The theme for this quarter of AP Literature is Illusion vs. Reality. The novels The

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1 Marlena Purcell Purcell 1 AP Literature Mrs. Howells 12 March 2018 The theme for this quarter of AP Literature is Illusion vs. Reality. The novels The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath are two books that fit into this quarter s theme. Both contain similar protagonists who struggle to see what is truly occurring in their lives. They are stuck in their own worlds that they have created in their minds. Holden is the main character of The Catcher in the Rye. He is expelled from his school and spends several days by himself in New York City before he goes home. While he is there, everything he encounters is attempting to make him lose his innocence and grow up, but he doesn t want to. His reality is that he is coming of age, but to combat this he creates an illusion that he is comfortable and can stay the way he is now for a long time. There are several symbols in the story. One is Holden s dead brother s baseball glove. This glove has quotes written all over it by his brother Allie. When Allie died, Holden had a hard time dealing with it. God, he was a nice kid though. He used to laugh so hard at something he thought of at the dinner table that he just about fell off his chair. I was the only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. [...] I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it (44).

2 Purcell 2 Carrying this glove with him represents the grief that Holden still has over the loss of his brother. Holden also talks about sex frequently; he even hires a prostitute at one hotel. He never actually commits to these thoughts though. He makes excuses as to why he doesn t want to sleep with someone. He is still a virgin, so this symbolizes that he doesn t want to move on to adulthood. He says If you want to know the truth, I m a virgin. I really am. I ve had quite a few opportunities to lose my virginity and all, but I ve never gotten around to it yet (103). Holden sometimes brings up religion. He talks about joining a monastery, but he doesn t even wholeheartedly like his religion. I can t always pray when I feel like it. In the first place, I m sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don t care too much of the other stuff in the Bible (111). Holden talking about joining a monastery even though he doesn t like churches shows all the random ideas he thinks of and just how inconsistent his thoughts are. Esther is the main character from The Bell Jar. She is living a life that most people would love to have. She has an internship in New York for a magazine. This internship includes an excess of parties, dinners, and other social events. Esther doesn t enjoy it and she becomes depressed; with this comes an illusion. She is stuck under a bell jar where it s cloudy and miserable all the time. She can see the bright happiness of the world outside, but she can t get to it. Her doctor helps her try to get out of the bell jar. Like Holden, Esther also forgoes having sex. She struggles with the prevailing idea at the time that a woman should stay pure until she marries a man. She doesn t want to be stuck married to a man who she doesn t like. It might be nice to be pure and then to marry a pure man, but what if he suddenly confessed he wasn t pure after we were married, the way Buddy Willard had? I couldn t stand the idea of a woman

3 Purcell 3 having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not (66). To help Esther have a happier life, her doctor helps her set up an appointment to figure out a contraception method. I climbed up on the examination table thinking; I am climbing to freedom, freedom from fear, freedom from marrying the wrong person, like Buddy Willard, just because of sex, freedom from the Florence Crittenden Homes where all the poor girls go who should have been fitted out like me, because what they did, they would do anyway, regardless (182). This contraceptive device symbolizes Esther s independence from the ideals of society. Esther also brings up religion in The Bell Jar. She tells the story of a nun and a Jewish man who met under a fig tree, but they couldn t be together because of their different religions. Esther compares herself and Buddy Willard to these people because she and Buddy have conflicting views about almost everything. Even though they are from two different novels, Holden and Esther have similar characteristics. They both narrate their own stories and they don t necessarily tell them in chronological order. There are many instances of flashbacks and intervening the story with explanations. It s difficult for them to connect personally with others. Holden and Esther have both lost someone important to them early in their lives. Holden lost his brother Allie; Esther lost her father when she was nine. This may have something to do with their depression. These characters don t hide the fact that they re depressed. Esther says The silence depressed me. It wasn t the silence of silence. It was my own silence (15). Holden says New York s terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can hear it for miles. It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed (91). Both go through a depressive breakdown that leads them

4 Purcell 4 to a new part of their lives. For Holden, he was wandering through NYC and was consumed by something that seemed like a panic attack. Then all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening. Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I d never get to the other side of the street. [ ] Boy did it scare me. You can t imagine. I started sweating like a bastard my whole shirt and underwear and everything ( ). Esther s breakdown occurred when she was skiing on her own after Buddy taught her how to ski. The interior voice nagging me not to be a fool to save my skin and take off my skis and walk down, camouflaged by the scrub pines bordering the slope fled like a disconsolate mosquito. The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or flower (79). Some other unique things they have in common are that they both find themselves walking frequently, and they both complain about movies. Esther had to walk forty-three blocks back to her hotel and she says, Walking has never fazed me (15). Holden walked forty-one blocks back to his hotel because he didn t feel like getting in and out of another taxi cab (98). As for the movies, Esther says I hate Technicolor. Everybody in a Technicolor movie seems to feel obliged to wear a lurid costume in each new scene and to stand around like a clotheshorse with a lot of very green trees or very yellow wheat or very blue ocean rolling away for miles and miles

5 Purcell 5 in every direction (34). In the first chapter of Holden s story, he says If there s one thing I hate, it s the movies. Don t even mention them to me (4). The Catcher in the Rye and The Bell Jar are two books about people with depression who create illusions to evade their realities. The protagonists Holden and Esther are very similar in the way they act. Losing someone dear to them in their early years, and their dissatisfaction with their lives contributes to their depression. In the end, they both receive help from doctors to improve their mental situations.

6 Purcell 6 Works Cited Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Bantam Books, Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Little, Brown and Company, 2014.

Catcher in the Rye Study Guide Questions

Name: Class: Date: Chapter 1 Catcher in the Rye Study Guide Questions 1. What does Holden mean when he says that his brother D.B. is out in Hollywood "being a prostitute"? 2. Where is Holden as the story