Each other have very ambivalent thinking from the gender: as they talk otherwise contemplate intercourse almost constantly, as well as offer to help you other people about their intimate knowledge and experience, they are both indeed afraid regarding sex, indeed is actually care about-confessed virgins
D. Salinger’s The fresh Catcher in the Rye, due to the fact identity suggests, was a chemistry login book constructed on literary the thing is and you may allusions; consequently, its champion, Holden Caulfield, has been as compared to many most other emails, out of one another Western and you will community literature.step 1 The fresh new nearest out-of Holden’s blood brothers, given that also a cursory survey of your ailment off Salinger’s book can tell you, can be named Huckleberry Finn.2 And you may certainly you’ll find well known likenesses anywhere between Huck and you will Holden: both are stressed teens on the road–psychologically, linguistically, and you can geographically–away from an adult world that they pick pretentious, hypocritical, superficial, cruel, and you may unsafe. step three Remarkably, regardless of if, these stress and anxiety and obsessions are only the of them shown of the William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, one of many protagonists of your own Sound plus the Fury. The secret to the brand new neurotic behavior off one another letters would be found in the Freudian idea from anality, eg because the that idea could have been increased and reinterpreted because of the such later on psychologists once the Norman O. Brownish and you will Ernest Becker. Both Holden and you can Quentin showcase characteristics which can be on the anybody whoever development has been arrested at the anal phase.
The surface parallels among them characters can be centered, and you will striking. Both are intelligent, delicate, introspective, well-advised young men: Holden are a seventeen-year-dated creating university pupil which reads «a lot» (18) and you can whose better topic is actually English (110); Quentin are an enthusiastic to get-year-old freshman within Harvard you never know Latin and you will prices St. Francis. cuatro Additionally, both Holden and you can Quentin project the intimate anxiety to their siblings, implementing a safety, «big brother» feelings and seeking to pub this new sisters’ entrance with the carnal studies. In the end, their baffled and disturbed intellectual says head one another Holden and you can Quentin in order to contemplate suicide.5 Quentin, definitely, rather than Holden, indeed observe courtesy into the their death desire to, to acquire a couple of apartment-irons having human body loads following hurling himself from a bridge towards Charles River.
However the most significant specifics of Holden Caulfield’s characterization –his paralyzing concern with sex, his overly protective thinking on their sis, and his awesome unhealthy preoccupation with passing–are shed into the Twain’s portrait from Huck
Just like the ideal earlier, the new unifying mental foundation underlying one another Holden and you can Quentin’s anxiousness off sex, lady, and demise will be based in the Freudian idea from anality. Predicated on Freud, the rationale of all the adult neurosis is usually to be found in the brand new suppressed intimate desires away from childhood. Freud posited around three values out of infantile sexual development: the latest oral (delivery so you can 12 months), amongst the facts of sucking and you will biting; new rectal (you to 3 years), focusing on the child’s fascination with brand new arsehole and feces; plus the phallic (two-and-a-half to half a dozen years), centering on the kid’s advancement of the genitals. In case your child’s passageway due to each of these phases is not discussed successfully and you will gladly, the fresh new stifled pushes often resurface inside the adulthood in the form of certain neuroses. Predicated on Freud, the new adult personality traits that will be with the assertion and repression within the rectal stage are orderliness (and neatness), obstinacy, and you will parsimony (or possessiveness).6
Getting Freud, rectal interest and you may gamble, such as the children’s actions for the most other phase away from infantile advancement, are primarily assertions of satisfaction principle across the facts and you may morality principles–exactly what do be viewed into the retrospect while the futile attempts out-of the little one to help you cling so you’re able to a keen Edenic arena of simple liberty and you may play in the face of impending exile into adult world of functions and obligation. However, after psychologists such as for example Norman O. Brownish and you may Ernest Becker possess assisted us to keep in mind that the newest concern is somewhat more difficult than just also Freud had recognized. Inside the insightful and influential book, Lifetime Up against Demise, Brownish argues you to what is actually very becoming stamped into the understanding of any of us in anal phase is nothing quicker than simply «new dispute ranging from our very own animal looks, rightly epitomized on the anal mode, and you can the pretentious sublimations, much more particularly brand new pretensions of sublimated otherwise personal-Platonic love» (186). Simply put, the fresh new rectal position signifies the newest kid’s earliest stumble on that have mortality and decay. Since Becker cards, echoing Brownish, «That have rectal play the guy has already been as a good philosopher off the human position. But as with any philosophers he’s however bound by it, along with his head activity in life will get brand new assertion off just what the asshole stands for: one in fact, he’s nothing but looks where characteristics is worried. Nature’s thinking was real values, person beliefs is rational thinking, and although they make the loftiest aircraft they are founded abreast of a stool, hopeless without it, always cut back to help you they» (31). This new disagreement experienced of the child at the rectal phase, hence, is the fact of your human anatomy in the place of your mind otherwise heart, the genuine versus an appropriate.
