Each other has highly ambivalent feelings throughout the intercourse: as they chat otherwise think of intercourse nearly constantly, and also feature in order to someone else about their intimate experience and knowledge, both are in fact afraid off intercourse, in reality are thinking-admitted virgins

D. Salinger’s The Catcher about Rye, because name ways, is actually a novel built on literary parallels and allusions; this means that, its hero, Holden Caulfield, has been versus a number of other emails, out-of one another American and you may world literature.step one The fresh new nearest regarding Holden’s blood brothers, since the also a cursory survey of one’s grievance of Salinger’s book can tell you, can be named Huckleberry Finn.2 And you may certainly you will find famous likenesses between Huck and you will Holden: they are both stressed kids on the go–emotionally, linguistically, and geographically–out-of an adult world that they come across pretentious, hypocritical, superficial, cruel, and you can hazardous. step three Amazingly, regardless of if, these types of stress and anxiety and obsessions was only the of these demonstrated by William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, one of several protagonists of your own Voice together with Fury. The answer to the new neurotic decisions out-of each other characters is going to be based in the Freudian concept off anality, for example given that one to theory might have been increased and you will reinterpreted by the such as later on psychologists because Norman O. Brownish and Ernest Becker. Both Holden and you will Quentin showcase personality traits that are of anyone whose innovation could have been arrested during the rectal phase.

The outside parallels between them letters are easily established, and striking. They are both practical, sensitive, introspective, well-told young men: Holden was good seventeen-year-dated prep college or university pupil who reads “a lot” (18) and whoever top topic was English (110); Quentin try a keen eighteen-year-dated freshman within Harvard you never know Latin and you can estimates St. Francis. 4 More over, each other Holden and you will Quentin venture its sexual nervousness onto their sisters, implementing a defensive, “your government” feelings and seeking so you’re able to bar the latest sisters’ entrance with the carnal degree. Ultimately, their perplexed and you may disrupted rational states head each other Holden and you will Quentin so you’re able to remember suicide.5 Quentin, of course, in place of Holden, in reality observe thanks to on the his dying like to, to get a pair of apartment-irons to have body weights after which throwing himself from a link on Charles Lake.

Nevertheless the most significant information on Holden Caulfield’s characterization –their paralyzing concern about sex, his excessively protective thoughts into his aunt, along with his below average preoccupation having demise–was forgotten inside the Twain’s portrait off Huck

As the ideal prior to, the fresh unifying emotional foundation underlying one another Holden and you can Quentin’s stress and anxiety out of sexuality, ladies, and you can death is usually to be found in the Freudian concept of anality. According to Freud, the rationale of the many adult neurosis is going to be found in the brand new suppressed sexual wishes regarding youngsters. Freud posited about three amounts from infantile sexual innovation: this new oral (beginning to one-year), amongst the facts regarding drawing and you can biting; new rectal (that three years), focusing on the fresh new child’s fascination with the fresh new anus and you can stools; additionally the phallic (two and a half to half dozen ages), concentrating on the newest child’s development of pussy. If your kid’s passage compliment of each of these levels isn’t negotiated properly and you can gladly, the fresh new stifled drives will resurface for the adulthood in the form of various neuroses. Centered on Freud, new mature characteristics which can be regarding the assertion and you can repression in the anal phase try orderliness (also neatness), obstinacy, and you will parsimony (otherwise possessiveness).6

Having Freud, rectal curiosity and you may gamble, like the kid’s steps inside almost every other levels off infantile creativity, are primarily assertions of your own pleasure concept across the truth and you can morality prices–what can be regarded as during the retrospect because the futile initiatives away from the child so you can cling so you’re able to an enthusiastic Edenic realm of simple versatility and you will play facing coming exile into mature arena of really works and you will responsibility. However, afterwards psychologists including Norman O. Brownish and you can Ernest Becker possess assisted us to understand that new issue is significantly more difficult than simply also Freud got acknowledged. In his have a peek at tids link insightful and you will important publication, Lifestyle Against Dying, Brownish argues one what exactly is really becoming stamped into awareness of every folks from inside the rectal phase is absolutely nothing quicker than simply “the new argument ranging from all of our animal muscles, rightly epitomized from the rectal mode, and you will the pretentious sublimations, so much more specifically new pretensions regarding sublimated otherwise personal-Platonic love” (186). Put simply, new anal position is short for new children’s very first come upon that have death and rust. Just like the Becker notes, echoing Brown, “Having rectal play the kid is already becoming a philosopher of the human status. However, like all philosophers he is still bound by it, and his awesome fundamental activity in daily life gets the latest assertion regarding exactly what the fresh new anus stands for: you to definitely actually, he is only body where characteristics is worried. Nature’s thinking is real viewpoints, human thinking was intellectual thinking, and although it make the loftiest flights he’s built abreast of excrement, hopeless without one, usually brought back to help you it” (31). New disagreement educated because of the child on rectal phase, hence, is the fact of your body rather than your body and mind or heart, the actual in place of an appropriate.