This thesis attempts to analyze Holden’s spiritual world reflected from his communicating with his family, schoolmates and teachers and people he met in New York: his pursuit for innocence and love; the hatred and sensitivity towards the hypocritical adulthood; his cowardliness, loneliness and mental emptiness. However, the strong desire for material welfare of the American society during the post World War Two period and the indifferent atmosphere in Holden’s family and school contributed a lot to Holden’s spiritual problems.
Key words:  The Catcher in the Rye; loneliness and rebellion; spiritual world; love and understanding
Contents
Acknowledgements    I
摘  要    I
Abstract    I
1. Introduction    1
1.1 A Brief Introduction to J.D.Salinger      1
       1.2 A Brief Introduction to The Catcher in the Rye    2
2. Holden's Spiritual World Reflected from His Interacting with Others    4
2.1  Innocence and Purity
2.1.1 Holden's interaction with his family    4
2.1.2 Holden's wish to protect the innocence and purity of children    6
2.2  Hatred and Sensitivity
2.2 1 Holden's interaction with people from his school    8
2.2.2 Hatred and sensitivity towards the hypocrisy in adulthood    9
2.3  Loneliness,Cowardliness,Alienation and Escapism
2.3.1 Holden's interaction with adults he met in New York.....    10
2.3.2 Holden's lethal loneliness,cowardliness,alienation and escapism    11
3. The Causes and Factors Contributing to Holden's Spiritual Problems    13
3.1  The Post World War II society    13
3.2  Disharmony within Holden's Family    14
       3.3  Holden's Complicated Personality     15
4. Conclusion    16
Bibliography    17
1. Introduction
1.1 A Brief Introduction to J.D.Salinger.
J.D.Salinger, was born in New York on January 1st ,1919. Salinger was raised in Manhattan. He was sent to a military school in Pennsylvania at the age of 15. In 1936, Salinger started his freshman year at New York University. However, his father forced him to learn about the meat-importing business in the next fall. Then, he went to work at a company in Vienna, Australia. After that, in the fall of 1938, Salinger went to the Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, he dropped out after one semester. Therefore, in 1939, he attended a Columbia University School of General Studies evening writing class taught by Whit Burnett, the longtime editor of the Story magazine. Since then, Burnett has become Salinger’s mentor, and they corresponded for several years.
Salinger began writing short stories while in secondary school and several of his stories were published in Story magazine before he started serving in World War II. After the Second World War, he came back to New York and started writing novels and stories again. As it’s known to all of us, his first novel——The Catcher in the Rye, published in 1951, was an unexpected success to him. However, he became more reclusive and published his works less frequently after the publish of The Catcher in the Rye.
Therefore, Salinger kept struggling with the unwanted attention as well as the legal battle in the 1980s. Salinger published his last original work——a novella named Hapworth16, 1924 in the New Yorker in 1965. Afterwards, he remained intensively private about his stories and novellas, and never published another full-length novel or any other new material. Having given his final public interview in 1980, Salinger died of natural causes at his home in New Hampshire on January 27, 2010. 《麦田里的守望者》精神世界(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_2147.html