A Study of Stream of Consciousness in The Catcher in the Rye

A Study on the Techniques of Stream of Consciousness in The Catcher in the Rye

The famous American writer Salinger's classic The Catcher in the Rye has exerted a profound influence on American society and world literature since the 2th century. Looking at the whole book, its greatest feature is not only the hero who can attract young readers with his unique personality, experience and thoughts, but also the unique and extraordinary "Holden-style" stream of consciousness creation style. Based on the critical thoughts of traditional realism, this paper makes a further analysis of the flexible use of stream of consciousness in The Catcher in the Rye, and on this basis, demonstrates Salinger's innovative use of stream of consciousness skills in the process of creation, thus forming a "Holden-style" stream of consciousness creation style.

Keywords: stream of consciousness technique Jerome Salinger's innovative unreality

Abstract: the classic famous American writer Salinger's "the catcher in the rye", on American society and the world literature of the 2th century had a profound impact. An overview of the whole book, its greatest feature is not just the one that its unique personality, experience, thought to attract the majority of young readers of the hero, but also in the works a unique, otherworldly "Holden-style" Stream of Consciousness writing style. In this paper, related criticism intellectual tradition of realism, flexibility in the use of "The Catcher in the Rye" in the Stream of Consciousness in the way of further analysis, and on this basis, demonstrated in the use of stream of consciousness technique Salinger creation during the use of innovative techniques, thus forming a "Holden style" stream of consciousness writing style.

　Keywords: stream of consciousness Jerome Salinger innovation is not realist Ic

A Stream of Consciousness Creation in Realism

The Catcher in the Rye, written by Jerome Salinger, a famous American writer, has been loved and admired by young students in the United States and all over the world since it was published in 1951. This novel mainly describes the experience of a 16-year-old boy, Holden Caulfield, who left school and arrived in new york for a whole day and two nights, and analyzes the inner feelings and experiences of this young student in great detail. Holden in the novel hates hypocritical, self-motivated and morally corrupt school life; As a result, he always failed the exam and was expelled from many schools many times. Finally, when he was expelled from Panxi Middle School, he had to wander the streets of new york alone. To his surprise, this society is not much better than school life. It is also full of intrigue, hypocrisy and intrigue. There is no true feelings between people, which makes him feel extremely disappointed, depressed and frustrated. At the same time, it makes him feel extremely empty mentally, which leads to his ideological rebellion and extreme indulgence in behavior, but he balks at practical actions. All these have prompted Holden Caulfield to struggle in the cruel life of personal ideals and reality, and finally he has to escape from reality and stay away from this indifferent society as his helpless choice. Looking at The Catcher in the Rye, the most "modern classic" of American literature since World War II, it is not difficult to find that previous critics often commented on this work from the perspective of traditional realism. Through research, they concluded that Salinger completed the whole work in the first person and in the way of young people talking, especially during his creation. In order to highlight the protagonist's depressed, depressed and extremely hesitant inner feelings, the writer vividly and meticulously describes the middle-class young student with realism, for example, Holden's farewell scene at the old Spencer's house in his works, and his fascination with finding a witch girl in a hotel, etc. However, if we study this immortal work at a deeper level, we will be pleasantly surprised to find that in fact, in this novel, the writer often uses the creative means of stream of consciousness; In the novel, the creative skills of excellent traditional stream-of-consciousness novels have been greatly enriched and supplemented. What is more commendable is that Salinger has also innovated and improved this creative method on the basis of the original. For example, in the second half of the work, the action description of the characters is deeply influenced by the stream-of-consciousness characteristics.

Second, the creation of stream of consciousness based on psychology

Stream of consciousness novels are unique in the halls of world literature and can be called a miracle in world literature. In this creative field, many western literary masters, such as Virginia Woolf (Britain), James Joyce (Ireland) and William Faulkner (America), have left the world with classic masterpieces with the characteristics of stream of consciousness creation. As for the stream of consciousness, its meaning is extremely extensive, and its capacity is large enough to accommodate everything in the universe. Therefore, in the history of world literature, the creative techniques of the stream of consciousness novels are extremely diverse and eclectic. Because of this, many scholars and experts have different opinions when commenting on stream-of-consciousness novels, which promotes the development of stream-of-consciousness novels to a certain extent and enables many young people born in the last century and longer than the new century to deeply understand the unique creative charm of stream-of-consciousness novels. However, we must also see that it is precisely because of this irreconcilable view that the marginal nature of stream-of-consciousness novels is particularly prominent. However, if we look at it from the perspective of psychology today, we can still clearly feel that the stream-of-consciousness novel has many similarities. Therefore, from the perspective of psychological basis, The Catcher in the Rye is also a novel with extremely significant stream-of-consciousness characteristics, which has been recognized by many experts and scholars today. It is a highlight of this novel to unfold the plot of the whole book in the way of the first person "I". A close reading of this novel can make us feel particularly cordial, just as the protagonist Holden tells you all his feelings in a tireless way in your ear. At this time, you will be surprised to find that what Holden tells you is those intermittent and rambling feelings and his own memories. Even those who use realistic writing methods have the embodiment of this heartfelt monologue. For example, in this novel, the protagonist Holden told us endlessly as soon as he appeared: "David Copperfield's nonsense bored me." Another example is that when he went to say goodbye to his teacher, old Spencer, he was talking to the teacher, but his mind flew to a distant place ... All these showed that the hero greatly rejected this hypocritical environment around him, but in his heart, he longed for something that was old and infinitely pure and beautiful, which made him infatuated. If just visiting really appeared in front of his eyes, we guess he must have stepped in without hesitation, so that he could travel through time and return to the good times he had. As a famous critic said, there are many changeable techniques that can be applied to the stream of consciousness, among which the most important one is psychological monologue, such as the "secret goldfish" in the novel, Holden's younger brother Airy, and Gaga, who never really appeared like a dream, etc., all of which originated from psychological monologue. Therefore, based on the inner monologue, the creation by means of stream of consciousness is like a rushing river, which drives and connects the protagonist Holden with the real things and flows forward together; Although the purpose of this instinct originated from nature is not clear, for Holden, his consciousness in different time and space is closely related to each other, just like those independent dominoes, which collide with each other to achieve mutual connection and continue to move. It can be seen that the psychological basis is the survival and foothold of this famous stream of consciousness novel, and the stream of consciousness originated from the psychological basis is used to create it, transforming Holden's 16-year-old boy's broken and fragmented ideology into that continuous state of motion; This endless stream of "river" in Holden's inner world, although in many cases it shows no logic or much rationality, is created with the help of this stream of consciousness derived from psychological foundation, and the real thoughts and thoughts from Holden's inner world, which are not mixed with other impurities, are presented to us in an extremely perfect form, bringing a little shock to the hearts of many young readers.

Third, the creation of stream of consciousness is higher than the traditional creation skills of stream of consciousness

The novel The Catcher in the Rye is naturally closely related to the traditional creation skills of stream of consciousness, but we must also see that Salinger, the father of stream of consciousness novels in the world, is not satisfied with the creation of this work by stream of consciousness. Nor does it stick to the path taken by predecessors, but finds a new way on the achievements made by predecessors, and greatly enriches and innovates the creative form of stream-of-consciousness novel in a unique way. For example, in this novel, although the protagonist Holden's inner consciousness activity is intermittent and illusory, it is Salinger's extraordinary wisdom that sets up the first-person self-monologue. In addition, we can get enough explanation from Holden's words and deeds and every move in the works. For another example, this feature is fully reflected in the sentence "The more I sit there, the more drunk I get" at the beginning of the twentieth section of the work, and this feature has been fully demonstrated in this work since then; It is also from then on that the description of the protagonist with great despair and frustration about the real society reached an unprecedented peak, which really pushed his wandering life, which was aimless and unsupported, to an extremely desperate and hopeless situation! Therefore, in this novel, its remarkable feature of stream of consciousness, which is full of the whole work, is not only reflected in the protagonist's endless thoughts, but also from top to bottom, from outside to inside, from thoughts to the whole action, so that he can't tell the difference between east and west, north and south, and abandons the goal of life. At this time, you should let the protagonist realize the goal of life with the rational thinking that human beings should have, which is different from letting us humans cross the earth on foot. Therefore, in the face of this realm, the protagonist Holden can only use that subconscious to guide his life direction; Although the stream of consciousness of this kind of thought has a certain causal connection with those illogical actions, it still successfully shows the 16-year-old boy's extremely empty, depressed, helpless and lonely living state to the readers, thus bringing us an uncontrollable tremor.

Therefore, when this work is created by means of stream of consciousness, it is based on the traditional stream of consciousness creation skills, and it is enriched and innovated to some extent, which can be seen in the main actions of relevant characters in the work. In the traditional novels with the characteristics of stream of consciousness in the past, such as Bruce, the hero in Ulysses (Joyce), no matter how loose and absurd his thoughts are, the hero still has those reasonable actions, but in the novel The Catcher in the Rye, the young man Holden's actions are mostly unconventional and unreasonable, which seems to be both feasible and plausible. In fact, this is the reflection of our hero's true feelings in his inner world. What he did is based on his unconscious thinking, and it is not surprising that the protagonist's absurd, unreasonable and unconventional actions and words appear in the book. It can be seen that Salinger's literary creation based on the traditional stream of consciousness is higher than the traditional stream of consciousness, which reflects the special relationship between the specific actions of the protagonist Holden and his specific thoughts. The unrestrained and unconventional actions of the protagonist in the book can be seen everywhere in the whole novel. For example, he thought he was badly hurt by being shot by a bullet, but in fact he was fine at all, and he was still a good person; In fact, it's just that he wants to express the survival crisis that has been buried in his heart for a long time to the world. From another aspect, it also shows that he has long been tired of the real world. The shady and mercenary adult world around him completely scares him, and he tries his best to find a pure and fairy-tale paradise in his heart, so that he will never be hurt by this real world again. This is a manifestation of the real ideological situation of Holden, the protagonist of the novel. When his beautiful fairy tale world is so far away, and the real world is so real around him, he can't live without it for a moment. What a helpless life it is