1、麦田里的守望者的主题思想和象征手法的运用英语专业毕业论文麦田里的守望者的主题思想和象征手法的运用1. IntroductionIn 1951,Jerome David Salinger published his first well-known novel, The catcher in the Rye, with which he gained an almost immediate reputation as one of the foremost post-world War American novelists. Shortly afterwards, the book became
2、 assigned reading for a majority of high school and college English courses in America. No other writer since War has achieved the heights of popularity of J.D. Salinger. And we can say that his popularity has rested primarily on one character, Holden Caulfield, in the book.The novel tells a seeming
3、ly simple story of a 16-year-old boy, Holden Caulfield,who, after being expelled from the school for failing almost all of his courses, runs away from that hateful place to New York and spends three days there, roaming around in search for some goodness and the true value which he vaguely understand
4、s. With suffering uneasiness and a bitter spirit, he encounters many different people, only to find hypocrites and liars everywhere. Finally, he sneaks home to see his sister Phoebe, an unspoilt, angel-like child who helps him find the courage to live on in this corrupted adult world.Salingers succe
5、ss surprised the critics as well as the reading public. Critics searched and are still searching for justification for such overwhelming success in literature. They emphasize the spiritual disillusionment, the psychological stress of the adolescents in post-war America, and the creation of a life-li
6、ke character. These are, admittedly, important and primary factors contributing to the immediate success of the novel. However, many authors have lightly touched upon one literary technique, which Salinger employs extensively, and which helps the author to achieve what he wants to achievedthe use of
7、 symbols. This thesis tries to deal with this aspect of Salingers style of writing and in relative detail I shall try to show how, step by step, the author underlines the basic theme of the novel by using symbols and how symbolism plays an irreplaceable role in the boy who is also a literary represe
8、ntative of the whole generation of American youth, and in the realistic portrayal of a whole generation through a baffled youngster-Holden.While emphasizing the significance of Salingers writing style, especially the use of symbols in the whole narrative, we do not want to ignore the social backgrou
9、nd at that time in America that seems necessary.The Catcher in the Rye was given accurate description in the postwar period, which was a sober and realistic time. The 1950s was the time when American social ideology changed quickly. The economy had already recovered from the Great Depression and Ame
10、rica became the richest country in the world through war business. The living standard in America was raised considerably. The number of the Middle Class increased sharply. People, especially the youth, seized the opportunity that the prosperity had brought people to pursue all the modern pleasures.
11、But the bright days were shadowed by a spiritual and cultural crisis in American society. With more material comfort, and more people lacked the spiritual belief. Whats more, the trend of existentialism was flooding in the western countries at the time, greatly influencing the youngsters in America.
12、 The main character of the book, Holden, has the feature of existentialisma rebel in spirit, a coward in behavior, despise the false, the vulgarity and the convention.Though their family could supply them with material life, they still felt depressed and began to doubt whether the material comfort r
13、eally meant anything in life. In a passive way, they adopted the decadent way of lifedrinking excessively，taking drugs and enjoying sex freedom as an expression of their dissatisfaction with the society. As a result, many of these young people became social “dropouts” which historians call “The beat
14、 Generation”. Youngsters at this period of time sensed something was wrong but did not know what and wanted to rebel but did not know how.We see that Salinger sensitively depicts the time he knows well. He chooses intelligent, sensitive and very self-conscious adolescent as his main character repres
15、enting all the problems his generation of youth confronted. The young man suffers from the “phoniness” in the corrupted society and struggles vainly to find a way out. Salinger feels and analyses the abnormal modern society through a symbolic structure of language, motif, and episode. Throughout the
16、 book, Salinger emphasizes on the conflicts between the spirit and material, the reality and imagination, the living and the death.Ihab Hassan comments on Salingers novel saying that “It is the new look at the American Dream especially dramatized by the encounter between a vision of innocence and th
17、e reality of guilt, between the forms love and power have tended to assume in America. The natural locus of the conflict in the work of Salinger is childhood and adolescence. In them the counter play of hope and despair, participation and withdrawal, commands a full range of comic that is ambivalent
18、, reference: it is the old story of the self against the world in outlines by a mass society.It is because the novel presents a picture of the confused mind of a sixteen-year-old boy in a few days in his life, during which the protagonist tries to understand a world which is far beyond his scope of
19、understanding, the narrative becomes a very complicated mixture of various kinds of ideas behind a seemingly innocent and unsophisticated monologue. Only symbol can be a tool powerful enough to capture such complicated mind of one under great psychological stress and this is exactly what Salinger us
20、es to enable the reader to perceive reality from the inside, and to find meaning through it. However, the term symbolism is ambiguous. It can mean “both a system of symbols or representation, and the practice of using symbols, especially by sensuous representation.”From this, we can see, the “symbol
21、” has extended its meaning to denote every conventional representation of idea by form. When the symbol is shown a reader, he sees, hears, and feels something else -he receives the range of meaning beyond the thing itself. Some symbols are “conventional” or “public”. For example, the cross is a symb
22、ol of Christianity; the rose is a symbol of beauty and love. While some other symbols are “particular” ones which are influenced by the readers own interpretations and understandings. Therefore, a symbol may mean differently for different readers with their own different life experiences and cultura
23、l backgrounds. For instance, the color “red” indicates prosperity, happiness in China; while in the western countries, it may symbolize the madness and violence. Here cultural difference plays its role, just as much as personal differences. Some symbols closely connecting with an idea or person and
24、are easily recognized; others have to be understood in a social, cultural or psychological context. Symbols employed by Salinger in his The Catcher in the Rye are mostly of latter type. Real symbol has magic and life, which it brings to a complex and subtle situation.Everyones feeling is different f
25、rom every other at every moment of his comprehension. The emotional changes as we actually experience them are often beyond the power of any writer to put them down through the conventional means of description. One needs to resort to symbols to reflect, to reveal the unconscious emotional situation
26、s.It is clear that symbols are the artists means of creation patterns of thought and emotion, which do not previously exist. A symbol, however, must have a specific reference or a cluster of them to which it is somehow specifically attached. There may be ambiguities, because its value is to be achie
27、ved by the understanding of the reader, who is to participate in the artists perception and creation. What we should do is to keep our eyes open for literary symbols so they can bring out the effect, which the author wants to evoke.In the following chapter, I would like to discuss in relative detail
28、s how Salinger uses these symbols to achieve the powerful effect of the novel. This thesis will concentrate on a discussion on Salingers use of symbols in the novel to bring out its thematic importance. We will discuss how Mr. Salinger portrays a disillusioned young mans nostalgic longing for the be
29、autiful and innocent past by employing some symbolic characters. Through the discussion in this part, I hope to present a relatively clear picture of how Salingers employments of symbols have helped achieve the thematic depth of the novel.2. The authors purpose of using childhood as the memorial in
30、Holdens heartBecause Salinger experienced the World Warand was deeply depressed by it, his perspective on life is , to a large extent, molded by this experience. He recalls the initial stage of the human beings, a state of innocence not yet corrupted by the society. This innocence can now only be fo
31、und in children. Childhood is an essential symbol in the novel through which Salinger expresses this longing for the basic goodness innocence to the readers through his heroes.The spiritual crisis in which Salingers hero finds himself probably shaped by a world which is full of injustice, frustratio
32、n, agony and horror. Salinger captures the reality of the world and wants to embody them through a youngsters experience. On the naturalistic theory “the further one goes from the innocence of the cradle, the more tainted on becomes from contact with society”. It means that when people in their chil
33、dhood, their love are pure and open, when they grow older, they are formed to obey certain kind of rules in order to live decently like people around them. They turn to be “phony”.Through this novel, the author tries to raise this question“How can an adult keep the innocence all through the life?” An adolescent struggling un
