Both have highly ambivalent emotions on the sex: as they talk or contemplate sex almost usually, plus brag so you can others about their sexual experience and knowledge, both are in reality scared off intercourse, indeed is mind-confessed virgins
D. Salinger’s This new Catcher in the Rye, as label means, try a novel built on literary the thing is that and you will allusions; this is why, their character, Holden Caulfield, could have been than the a number of most other letters, out of one another Western and globe books.step one The new closest of Holden’s bloodstream brothers, due to the fact actually a cursory survey of one’s problem off Salinger’s book will highlight, is generally named Huckleberry Finn.2 And you may certainly discover well-known likenesses ranging from Huck and you will Holden: both are stressed kids on the move–emotionally, linguistically, and you can geographically–off an adult industry that they find pretentious, hypocritical, low, vicious, and you may dangerous. 3 Remarkably, no matter if, this type of stress and anxiety and you can obsessions are just the of them demonstrated by William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, one of many protagonists of your own Sound as well as the Frustration. The key to the latest neurotic behavior from both emails would be found in the Freudian idea away from anality, for example as one concept might have been increased and reinterpreted by such as later psychologists as the Norman O. Brownish and you will Ernest Becker. Each other Holden and Quentin showcase characteristics which might be associated with people whoever development might have been detained on anal phase.
The exterior similarities between them emails can be mainly based, and you can striking. They are both brilliant, sensitive and painful, introspective, well-told young men: Holden was a beneficial seventeen-year-dated planning college college student who checks out “much” (18) and you may whoever most readily useful subject try English (110); Quentin is actually an to try to get-year-dated freshman at Harvard you never know Latin and you will estimates St. Francis. cuatro Moreover, one another Holden and you will Quentin enterprise its sexual stress onto its siblings, implementing a defensive, “big brother” feelings and looking to bar the fresh sisters’ access to the carnal studies. Ultimately, the mislead and you will disturbed intellectual claims direct each other Holden and you will Quentin so you’re able to think of committing suicide.5 Quentin, obviously, in lieu of Holden, in reality follows thanks to for the his death need, to buy a set of apartment-irons for muscles loads following hurling themselves off a connection with the Charles Lake.
Nevertheless the greatest details of Holden Caulfield’s characterization –his paralyzing anxiety about sex, their overly defensive thoughts on the their cousin, with his substandard preoccupation having dying–try missing into the Twain’s portrait away from Huck
Due to the fact suggested earlier, the latest unifying psychological basis underlying one another Holden and Quentin’s anxiety out of sex, lady, and you can dying is going to be based in the Freudian idea of anality. Considering Freud, the explanation of the many adult neurosis is usually to be found in the brand new suppressed sexual desires from youthfulness. Freud posited three level of infantile intimate innovation: this new dental (delivery so you’re able to yearly), involving the products from sucking and you may biting; brand new anal (you to definitely three years), concentrating on this new kid’s love for new arsehole and you may feces; in addition to phallic (two and a half so you’re able to half dozen years), concentrating on the new kid’s discovery of your vagina. If the children’s passage courtesy each one of these phase isn’t negotiated properly and you will happily, the brand new stifled pushes usually resurface into the adulthood when it comes to individuals neuroses 
. Considering Freud, new mature personality traits which can be with the assertion and repression in anal phase is actually orderliness (as well as neatness), obstinacy, and you may parsimony (otherwise possessiveness).6
To have Freud, rectal interest and gamble, including the children’s strategies from inside the other phase out of infantile invention, are primarily assertions of your own pleasure concept across the reality and you will morality values–exactly what do be regarded as within the retrospect as the useless efforts regarding the child to help you stick to help you an enthusiastic Edenic realm of simple versatility and you can enjoy when confronted with coming exile on the mature field of work and you can obligation. But later on psychologists instance Norman O. Brownish and Ernest Becker enjoys helped me to keep in mind that this new issue is significantly more complicated than simply actually Freud got approved. In the insightful and you will important guide, Existence Against Demise, Brown argues one to what’s extremely getting stamped into the awareness of each of us into the anal stage is absolutely nothing faster than simply “the dispute ranging from all of our animal body, correctly epitomized on anal means, and you will our pretentious sublimations, alot more especially this new pretensions out-of sublimated otherwise personal-Platonic love” (186). Put another way, the latest anal standing signifies this new children’s very first run into with death and decay. While the Becker notes, echoing Brown, “Having rectal play the guy has already been becoming an effective philosopher off the human being position. However, like all philosophers he could be nonetheless limited by they, and his head activity in daily life becomes the fresh denial out of exactly what new anus stands for: that in fact, they are simply human anatomy where characteristics is concerned. Nature’s thinking was bodily values, people opinions is mental thinking, and although they grab the loftiest aircraft he is oriented upon excrement, hopeless without it, usually cut back so you can it” (31). The disagreement experienced by son from the anal phase, therefore, would be the fact of the body instead of your brain or soul, the genuine rather than an appropriate.
