An Interpretation Of The Catcher In The Rye From The Perspective Of Structuralism

The Catcher in the Rye is the only novel by American writer Jerome David Salinger.Although there are only tens of thousands of words,it not only has a great influence on the American literary and social circles,but also attracts the attention of teenagers and parents as well as educators from many other countries.The thesis attempts to respectively analyze the deep narrative structure of the novel,Holden's image and the relationship between the protagonist Holden and other characters by three structural literary critical methods: Todorov's Narrative Syntax,Binary Opposition critical method from Ferdinand de Saussure as well as Greimas' s Actantial Model and Semiotic Square,so as to explore the profound connotation,theme and enlightenment.The main body of the thesis is divided into three parts.Part one analyzes the deep narrative structure of the novel so as to dig out connotation.Todorov believes that every story in literary works can be reduced to a purely syntactic structure,and the two basic units of “proposition” and “sequence” can be drawn.Then a narrative structure model is set up.This part draws the narrative structure according to the theory.The deep structure consists of three propositions: Holden's escapes from familiar surroundings;Holden's epiphany;Holden's return to reality.At the end of this part,it explores the connotation under the deep narrative structure: Holden's series of behavior reveal the worrying educational situation faced by American teenagers after World War II.It is mainly reflected in four aspects,namely,the utilitarian school education,the neglected family education,the corrosive social education and the lack of personal educational consciousness.Part two analyzes Holden's image in order to dissect the theme.Saussure is the first to put forward Binary Position critical thinking method in linguistic research.In his opinion,any word or sentence in a language can show its value and significance when it forms contrasting relations with other words or sentences.After that,Binary Opposition becomes the most important and basic method in structural literary criticism.It is a powerful tool to analyze literary works,character images and the theme of literary works.This part analyzes Holden's heroic image and antihero image,and dig out two opposing themes,material hell and spiritual paradise.First of all,it reveals the alienation of American society after World War II and the spiritual crisis of teenagers in the alienated environment.Secondly,the comparison with alienation is Holden's pursuit of innocence.It also further reflects Salinger's criticism on alienated society and the yearning for the natural life.Part three analyzes the relationship between the protagonist Holden and other characters to obtain enlightenment.In Greimas' s structural narratology,he proposes Actantial Model with three sets of actants and Semiotic Square pattern with four sets of Semantic elements.He believes that the deep meaning can be produced by theinteraction between the three sets of actants and between the four sets of semantic elements.It can be seen that from Holden's short three days' wandering.Actually Holden has been searching for a goal in his life.This goal is a good quality of human beings,and generally speaking only children can have this quality.This quality is“innocence”.In the process of pursuing innocence,Holden fails repeatedly,resulting spiritual crisis,and then the idea of escaping arises.He does not abandon the idea of escape returns to real life until Phoebe helps him out of crisis.At the end of this part,it attempts to sum up the enlightenment under the deep meaning from the angle of education.Just as Phoebe helps Holden out of the predicament,the effective way to solve the mental crisis for young people is to be sincere,to listen to their inner voice and to accompany them with love.The thesis provides a different perspective to analyze and explore literary works' structure,characters and theme by three structural literary critical methods.Due to the rapid development of high technology and a substantial increase in productivity,the alienation of human society is becoming more and more common.In today's big data age,mankind is enjoying unprecedented wealth and material,while losing good qualities of them.The biggest side effect of the material oriented society is that the mental crisis is becoming more and more serious,especially for adolescence.Every member of our society,whether it is a parent,an educator,or a social person,should pay attention to this issue.Only in this way can human beings live in harmony with nature and not be controlled and destroyed by the world that people have created.Only in this way can the human quality continue to prosper and can the civilization of mankind be handed down from generation to generation.