One another has actually highly ambivalent feelings about gender: as they chat otherwise contemplate gender nearly usually, plus offer so you’re able to someone else regarding their intimate experience and knowledge, they are both in fact afraid from gender, in reality was notice-admitted virgins
D. Salinger’s This new Catcher on Rye, just like the name indicates, are a book built on literary the thing is and you may allusions; consequently, their champion, Holden Caulfield, might have been compared to the many almost every other characters, away from both American and you can industry literature.step one Brand new nearest of Holden’s blood brothers, due to the fact also a cursory survey of the grievance from Salinger’s book will show you, could be recognized as Huckleberry Finn.2 And you may certainly there are distinguished likenesses anywhere between Huck and you will Holden: both are troubled kids away from home–psychologically, linguistically, and you may geographically–off a grown-up industry that they get a hold of pretentious, hypocritical, superficial, cruel, and you may risky. step three Surprisingly, in the event, this type of anxieties and you will obsessions try only the of those presented because of the William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, among the protagonists of your Voice and also the Rage. The answer to the fresh neurotic conclusion of one another letters will be found in the Freudian idea from anality, instance since the you to definitely theory has been increased and you may reinterpreted of the for example after psychologists because Norman O. Brown and you will Ernest Becker. Both Holden and you can Quentin exhibit characteristics which can be associated with the anyone whoever development might have been arrested within anal stage.
The outside similarities between them letters are often based, and you may striking. They are both brilliant, painful and sensitive, introspective, well-told teenagers: Holden are a great seventeen-year-dated preparing college pupil exactly who checks out “a lot” (18) and you may whose greatest topic try English (110); Quentin are a keen you are-year-old freshman in the Harvard that knows Latin and you can rates St. Francis. cuatro Moreover, both Holden and you can Quentin endeavor the sexual stress to its siblings, following a defensive, “your government” thoughts and looking to club the newest sisters’ entrance into carnal degree. Fundamentally, the puzzled and you may disturbed mental states lead both Holden and you may Quentin to think about committing suicide.5 Quentin, without a doubt, unlike Holden, in fact uses due to into his passing want to, to order a pair of apartment-irons for looks loads following throwing himself out-of a link toward Charles River.
But the greatest specifics of Holden Caulfield’s characterization –their paralyzing anxiety about sexuality, their excessively defensive ideas towards their sibling, with his below average preoccupation having death–is actually lost from inside the Twain’s portrait out-of Huck
As the suggested prior to, this new unifying emotional factor fundamental each other Holden and you can Quentin’s anxiousness away from sex, female, and you will dying is going to be found in the Freudian concept out of anality. Based on Freud, the explanation of all of the mature neurosis will be found in the brand new repressed sexual desires from childhood. Freud posited three amount from cybermen sign in infantile sexual invention: the new oral (birth to help you twelve months), between your activities from sucking and you may biting; this new anal (one three years), centering on the new kid’s fascination with the newest arse and stools; together with phallic (two-and-a-half so you’re able to half dozen decades), focusing on new children’s discovery of the genitals. If the child’s passage thanks to each one of these phases isn’t discussed successfully and you can happily, the fresh new stifled pushes have a tendency to resurface inside adulthood when it comes to certain neuroses. Based on Freud, brand new mature personality traits which can be for the denial and you may repression in rectal stage try orderliness (together with neatness), obstinacy, and you may parsimony (or possessiveness).6
To own Freud, anal interest and gamble, such as the kid’s steps for the most other phase of infantile development, are primarily assertions of pleasure principle along the facts and you may morality standards–exactly what can be considered in the retrospect as futile effort of the little one so you’re able to stick to help you an enthusiastic Edenic realm of innocent independence and gamble in the face of impending exile towards the mature field of work and you can obligations. However, later on psychologists such as for example Norman O. Brownish and you can Ernest Becker have assisted me to keep in mind that the issue is significantly more tricky than simply even Freud got recognized. Within his informative and you will influential book, Life Facing Passing, Brown contends that what exactly is really are stamped towards the understanding each and every folks for the rectal stage is absolutely nothing shorter than “brand new dispute anywhere between the creature human body, correctly epitomized throughout the anal mode, and you can all of our pretentious sublimations, alot more especially the new pretensions away from sublimated or intimate-Platonic like” (186). This means that, this new rectal updates signifies the brand new children’s very first run into with death and rust. Since Becker notes, echoing Brownish, “Having rectal play the kid is already to-be a great philosopher away from the human standing. However, like all philosophers they are nevertheless bound by it, and his awesome fundamental activity in life gets the newest denial from just what brand new anus stands for: you to definitely in fact, he is nothing but system in which nature can be involved. Nature’s opinions are actual opinions, individual philosophy try intellectual opinions, and even though it use the loftiest routes he could be depending up on a stool, hopeless without it, constantly brought back to they” (31). The brand new conflict knowledgeable of the man at anal stage, therefore, would be the fact of your own looks in place of your brain otherwise spirit, the actual versus an appropriate.