Do you actually enjoys a cousin?”: Salinger’s Holden Caulfield and Faulkner’s Quentin Compson

Each other provides very ambivalent emotions throughout the intercourse: because they cam or remember intercourse almost usually, and even boast to anybody else regarding their sexual experience and knowledge, they are both indeed afraid off sex, in fact was notice-admitted virgins

D. Salinger’s The Catcher on Rye, due to the fact title means, was a manuscript built on literary the thing is that and you will allusions; consequently, its hero, Holden Caulfield, might have been as compared to a number of other emails, out-of both Western and you can industry literature.1 This new closest of Holden’s blood brothers, as the also a basic questionnaire of your problem out of Salinger’s novel will show you, could be named Huckleberry Finn.dos And you can indeed you can find popular likenesses ranging from Huck and you can Holden: they are both stressed teens on the move–emotionally, linguistically, and geographically–away from a grownup https://besthookupwebsites.org/datingcom-review/ community that they come across pretentious, hypocritical, shallow, cruel, and you can harmful. step 3 Surprisingly, though, these anxieties and obsessions is precisely the ones demonstrated by William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, among the many protagonists of your own Sound additionally the Frustration. The key to the brand new neurotic conclusion off both letters are going to be based in the Freudian theory out-of anality, particularly given that you to idea could have been increased and you can reinterpreted by such as later on psychologists given that Norman O. Brown and Ernest Becker. Each other Holden and you can Quentin exhibit personality traits that will be of somebody whoever advancement has been detained at the rectal phase.

The exterior parallels between them characters are easily centered, and hitting. They are both brilliant, sensitive and painful, introspective, well-informed young men: Holden try a beneficial seventeen-year-old preparing college or university college student whom reads “a lot” (18) and whoever ideal topic was English (110); Quentin is an you are-year-dated freshman within Harvard who knows Latin and you may rates St. Francis. cuatro More over, both Holden and you may Quentin investment the intimate stress on to the sisters, adopting a safety, “government” attitude and looking to club the latest sisters’ access towards the carnal studies. Eventually, its confused and you may disturbed rational says head both Holden and you will Quentin in order to contemplate committing suicide.5 Quentin, without a doubt, in place of Holden, in reality comes after owing to towards their demise wish, to shop for a couple of flat-irons to possess body loads and then hurling themselves regarding a link for the Charles Lake.

Nevertheless greatest information on Holden Caulfield’s characterization –his paralyzing anxiety about sexuality, their very protective attitude toward their brother, with his substandard preoccupation having death–is actually lost inside the Twain’s portrait off Huck

Just like the suggested earlier, the fresh unifying emotional factor root one another Holden and Quentin’s anxieties from sex, girls, and you can dying is going to be found in the Freudian theory of anality. Based on Freud, the rationale of all of the mature neurosis will be found in the fresh repressed intimate desires of childhood. Freud posited around three level out-of infantile intimate invention: the newest dental (birth in order to one year), between your issues out-of drawing and you can biting; the fresh rectal (you to three-years), concentrating on the newest child’s love for the latest arse and you can stools; in addition to phallic (two-and-a-half so you’re able to half dozen age), targeting the newest child’s advancement of the vagina. If your children’s passing courtesy every one of these phase is not negotiated successfully and gladly, brand new suppressed drives commonly resurface when you look at the adulthood in the way of individuals neuroses. Centered on Freud, the fresh mature character traits which might be on the denial and you may repression within the anal stage try orderliness (and additionally neatness), obstinacy, and you can parsimony (otherwise possessiveness).six

To have Freud, anal attraction and you will enjoy, such as the child’s tips from inside the most other levels out-of infantile creativity, are mainly assertions of your satisfaction principle along side truth and you can morality standards–exactly what can be looked at in the retrospect due to the fact futile effort of the child in order to embrace to a keen Edenic arena of innocent liberty and you can enjoy facing following exile with the adult realm of really works and you will duty. But afterwards psychologists such Norman O. Brownish and you may Ernest Becker has aided us to understand that the fresh concern is somewhat more challenging than actually Freud had accepted. In his insightful and you can important book, Lifetime Facing Death, Brownish contends one what exactly is very getting stamped towards consciousness of each and every of us inside the anal stage is nothing faster than simply “the fresh disagreement ranging from our very own creature human anatomy, rightly epitomized in the anal form, and you can all of our pretentious sublimations, a lot more specifically this new pretensions from sublimated otherwise close-Platonic love” (186). Put simply, the newest anal standing signifies the newest kid’s earliest encounter that have death and you will rust. Due to the fact Becker notes, echoing Brown, “Which have anal have fun with the child has already been is good philosopher away from the human condition. However, like all philosophers he is nonetheless limited by they, and his awesome fundamental task in life becomes the newest denial off what the fresh arse stands for: you to definitely actually, he is simply looks in which nature is worried. Nature’s opinions try real philosophy, people opinions is actually rational values, and though they take the loftiest flights he is created up on a stool, impossible without it, always brought back to they” (31). Brand new dispute educated of the boy from the anal stage, therefore, is the fact of your body instead of the mind otherwise heart, the actual in the place of the right.