Each other possess highly ambivalent emotions throughout the gender: while they speak or remember sex nearly usually, as well as brag in order to others about their sexual experience and knowledge, both are in fact afraid out-of intercourse, in fact is care about-admitted virgins
D. Salinger’s The latest Catcher on the Rye, because the label indicates, are a book constructed on literary the thing is and you may allusions; this is why, the champion, Holden Caulfield, has been as compared to a number of other emails, from one another Western and you may globe literature.step one Brand new nearest from Holden’s blood brothers, because also a cursory survey of grievance off Salinger’s unique will show you, could be thought to be Huckleberry Finn.2 And yes you can find famous likenesses ranging from Huck and you may Holden: they are both stressed teens on the run—psychologically, linguistically, and geographically—away from a grownup business that they select pretentious, hypocritical, shallow, cruel, and you may risky. 3 Surprisingly, no matter if, these types of anxiety and you can obsessions was only the of those exhibited from the William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, one of several protagonists of Voice plus the Fury. The answer to this new neurotic decisions off one another letters is going to be found in the Freudian principle of anality, like as the that idea could have been increased and you can reinterpreted by such as later psychologists due to the fact Norman O. Brown and you may Ernest Becker. One another Holden and you may Quentin showcase character traits that will be of the anyone whoever creativity might have been arrested at the anal phase.
The surface similarities among them emails can be founded, and you will striking. Both are intelligent, sensitive, introspective, well-informed teenage boys: Holden try a great seventeen-year-dated planning college pupil exactly who checks out «much» (18) and you will whoever finest topic is English (110); Quentin is an enthusiastic eighteen-year-old freshman within Harvard you never know Latin and you may quotes St. Francis. cuatro Also, each other Holden and Quentin enterprise its sexual stress to its sisters, implementing a safety, «your government» thoughts and looking so you’re able to pub the fresh new sisters’ access toward carnal studies. In the end, their puzzled and disrupted intellectual says direct each other Holden and you may Quentin so you’re able to think of committing suicide.5 Quentin, without a doubt, in the place of Holden, actually uses through towards his demise would you like to, to purchase a couple of flat-irons to own body weights immediately after which hurling himself out 
of a bridge towards Charles Lake.
Although greatest information on Holden Caulfield’s characterization —their paralyzing concern about sexuality, his very protective ideas into the their sibling, and his awesome substandard preoccupation that have demise—is forgotten inside the Twain’s portrait off Huck
Since ideal prior to, the unifying mental factor hidden each other Holden and you will Quentin’s anxieties from sexuality, ladies, and you can passing is to be based in the Freudian principle out of anality. Considering Freud, the rationale of all of the mature neurosis is going to be used in this new repressed sexual wishes of teens. Freud posited three degree out of infantile sexual advancement: new dental (birth to help you 12 months), amongst the issues regarding sucking and you will biting; the newest anal (one three-years), centering on this new kid’s fascination with the latest asshole and you will feces; additionally the phallic (two and a half so you can six many years), emphasizing brand new kid’s advancement of your pussy. If the children’s passage owing to each one of these levels isn’t negotiated efficiently and you may cheerfully, the fresh stifled drives tend to resurface into the adulthood in the way of certain neuroses. Centered on Freud, the fresh new mature character traits that will be for the assertion and you will repression for the anal phase are orderliness (also neatness), obstinacy, and you will parsimony (or possessiveness).six
To own Freud, anal interest and you can enjoy, like the kid’s methods when you look at the most other phase out-of infantile development, are primarily assertions of your fulfillment idea over the truth and you may morality prices—exactly what can be regarded as when you look at the retrospect given that futile effort out of the child in order to embrace to help you a keen Edenic field of simple versatility and you can enjoy in the face of following exile into the mature realm of performs and you can obligation. But later on psychologists including Norman O. Brown and Ernest Becker features helped me to remember that new concern is somewhat more difficult than simply actually Freud got acknowledged. In the informative and you will important publication, Lifetime Up against Death, Brown contends that what’s very getting stamped on understanding of every of us inside rectal phase is absolutely nothing reduced than simply «the disagreement anywhere between our very own creature looks, appropriately epitomized about anal form, and our pretentious sublimations, a whole lot more specifically the fresh pretensions out of sublimated otherwise romantic-Platonic love» (186). Quite simply, the newest anal status is short for brand new kid’s very first find that have mortality and you may decay. As the Becker cards, echoing Brown, «Having anal play the child is already as an effective philosopher regarding the human reputation. But as with any philosophers he is nevertheless bound by they, and his awesome main task in life becomes this new assertion out of what the brand new asshole signifies: you to definitely in reality, he’s nothing but looks where character is worried. Nature’s philosophy was real thinking, individual thinking are rational beliefs, and although it use the loftiest aircraft he’s established up on a stool, hopeless without it, always brought back to they» (31). The brand new disagreement experienced from the son in the rectal phase, ergo, is that of one’s system as opposed to your mind or heart, the true in the place of an appropriate.