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J.D. Salinger’s *The Catcher in the Rye*, published in 1951, occupies a significant place in the canon of the American novel. Though it is not a tragedy in the classical sense, the novel contains numerous tragic elements that align it more with modernist interpretations of tragedy, where the focus shifts from grand downfall to internal emotional and psychological collapse. The protagonist, Holden Caulfield, becomes a tragic figure due to his deep alienation, inability to connect meaningfully with others, and his relentless struggle against the perceived phoniness of the adult world. The tragedy in *The Catcher in the Rye* lies in the slow and painful unraveling of a young mind caught in the conflict between innocence and experience, idealism and reality. Holden Caulfield embodies the traits of a modern tragic protagonist. He is not a person of noble birth or heroic stature, but a sixteen-year-old boy from an upper-middle-class family. His suffering, however, is intense and deeply human. He is caught in a period of liminality—no longer a child, not yet an adult—where his alienation becomes both his weapon and his wound. This sense of estrangement is at the heart of his tragedy. Throughout the novel, Holden attempts to find authenticity in a world he believes to be filled with hypocrisy. His rejection of social norms and his disdain for the “phonies” around him isolates him further, leading to a downward spiral of emotional instability. The novel’s opening scene, in which Holden narrates his experiences from a rest home, already suggests a fall from normalcy. He has been expelled from Pencey Prep, yet another in a series of expulsions that signal his inability to function within structured institutions. His tragic flaw—or *hamartia*—is his obsessive idealism, which becomes ______ _________ ________ _______ ______ __________ ______ _____.
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