Both features highly ambivalent emotions on intercourse: because they speak otherwise think of intercourse almost usually, and also brag so you’re able to others about their intimate experience and knowledge, both are in fact afraid out-of sex, in reality are worry about-admitted virgins
D. Salinger’s The newest Catcher on Rye, due to the fact label suggests, try a novel built on literary parallels and you can allusions; because of this, their champion, Holden Caulfield, might have been than the a host of most other letters, away from each other Western and industry books.1 The latest closest out-of Holden’s blood brothers, as the also a cursory survey of the criticism off Salinger’s book will highlight, tends to be recognized as Huckleberry Finn.dos And certainly discover notable likenesses between Huck and you can Holden: both are troubled kids on the go–mentally, linguistically, and you will geographically–regarding a grownup globe which they find pretentious, hypocritical, low, vicious, and you may harmful. 3 Interestingly, although, these types of anxieties and you can obsessions was just the ones presented from the William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, among the protagonists of Voice together with Fury. The key to the brand new neurotic conclusion out of one another characters should be found in the Freudian principle off anality, such as since the one to concept might have been increased and you will reinterpreted by such as later psychologists since Norman O. Brown and you may Ernest Becker. Both Holden and Quentin exhibit character traits that are of this somebody whoever innovation could have been arrested within rectal stage.
The exterior parallels between them emails are often created, and you will hitting. They are both brilliant, delicate, introspective, well-told men: Holden are a good seventeen-year-dated creating college college student which checks out “much” (18) and you may whose ideal subject try English (110); Quentin are an to try to get-year-dated freshman during the Harvard you never know Latin and prices St. Francis. 4 Additionally, one another Holden and you can Quentin opportunity its intimate anxiety on to the sisters, implementing a defensive, “government” ideas and seeking so you can bar the new sisters’ entrance to your carnal knowledge. Ultimately, its perplexed and you will disrupted intellectual states head both Holden and you may Quentin so you’re able to remember suicide.5 Quentin, definitely, instead of Holden, in fact employs because of to the their dying like to, to acquire a pair of flat-irons getting system loads and then hurling themselves regarding a connection into the Charles Lake.
But the greatest information on Holden Caulfield’s characterization –their paralyzing anxiety about sex, their overly defensive ideas toward their aunt, and his below average preoccupation which have demise–was forgotten in the Twain’s portrait off Huck
As suggested before, this new unifying mental factor root one another Holden and Quentin’s anxiety out of sex, women, and you will demise will be based in the Freudian principle out-of anality. Centered on Freud, the rationale of all the adult neurosis will be utilized in the fresh new stifled intimate wants out of teens. Freud posited about three stages out of infantile sexual innovation: the brand new oral (beginning so you can one-year), amongst the products of drawing and you may biting; the rectal (you to definitely three-years), focusing on the newest children’s love for the newest arse and you may feces; as well as the phallic (two-and-a-half to help you six many years), emphasizing 
the brand new child’s development of snatch. In the event the kid’s passageway as a result of every one of these phase is not discussed successfully and you may cheerfully, the latest stifled pushes often resurface when you look at the adulthood when it comes to individuals neuroses. Based on Freud, the adult personality traits that are on the assertion and you may repression inside anal stage is actually orderliness (and additionally neatness), obstinacy, and parsimony (otherwise possessiveness).six
Having Freud, rectal interest and gamble, like the children’s steps within the most other levels out-of infantile advancement, are primarily assertions of your pleasure concept along the reality and you can morality standards–what can be considered into the retrospect since the futile initiatives from the little one so you can embrace so you’re able to an Edenic arena of simple liberty and you will gamble in the face of upcoming exile on the adult realm of works and you will responsibility. But later on psychologists for example Norman O. Brown and you may Ernest Becker possess assisted us to remember that the latest concern is somewhat more complicated than just even Freud had recognized. In his insightful and you may influential book, Life Facing Demise, Brown contends that what is actually very getting stamped toward consciousness of each and every people within the rectal phase is nothing smaller than simply “the new argument between our animal human anatomy, correctly epitomized regarding rectal setting, and you will our pretentious sublimations, a whole lot more especially new pretensions from sublimated otherwise intimate-Platonic like” (186). This basically means, the fresh new rectal updates signifies this new children’s very first stumble on having mortality and you can decay. Once the Becker cards, echoing Brownish, “With rectal play the boy is to get an excellent philosopher out of the human being condition. But as with any philosophers he could be nonetheless limited by it, along with his head activity in life gets this new denial of what this new asshole represents: one to actually, he or she is nothing but looks in which nature can be involved. Nature’s viewpoints is real beliefs, human philosophy is actually rational viewpoints, and though they make loftiest flights he’s centered up on excrement, hopeless without one, constantly brought back to help you they” (31). The fresh disagreement educated by man within rectal phase, ergo, is that of one’s system versus the brain or spirit, the actual rather than the ideal.