Life’s Many Obstacles In J. D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” the protagonist, Holden, is faced with many obstacles. Like most tragic heroes, he is a man who is reasonably happy at the beginning of the tragedy, but as the tragedy develops, some failure in his personality begins to affect events, so that his progress is a movement from happiness to misery. The ultimate misery results from his final awareness of his …showed first 75 words of 869 total…

…showed last 75 words of 869 total…and Juliet. All three characters were mostly blind to the forces of nature and society working around them and against them, yet Holden came out on top because he did not succumb to the temptation to just hang up the line and commit suicide. After all he does not want a “bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when [he] was gory,” and to a teenager appearance and reputation are as important as anything else.