Do you previously has a brother? »: Salinger’s Holden Caulfield and you will Faulkner’s Quentin Compson

Both have highly ambivalent thoughts regarding gender: as they talk otherwise remember sex almost usually, plus brag so you’re able to anyone else regarding their intimate experience and knowledge, both are in reality afraid from sex, in fact are self-confessed virgins

D. Salinger’s The fresh Catcher regarding Rye, since name implies, try a novel built on literary the thing is and you may allusions; this means that, their champion, Holden Caulfield, has been compared to many other emails, regarding both Western and you may world literature.1 This new closest out-of Holden’s https://besthookupwebsites.org/amolatina-review/ bloodstream brothers, as the actually a basic survey of the ailment from Salinger’s unique will reveal, tends to be named Huckleberry Finn.dos And you will certainly discover celebrated likenesses anywhere between Huck and you can Holden: they are both troubled kids while on the move–psychologically, linguistically, and geographically–out-of a grown-up industry which they come across pretentious, hypocritical, shallow, horrible, and you may harmful. step three Amazingly, whether or not, this type of anxieties and you can obsessions try only the of these showed of the William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, among the protagonists of one’s Sound in addition to Frustration. The key to new neurotic conclusion regarding both emails is going to be based in the Freudian idea regarding anality, such as for instance since one principle might have been amplified and reinterpreted of the eg later psychologists because Norman O. Brownish and you can Ernest Becker. Both Holden and you may Quentin showcase personality traits that will be regarding the individuals whoever creativity has been arrested in the anal phase.

The surface parallels among them letters are often dependent, and you can hitting. They are both wise, painful and sensitive, introspective, well-informed men: Holden is actually an excellent seventeen-year-old prep university beginner just who checks out « much » (18) and you will whoever finest topic is English (110); Quentin is actually an eighteen-year-old freshman from the Harvard you never know Latin and you may quotes St. Francis. cuatro Furthermore, each other Holden and you can Quentin project its intimate anxiety to their sisters, following a protective, « big brother » thinking and looking to club brand new sisters’ entrances toward carnal training. Ultimately, the confused and you can interrupted rational states head one another Holden and you may Quentin to consider suicide.5 Quentin, obviously, unlike Holden, in reality follows owing to to the his dying wish to, to shop for a set of apartment-irons to have human anatomy weights and throwing themselves regarding a bridge towards the Charles River.

However the most significant specifics of Holden Caulfield’s characterization –his paralyzing concern about sexuality, his very protective ideas towards the his sibling, with his substandard preoccupation which have dying–are forgotten into the Twain’s portrait out-of Huck

Since suggested earlier, brand new unifying psychological factor underlying both Holden and you may Quentin’s anxiousness out of sexuality, ladies, and you can passing is to be found in the Freudian theory from anality. Based on Freud, the rationale of all mature neurosis is going to be used in the latest repressed sexual desires of youth. Freud posited about three degrees of infantile intimate development: the fresh new oral (beginning to twelve months), between the circumstances out of drawing and biting; the brand new anal (one to three years), focusing on this new kid’s fascination with the latest arsehole and you will feces; together with phallic (two and a half so you can half dozen years), focusing on the fresh child’s discovery of your own genitals. When your child’s passageway compliment of each of these phases isn’t discussed effectively and happily, the fresh stifled pushes have a tendency to resurface during the adulthood when it comes to some neuroses. Considering Freud, brand new adult character traits that will be for the denial and you can repression for the anal stage are orderliness (as well as neatness), obstinacy, and parsimony (or possessiveness).6

Getting Freud, anal interest and play, such as the kid’s steps during the other phases off infantile creativity, are primarily assertions of the pleasure idea along side reality and you may morality beliefs–so what can be viewed inside the retrospect because useless efforts from the child to embrace to help you an Edenic realm of simple independence and gamble in the face of following exile into adult arena of work and you will obligation. However, later on psychologists like Norman O. Brown and Ernest Becker has helped us to understand that the latest issue is considerably more difficult than just also Freud had acknowledged. In his informative and you can important publication, Existence Up against Passing, Brownish contends you to definitely what’s really are stamped into understanding of any folks into the rectal phase is absolutely nothing faster than just « the newest argument anywhere between our very own animal body, correctly epitomized regarding the rectal mode, and you may the pretentious sublimations, more especially this new pretensions out-of sublimated or intimate-Platonic love » (186). Put simply, the new rectal position represents this new children’s earliest find which have mortality and you may decay. As the Becker notes, echoing Brownish, « Having anal play the man is already to-be an effective philosopher away from the human condition. However, as with any philosophers he or she is still limited by they, and his chief task in life becomes the fresh new assertion away from what the fresh new arse stands for: you to definitely actually, they are only system where characteristics is worried. Nature’s viewpoints was physical values, person values was intellectual thinking, and though they make loftiest routes he or she is depending on a stool, impossible without one, usually cut back so you can it » (31). New dispute educated by the child from the rectal phase, therefore, is that of muscles rather than your body and mind or soul, the real as opposed to an appropriate.