One another features highly ambivalent emotions about intercourse: while they talk or think of gender nearly usually, as well as offer so you can other people about their sexual knowledge and experience, they are both actually scared out of gender, in reality is actually mind-confessed virgins
D. Salinger’s New Catcher regarding the Rye, while the identity implies, try a novel constructed on literary the thing is and you will allusions; consequently, their character, Holden Caulfield, could have been compared to the a host of other letters, away from both American and you may community literary works.step one The latest nearest away from Holden’s blood brothers, given that even a basic survey of one’s problem out of Salinger’s novel will highlight, can be seen as Huckleberry Finn.2 And you may certainly you’ll find prominent likenesses ranging from Huck and Holden: they are both stressed kids on the go–psychologically, linguistically, and you can geographically–from a grown-up world that they see pretentious, hypocritical, shallow, horrible, and you will risky. step 3 Remarkably, even though, this type of anxieties and you can obsessions are just the of those showed by the William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, one of several protagonists of one’s Voice therefore the Outrage. The answer to the latest neurotic behavior out-of both letters can be based in the Freudian principle away from anality, instance since the you to principle could have been amplified and you will reinterpreted by for example later psychologists because Norman O. Brown and you can Ernest Becker. One another Holden and you will Quentin showcase character traits which might be regarding the individuals whose advancement might have been arrested during the rectal phase.
The exterior similarities between them letters can be centered, and you will striking. They are both wise, sensitive, introspective, well-informed men: Holden was good seventeen-year-old preparing college or university student just who reads « a lot » (18) and you may whose finest subject was English (110); Quentin is actually an you are-year-old freshman in the Harvard you never know Latin and you can quotes St. Francis. cuatro Furthermore, each other Holden and you may Quentin enterprise their intimate nervousness to the siblings, following a safety, « your government » feelings and looking in order to club the new sisters’ entrances towards the carnal knowledge. In the long run, their perplexed and curvesconnect sign up you will interrupted rational states head both Holden and Quentin in order to contemplate suicide.5 Quentin, obviously, instead of Holden, indeed comes after courtesy on the his passing desire to, purchasing a pair of flat-irons getting human anatomy loads then throwing themselves out of a bridge to the Charles River.
Nevertheless the biggest details of Holden Caulfield’s characterization –their paralyzing anxiety about sexuality, his very protective feelings toward his cousin, with his below average preoccupation having death–are missing in Twain’s portrait of Huck
Given that ideal before, the new unifying mental factor fundamental each other Holden and you can Quentin’s stress and anxiety out-of sexuality, women, and you may demise is usually to be found in the Freudian idea out of anality. According to Freud, the rationale of all the mature neurosis will be included in the fresh suppressed sexual wants of youngsters. Freud posited around three stages out-of infantile intimate development: new oral (beginning to help you one year), within facts away from drawing and you can biting; the latest anal (one to three years), emphasizing new children’s love for the new arse and you will feces; as well as the phallic (two and a half so you’re able to half a dozen age), centering on the brand new children’s knowledge of your snatch. In case your child’s passing as a result of each one of these levels isn’t discussed properly and you may joyfully, the suppressed pushes will resurface in adulthood in the form of individuals neuroses. Based on Freud, the mature characteristics that will be of this denial and you may repression when you look at the rectal stage is actually orderliness (in addition to neatness), obstinacy, and you will parsimony (or possessiveness).6
For Freud, anal curiosity and you may enjoy, for instance the children’s methods into the most other phases of infantile creativity, are mainly assertions of your fulfillment concept across the reality and you will morality prices–what can be considered for the retrospect as the futile initiatives of the little one to help you cling to help you an enthusiastic Edenic field of innocent independence and you may play in the face of coming exile on the mature world of functions and you may obligation. But later on psychologists such as for example Norman O. Brown and Ernest Becker has actually assisted me to understand that brand new issue is significantly more complicated than actually Freud had acknowledged. In the insightful and you can influential guide, Life Facing Dying, Brownish argues one what’s very being stamped towards understanding of each and every of us when you look at the rectal phase is absolutely nothing reduced than « the newest conflict between our animal looks, rightly epitomized regarding the anal setting, and the pretentious sublimations, way more particularly brand new pretensions away from sublimated or close-Platonic love » (186). Quite simply, brand new anal condition signifies the children’s first come upon with mortality and decay. As Becker cards, echoing Brown, « Which have rectal have fun with the son is to be a great philosopher out-of the human being status. However, like all philosophers they are however limited by it, with his main task in life gets brand new assertion away from exactly what the fresh new arse signifies: one indeed, he’s simply human body in which character is worried. Nature’s opinions was actual philosophy, people values are mental opinions, and although it use the loftiest flights they are centered abreast of excrement, hopeless without one, usually cut back to it » (31). The newest conflict educated by the boy within anal stage, hence, would be the fact of muscles versus your mind or soul, the genuine rather than the ideal.