One another possess highly ambivalent emotions on the intercourse: because they talk or remember intercourse almost usually, as well as boast so you can others about their intimate experience and knowledge, they are both indeed scared from intercourse, in reality are self-confessed virgins

D. Salinger’s New Catcher regarding the Rye, since the identity suggests, try a book built on literary the thing is and you can allusions; consequently, its character, Holden Caulfield, might have been compared to a number of most other emails, away from one another American and community literature.step 1 New closest out of Holden’s blood brothers, since the even a cursory survey of the problem away from Salinger’s book will show you, tends to be seen as Huckleberry Finn.2 And indeed discover famous likenesses ranging from Huck and Holden: they are both stressed teenagers while on the move–emotionally, linguistically, and you will geographically–out-of a grownup business that they find pretentious, hypocritical, superficial, horrible, and you may unsafe. step 3 Surprisingly, even when, such anxiety and you can obsessions is precisely the ones displayed of the William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, one of many protagonists of your own Sound as well as the Rage. The key to the fresh new neurotic behavior off one another emails are going to be based in the Freudian idea out-of anality, such as since you to definitely concept might have been amplified and you can reinterpreted by such as for example later on psychologists given that Norman O. Brownish and you may Ernest Becker. Both Holden and you will Quentin display characteristics which can be associated with individuals whose development has been arrested on rectal phase.

The surface parallels between them characters are often centered, and you can striking. Both are intelligent, delicate, introspective, well-informed men: Holden try a good seventeen-year-dated creating university student exactly who checks out “a lot” (18) and whose most useful topic is actually English (110); Quentin are an enthusiastic you are-year-old freshman from the Harvard you never know Latin and you can quotes St. Francis. 4 Also, both Holden and you will Quentin opportunity their intimate stress on to their sisters, following a protective, “big brother” thoughts and seeking in order to pub the new sisters’ entrance with the carnal studies. Finally, the confused and disrupted rational claims head both Holden and you may Quentin in order to consider suicide.5 Quentin, obviously, as opposed to Holden, actually pursue owing to to the their demise should, to get a set of flat-irons to own body loads then throwing themselves out-of a connection towards the Charles River.

But the biggest specifics of Holden Caulfield’s characterization –their paralyzing anxiety about sex, their extremely protective thinking on their aunt, along with his below average preoccupation which have demise–was shed within the Twain’s portrait off Huck

Because suggested prior to, the unifying emotional factor fundamental one another Holden and you can Quentin’s anxieties off sexuality, ladies, and you can death is usually to be based in the Freudian principle regarding anality. According to Freud, the rationale of the many adult neurosis is to be found in the brand new suppressed sexual wants out of teens. Freud posited three level off infantile intimate creativity: the oral (birth so you can 12 months), between the products out of sucking and you may biting; the rectal (you to three-years), emphasizing the fresh new kid’s fascination with the latest arse and feces; as well as the phallic (two and a half in order to half a dozen many years), emphasizing the child’s finding of the genitals. Should your child’s passageway because of each one of these stages is not negotiated properly and happily, the fresh stifled drives often resurface within the adulthood when it comes to certain neuroses. Predicated on Freud, the newest adult character traits which might be on the denial and you will repression when you look at the rectal stage is actually orderliness (along with neatness), obstinacy, and you can parsimony (or possessiveness).6

To own Freud, anal fascination and you can gamble, for instance the children’s tips in the other stages regarding infantile invention, are primarily assertions of your pleasure concept across the reality and you can morality prices–so what can be regarded as from inside the retrospect while the futile efforts out of the kid to help you stick so you’re able to an Edenic world of innocent freedom and gamble in the face of impending exile with the adult field of functions and you may duty. However, after psychologists instance Norman O. Brown and Ernest Becker has actually assisted me to just remember that , the fresh issue is significantly more challenging than just also Freud had acknowledged. Within his insightful and you will important book, Lifestyle Against Passing, Brown argues one what exactly is most becoming stamped towards the awareness each and every people inside anal stage is absolutely nothing faster than simply “the dispute anywhere between all of our creature looks, correctly epitomized on the anal form, and you will all of our pretentious sublimations, a lot more particularly this new pretensions out of sublimated otherwise romantic-Platonic like” (186). Put another way, new rectal status stands for the latest kid’s basic come upon with mortality and rust. Since the Becker notes, echoing Brown, “Which have rectal play the son has already been become an effective philosopher away from the human status. However, as with any philosophers he’s nonetheless bound by they, along with his head activity in daily life gets brand new denial from what the latest asshole means: you to indeed, he’s only human body in which character is concerned. Nature’s thinking try actual beliefs, human beliefs was mental beliefs, and although they take the loftiest flights he’s created on a stool, hopeless without one, always cut back so you can it” (31). New conflict knowledgeable because of the son within anal phase, ergo, is the fact of your human body in place of the mind or heart, the true instead of a suitable.