麦田里的守望者主题

The Catcher in the Rye

Themes主题

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

主题是探讨文学作品的根本利益，往往普遍的想法。

Alienation as a Form of Self-Protection

Throughout the novel, Holden seems to be excluded from and victimized by the world around him. As he says to Mr. Spencer, he feels trapped on “the other side” of life, and he continually attempts to find his way in a world in which he feels he doesn’t belong.

As the novel progresses, we begin to perceive that Holden’s alienation is his way of protecting himself. Just as he wears his hunting hat (see “Symbols,” below) to advertise his uniqueness, he uses his isolation as proof that he is better than everyone else around him and therefore above interacting with them. The truth is that interactions with other people usually confuse and overwhelm him, and his cynical sense of superiority serves as a type of self-protection. Thus, Holden’s alienation is the source of what little stability he has in his life.

As readers, we can see that Hol den’s alienation is the cause of most of his pain. He never addresses his own emotions directly, nor does he attempt to discover the source of his troubles. He desperately needs human contact and love, but his protective wall of bitterness prevents him from looking for such interaction. Alienation is both the source of Holden’s strength and the source of his problems. For example, his loneliness propels him into his date with Sally Hayes, but his need for isolation causes him to insult her and drive her away. Similarly, he longs for the meaningful connection he once had with Jane Gallagher, but he is too frightened to make any real effort to contact her. He depends upon his alienation, but it destroys him.

异化的自我保护的一种形式

在小说中，霍顿似乎被排除在他周围的世界和受害。他斯宾塞先生说，他感到被困“的另一面”的生活，他不断试图找到他的方式在这个世界里，他觉得自己不属于。

随着小说的发展，我们开始觉察到霍顿的异化是他保护自己的方式。正如他的狩猎他戴着帽子（见“符号”下方），以宣传自己的独特性，他使用他的隔离，以证明他是比其他人在他周围，因此上述与他们互动。事实是，与其他人的互动通常混淆和淹没他，和他的玩世不恭的优越感作为自我保护的一种类型。因此，霍顿的异化是他在他的生活中有什么稳定的来源。

作为读者，我们可以看到，霍顿的异化的原因是他的痛苦。他从来没有处理自己的情绪，直接，他也没有试图发现他的麻烦之源。他迫切需要人与人之间的接触和爱，但他苦涩的防护墙阻止他寻找这种互动。异化源Holden的强度和他的问题的来源。例如，他的孤独感驱使他进入他的萨莉·海斯日期，但他需要隔离导致他侮辱她，赶她走。同样，他渴望有意义的联系，他曾经与简·加拉格尔，但他是吓破了胆，使任何真正的努力与她联系。他依赖于他的疏离感，但它破坏了他。

The Painfulness of Growing Up

According to most analyses, The Catcher in the Rye is a bildungsroman, a novel about a young character’s growth into maturity. While it is appropriate to discuss the novel in such terms, Holden Caulfield is an unusual protagonist for a bildungsroman because his central goal is to resist the process of maturity itself. As his thoughts about the Museum of Natural History demonstrate, Holden fears change and is overwhelmed by complexity. He wants everything to be easily understandable and eternally fixed, like the statues of Eskimos and Indians in the museum. He is frightened b ecause he is guilty of the sins he criticizes in others, and because he can’t understand everything around him. But he refuses to acknowledge this fear, expressing it only in a few instances—for example, when he talks about sex and admits that “[s]ex is something I just don’t understand. I swear to God I don’t” (Chapter 9).

Instead of acknowledging that adulthood scares and mystifies him, Holden invents a fantasy that adulthood is a world of superficiality and hypocrisy (“phoniness”), while childhood is a w orld of innocence, curiosity, and honesty. Nothing reveals his image of these two worlds better than his fantasy about the catcher in the rye: he imagines childhood as an idyllic field of rye in which children romp and play; adulthood, for the children of this world, is equivalent to death—a fatal fall over the edge of a cliff. His created understandings of childhood and adulthood allow Holden to cut himself off from the world by covering himself with a protective armor of cynicism. But as the book progress es, Holden’s experiences, particularly his encounters with Mr. Antolini and Phoebe, reveal the shallowness of his conceptions.

成长的困苦

根据大多数分析，麦田里的守望者“是一个成长小说，一本小说关于一个年轻的人物的成长进入成熟期。虽然它是适当的讨论小说中有关条款，霍尔顿是一个不寻常的一个成长小说的主角，因为他的主要目标是抗拒的成熟的过程本身。由于他的想法自然历史博物馆展示，霍顿担心的变化和复杂不堪重负。他希望一切可以很容易地理解和永远固定的，像爱斯基摩人和印第安人博物馆的雕像。他被吓坏了，因为他犯的罪，他批评别人，因为他无法理解他周围的一切。但他拒绝承认这种恐惧，表达只有在少数情况下，例如，当他谈论性行为，并承认“[S] ex是我不明白的东西。我向上帝发誓，我不知道“（第9章）。

承认成年恐慌和迷惑他，而是霍顿发明的幻想，成年是肤浅和虚伪的世界（“虚假”），而童年是纯真，好奇，和诚实的世界。没有揭示这两个世界胜过他的幻想麦田里的守望他的形象：他想象为一个田园诗般的麦田中，儿童嬉戏玩耍的童年，成年后，这个世界的孩子，就等于死亡的致命的秋天在了悬崖边上。他创建的童年和成年的理解让霍顿砍自己与世界隔绝了自己玩世不恭的保护装甲覆盖。但是，作为这本书的进展，霍顿的经验，特别是他的遭遇与安托利尼先生和菲比，揭示他的观念的浅薄。

The Phoniness of the Adult World

“Phoniness,” which is probably the most famous phrase from The Catcher in the Rye, is one of