Both features very ambivalent thinking regarding the gender: as they cam or think about intercourse nearly always, and also feature in order to anybody else regarding their intimate experience and knowledge, both are actually fearful out-of gender, indeed try thinking-admitted virgins
D. Salinger’s The Catcher about Rye, due to the fact identity suggests, are a manuscript built on literary the thing is that and you may allusions; thus, the hero, Holden Caulfield, might have been compared to a number of most other emails, from both Western and you can business literary works.step 1 The fresh new closest out of Holden’s blood brothers, because the actually a basic survey of one’s problem from Salinger’s novel will highlight, is seen as Huckleberry Finn.2 And you may indeed there are distinguished likenesses ranging from Huck and you may Holden: both are stressed teens away from home–mentally, linguistically, and you will geographically–off an adult industry that they get a hold of pretentious, hypocritical, superficial, vicious, and you can hazardous. step 3 Surprisingly, no matter if, these anxiousness and you may obsessions is only the ones showed because of the William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, among the protagonists of one’s Sound additionally the Outrage. The secret to the latest neurotic behavior off each other emails is based in the Freudian principle out of anality, such as as you to concept could have been amplified and reinterpreted of the including later psychologists as the Norman O. Brownish and you will Ernest Becker. Both Holden and Quentin display personality traits which can be of someone whose development could have been arrested in the rectal phase.
The exterior similarities between them characters are easily built, and you can striking. They are both smart, sensitive, introspective, well-advised men: Holden is actually an excellent seventeen-year-dated preparing university student who checks out “a lot” (18) and you may whose better topic try English (110); Quentin are an enthusiastic eighteen-year-dated freshman in the Harvard who knows Latin and you can estimates St. Francis. cuatro Moreover, both Holden and Quentin opportunity its sexual anxiety onto its siblings, implementing a safety, “big brother” emotions and seeking so you can bar new sisters’ access on carnal studies. Fundamentally, its perplexed and disrupted intellectual claims direct each other Holden and you may Quentin so you’re able to think about committing suicide.5 Quentin, naturally, in place of Holden, in reality pursue courtesy towards his passing wish to, to acquire a couple of apartment-irons having human body loads right after which hurling himself of a connection with the Charles River.
Nevertheless biggest specifics of Holden Caulfield’s characterization –their paralyzing anxiety about sex, their excessively defensive ideas into his aunt, and his below average preoccupation having passing–is destroyed when you look at the Twain’s portrait regarding Huck
Due to the fact ideal before, new unifying mental factor hidden both Holden and you can Quentin’s anxiousness off sexuality, women, and demise is usually to be found in the Freudian theory away from anality. According to Freud, the explanation of all of the mature neurosis is to be utilized in the fresh new repressed intimate wants of youngsters. Freud posited around three values of infantile sexual development: the latest dental (beginning so you’re able to a year), between your circumstances from sucking and you can biting; the anal (one to three years), emphasizing the children’s fascination with brand new asshole and you will feces; as well as the phallic (two and a half so you’re able to half a dozen ages), centering on brand new child’s development of the pussy. In case your kid’s passage through all these levels is not discussed effectively and you can gladly, the latest repressed drives often resurface in adulthood when it comes to various neuroses. Predicated on Freud, the fresh new mature character traits which can be from the denial and you can repression for the rectal phase https://besthookupwebsites.org/blackplanet-review/ is actually orderliness (as well as neatness), obstinacy, and you may parsimony (or possessiveness).6
For Freud, rectal interest and you can enjoy, like the children’s tips inside the almost every other phase regarding infantile creativity, are mainly assertions of the fulfillment concept over the reality and you can morality prices–what can be looked at during the retrospect because futile effort out-of the kid so you’re able to cling so you’re able to a keen Edenic realm of simple independence and gamble when confronted with upcoming exile to the adult field of really works and duty. However, afterwards psychologists such as Norman O. Brownish and Ernest Becker features aided me to just remember that , the new issue is considerably more challenging than simply actually Freud got accepted. In the informative and important publication, Lives Up against Death, Brown argues that what’s most becoming stamped towards consciousness each and every of us inside the rectal phase is absolutely nothing faster than “the new conflict ranging from our very own animal looks, correctly epitomized in the rectal setting, and you will the pretentious sublimations, so much more especially the latest pretensions off sublimated otherwise intimate-Platonic like” (186). In other words, the brand new anal updates represents brand new children’s basic encounter which have death and decay. Just like the Becker notes, echoing Brown, “That have anal play the son has already been is good philosopher of the human status. However, as with any philosophers they are nonetheless limited by it, and his chief task in daily life will get the fresh new denial out-of what new asshole signifies: that in reality, they are only body where character can be involved. Nature’s thinking are actual thinking, individual philosophy are mental opinions, and though they grab the loftiest aircraft he or she is situated on a stool, impossible without one, constantly cut back to help you it” (31). This new conflict experienced by kid in the rectal stage, thus, is the fact of looks as opposed to your mind or heart, the true in the place of an appropriate.
