Each other possess extremely ambivalent ideas from the intercourse: because they talk or think of gender almost always, as well as brag so you’re able to anyone else regarding their sexual knowledge and experience, both are in fact scared away from sex, in reality are notice-confessed virgins
D. Salinger’s The latest Catcher from the Rye, because term suggests, are a manuscript constructed on literary the thing is that and you will allusions; thus, their hero, Holden Caulfield, has been compared to a host of other letters, from each other American and you may globe literary works.1 The brand new closest regarding Holden’s blood brothers, because actually a cursory questionnaire of one’s grievance away from Salinger’s novel will highlight, is thought to be Huckleberry Finn.2 And you can yes you will find prominent likenesses ranging from Huck and you may Holden: they are both troubled teens on the move–psychologically, linguistically, and you will geographically–out of a grownup business that they see pretentious, hypocritical, superficial, cruel, and you may dangerous. 3 Interestingly, in the event, such anxiousness and obsessions are only the of those displayed by William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, one of many protagonists of your own Sound additionally the Outrage. The key to the new neurotic conclusion off one another emails is found in the Freudian principle out of anality, such as for instance because the you to definitely principle has been increased and reinterpreted from the such as later psychologists due to the fact Norman O. Brown and you will Ernest Becker. Both Holden and you may Quentin display character traits which can be with the some body whose advancement could have been arrested from the anal phase.
The outside parallels between them letters are typically built, and you can hitting. Both are practical, sensitive, introspective, well-told teenage boys: Holden try a great seventeen-year-old preparing college or university scholar which checks out « much » (18) and whoever better topic are English (110); Quentin are a keen to try to get-year-dated freshman from the Harvard that knows Latin and prices St. Francis. 4 More over, each other Holden and Quentin project its intimate stress to its sisters, adopting a protective, « big brother » thinking and seeking in order to pub the sisters’ entrance to the carnal degree. In the end, the puzzled and disrupted intellectual states head both Holden and you may Quentin so you’re able to remember suicide.5 Quentin, definitely, rather than Holden, indeed comes after because of on the his death like to, to invest in a pair of flat-irons to own body weights following throwing themselves off a link to the Charles River.
However the biggest details of Holden Caulfield’s characterization –their paralyzing concern with sexuality, his overly protective emotions with the their sis, and his awesome below average preoccupation that have demise–is shed during the Twain’s portrait out of Huck
As the ideal earlier, brand new unifying emotional foundation hidden each other Holden and you can Quentin’s anxiety regarding sexuality, girls, and dying is usually to be found in the Freudian principle out-of anality. Predicated on Freud, the rationale of all the adult neurosis is going to be found in the repressed sexual desires out of young people. Freud posited about three amounts from infantile sexual advancement: the latest dental (beginning so you’re able to yearly), within products from drawing and you will biting; new anal (that 36 months), focusing on the fresh child’s fascination with the asshole and you may feces; as well as the phallic (two and a half to six ages), focusing on the fresh new child’s knowledge of one’s pussy. In the event your kid’s passageway due to each of these levels isn’t negotiated properly and you can happily, the new stifled drives will resurface when you look at the adulthood in the way of some neuroses. Predicated on Freud, the fresh mature characteristics that will be from the denial and you may repression within the anal stage are orderliness (as well as neatness), obstinacy, and you may parsimony (otherwise possessiveness).six
To possess Freud, rectal interest and you can enjoy, such as the children’s strategies within the other stages from infantile advancement, are mainly assertions of fulfillment principle over the facts and morality beliefs–exactly what do be considered from inside the retrospect just like the futile initiatives out of the little one so you’re able to cling to help you an enthusiastic Edenic arena of innocent independence and you will play when confronted with impending exile towards the adult field of work and you may responsibility. But later psychologists including Norman O. Brownish and you may Ernest Becker have aided us to understand that the issue is somewhat more difficult than just also Freud had acknowledged. In the informative and you may important book, Lives Facing Passing, Brown argues that what is actually extremely getting stamped toward awareness of any people in the rectal phase is nothing quicker than simply « the dispute anywhere between our very own animal muscles, rightly epitomized throughout the rectal means, and you may all of our pretentious sublimations, far more particularly this new pretensions away from sublimated otherwise personal-Platonic like » (186). Put simply, brand new rectal updates stands for new children’s earliest come upon having death and you will rust. Once the Becker cards, echoing Brown, « That have rectal have fun with the boy is already as a good philosopher away from the human being status. However, like all philosophers he’s nevertheless limited by they, along with his head activity in daily life gets the newest denial out of what the newest anus stands for: that indeed, he could be just body in which character is worried. Nature’s beliefs try bodily beliefs, peoples thinking is intellectual philosophy, and even though it do the loftiest flights he or she is built on excrement, impossible without one, constantly brought back in order to it » (31). Brand new disagreement knowledgeable from the man during the anal phase, for this reason, is the fact of human anatomy rather than the mind or spirit, the actual rather than a suitable.