the Catcher in the Rye to protect children from the world in which he is forced to live. While talking with Phoebe, she asks Holden what he would like to be. He responds saying: Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around--nobody big, I mean--except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.'? (173) Holden wants to protect the innocence of his sister and every other innocent child in the world. Before Holden meets Sally for their date, he stops in front of the Museum of Natural History and begins to reminisce. He thinks about the way he visited the museum when he was younger. He also tells that every time one visits the museum, he is changed in some way, but the figures in the exhibits always stay the same. He wants to be able to preserve some things in the glass: ?Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone,? (122). Holden wants the innocence of children to be frozen behind that glass. When he visits Phoebe's school to give her a note, Holden notices two instances of graffiti on the walls. He succeeds in rubbing one of them off cannot rub off the other. It depresses Holden to think that someday this kind of graffiti will spoil his sister Phoebe and all of her companions. Up to thi s point, keeping young children from his plight is Holden's sole motive. He soon realizes that this is impossible. Holden sees that becoming the Catcher in the Rye is an unattainable ideal. When he meets Phoebe during her lunch break at school, he has made up

Summary of The Handmaids Tale essays

Summary of The Handmaid's Tale essays Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is a frighteningly credible, if somewhat tongues which come to mind include the increasing pressure to abolish the Constitutional barrier between church and state, the recent failure of the women's movement to establish legally mandated rights to equality, the growing schism between adherents of science and technology and those who fear the power and responsibility such advances create, and the growing sense of individual isolation from the collective of society – a phenomenon that has been on the rise for nearly a century. My reaction to this novel is one of trepidation. While the misuse of women certainly takes center stage, the callous and self-righteous movement behind the rise of Gilead clearly brutalizes both sexes. Offred and Ofglen several times see the executed bodies of "criminals" displayed on the wall as a warning to the population. Some of the men they see hanging there are former physicians who performed abortions, a priest, and homosexuals. Even the Commander eventually...

Solar power Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Solar power - Essay Example solar power market (Clean Energy Group and Smart Power 10).The solar power market has grown in the recent past but more needs to be done to sensitize consumers on its existence. One of the ways to ensure that solar power is attractive to individual consumers is by launching an advertising campaign based on solar energy’s characteristics. The unique features of solar such as it is the most abundant source of energy should be taken advantage of by advertisers. A television or radio commercial will appeal to a larger portion of the market. The prospective consumers who watch or listen to television or radio will be reached. There several ways through which United States government make solar power affordable to its citizens. The first on is offering subsidies to solar power companies. This would consecutively reduce the costs of producing solar panels, translating into lowered prices for solar panels, as well as, acquisition, and installation (Sunhot n.p). This would make solar power affordable to the citizens and more competitive in the market. Secondly, United States’ government needs to establish and implement policies that are favorable for solar power improvement and development. Lastly, the government needs to encourage research, creativity, economies of scale, and better technological solar systems that will sequentially reduce production costs (Office of energy efficiency and renewable energy n.p). The effectiveness of solar energy is, however, subject to discussion. The major limitation to its effectiveness is the fact that, solar can only produce power during the day which can further be reduced by cloud cover. Secondly, materials used in making solar panels, cadmium and lead, are considered harmful (Zachary n.p). When disposing solar panels one needs to be keen not to expose cadmium to the soil, to prevent it from leeching into the underground waters. Lastly, currently the costs of installing solar arrays for an entire home might be costly. This