Do you previously provides a sister?”: Salinger’s Holden Caulfield and you will Faulkner’s Quentin Compson

Both enjoys very ambivalent attitude regarding gender: while they cam otherwise contemplate gender almost always, and also offer in order to anybody else regarding their sexual knowledge and experience, they are both indeed afraid off sex, in fact are notice-admitted virgins

D. Salinger’s This new Catcher on Rye, because name suggests, was a manuscript constructed on literary the thing is that and you will allusions; this is why, their character, Holden Caulfield, might have been compared to a number of almost every other emails, out-of both Western and you will world literary works.1 The brand new nearest out of Holden’s blood brothers, due to the fact actually a basic survey of one’s grievance from Salinger’s novel can tell you, could be seen as Huckleberry Finn.2 And indeed you will find distinguished likenesses ranging from Huck and Holden: they are both troubled adolescents away from home–emotionally, linguistically, and geographically–away from an adult globe that they get a hold of pretentious, hypocritical, superficial, cruel, and you may risky. 3 Remarkably, in the event, such anxieties and you can obsessions try only the of those presented from the William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, among the protagonists of Sound in addition to Fury. The key to brand new neurotic choices out of both characters is going to be found in the Freudian idea from anality, such due to the fact one concept might have been increased and you can reinterpreted by the such as after psychologists due to the fact Norman O. Brownish and Ernest Becker. Both Holden and you may Quentin showcase characteristics which can be from the anybody whose development might have been detained from the anal phase.

The surface similarities between them letters are often dependent, and you may striking. Both are wise, sensitive and painful, introspective, well-told men: Holden is a beneficial seventeen-year-old creating college beginner who checks out “a lot” (18) and you will whoever ideal subject is actually English (110); Quentin are an enthusiastic to try to get-year-old freshman on Harvard who knows Latin and you will estimates St. Francis. 4 More over, one another Holden and you can Quentin venture its intimate stress to its sisters, following a defensive, “your government” thinking and seeking in order to club the fresh new sisters’ entrances to your carnal degree. Finally, the mislead and disturbed intellectual claims head one another Holden and you can Quentin to help you contemplate suicide.5 Quentin, definitely, rather than Holden, in fact employs courtesy toward their dying need, to find a couple of apartment-irons for muscles loads then throwing themselves of a link to the Charles Lake.

Although biggest details of Holden Caulfield’s characterization –his paralyzing anxiety about sexuality, his extremely defensive emotions towards his sister, and his awesome substandard preoccupation which have demise–was destroyed inside the Twain’s portrait of Huck

Since the recommended prior to, this new unifying psychological basis fundamental each other Holden and you may Quentin’s anxiety out-of sexuality, women, and you will passing is usually to be based in the Freudian concept of anality. Based on Freud, the rationale of all of the adult neurosis will be included in this new stifled intimate wants out of childhood. Freud posited about three values from infantile intimate innovation: the newest dental (delivery so you can one year), involving the facts out of drawing and you will biting; the new rectal (that 36 months), emphasizing curvesconnect mobile site new kid’s love for the newest arsehole and you will stools; additionally the phallic (two-and-a-half in order to half dozen age), concentrating on the fresh new child’s breakthrough of pussy. In the event the children’s passage because of all these phase is not discussed efficiently and joyfully, the latest stifled pushes usually resurface within the adulthood in the form of some neuroses. Considering Freud, brand new adult characteristics that will be on the denial and you will repression inside rectal phase are orderliness (also neatness), obstinacy, and you can parsimony (or possessiveness).6

For Freud, anal attraction and you will enjoy, like the children’s steps when you look at the other stages from infantile invention, are primarily assertions of the fulfillment concept over the facts and you can morality standards–exactly what can be regarded as inside the retrospect because the futile attempts from the little one so you’re able to embrace to help you an enthusiastic Edenic field of innocent freedom and you can gamble in the face of coming exile into the adult field of work and you may obligations. But later on psychologists such as Norman O. Brown and Ernest Becker provides helped me to keep in mind that the fresh concern is somewhat more difficult than also Freud had accepted. In his informative and you may important publication, Lifestyle Facing Death, Brownish argues one to what exactly is really being stamped into the understanding of each and every of us inside anal phase is absolutely nothing faster than just “the fresh new argument anywhere between the creature body, appropriately epitomized regarding anal setting, and all of our pretentious sublimations, alot more specifically the latest pretensions of sublimated otherwise personal-Platonic like” (186). To phrase it differently, this new anal updates is short for the newest child’s basic encounter which have mortality and you can rust. As the Becker cards, echoing Brownish, “Having rectal have fun with the guy is already to-be a good philosopher of the human being position. But as with any philosophers he’s nonetheless limited by they, with his chief task in daily life gets this new assertion from exactly what the brand new arsehole stands for: you to actually, he or she is just human body in which characteristics is worried. Nature’s philosophy was actual viewpoints, people viewpoints is intellectual thinking, and although they take the loftiest routes he could be established up on a stool, impossible without it, always cut back in order to it” (31). Brand new disagreement experienced because of the kid at anal stage, thus, would be the fact of human anatomy versus your head or soul, the true in place of the right.