麦田里的守望者的主题思想和象征手法的运用1. IntroductionIn 1951,Jerome David Salinger published his first well-known novel, The catcher in the Rye, with which he gained an almost immediate reputation as one of the foremost post-world War American novelists. Shortly afterwards, the book became assigned reading for a majority of high school and college English courses in America. No other writer since War has achieved the heights of popularity of J.D. Salinger. And we can say that his popularity has rested primarily on one character, Holden Caulfield, in the book.The novel tells a seemingly simple story of a 16-year-old boy, Holden Caulfield,who, after being expelled from the school for failing almost all of his courses, runs away from that hateful place to New York and spends three days there, roaming around in search for some goodness and the true value which he vaguely understands. With suffering uneasiness and a bitter spirit, he encounters many different people, only to find hypocrites and liars everywhere. Finally, he sneaks home to see his sister Phoebe, an unspoilt, angel-like child who helps him find the courage to live on in this corrupted adult world.Salingers success surprised the critics as well as the reading public. Critics searched and are still searching for justification for such overwhelming success in literature. They emphasize the spiritual disillusionment, the psychological stress of the adolescents in post-war America, and the creation of a life-like character. These are, admittedly, important and primary factors contributing to the immediate success of the novel. However, many authors have lightly touched upon one literary technique, which Salinger employs extensively, and which helps the author to achieve what he wants to achievedthe use of symbols. This thesis tries to deal with this aspect of Salingers style of writing and in relative detail I shall try to show how, step by step, the author underlines the basic theme of the novel by using symbols and how symbolism plays an irreplaceable role in the boy who is also a literary representative of the whole generation of American youth, and in the realistic portrayal of a whole generation through a baffled youngster-Holden.While emphasizing the significance of Salingers writing style, especially the use of symbols in the whole narrative, we do not want to ignore the social background at that time in America that seems necessary.The Catcher in the Rye was given accurate description in the postwar period, which was a sober and realistic time. The 1950s was the time when American social ideology changed quickly. The economy had already recovered from the Great Depression and America became the richest country in the world through war business. The living standard in America was raised considerably. The number of the Middle Class increased sharply. People, especially the youth, seized the opportunity that the prosperity had brought people to pursue all the modern pleasures.But the bright days were shadowed by a spiritual and cultural crisis in American society. With more material comfort, and more people lacked the spiritual belief. Whats more, the trend of existentialism was flooding in the western countries at the time, greatly influencing the youngsters in America. The main character of the book, Holden, has the feature of existentialisma rebel in spirit, a coward in behavior, despise the false, the vulgarity and the convention.Though their family could supply them with material life, they still felt depressed and began to doubt whether the material comfort really meant anything in life. In a passive way, they adopted the decadent way of lifedrinking excessively，taking drugs and enjoying sex freedom as an expression of their dissatisfaction with the society. As a result, many of these young people became social “dropouts” which historians call “The beat Generation”. Youngsters at this period of time sensed something was wrong but did not know what and wanted to rebel but did not know how.We see that Salinger sensitively depicts the time he knows well. He chooses intelligent, sensitive and very self-conscious adolescent as his main character representing all the problems his generation of youth confronted. The young man suffers from the “phoniness” in the corrupted society and struggles vainly to find a way out. Salinger feels and analyses the abnormal modern society through a symbolic structure of language, motif, and episode. Throughout the book, Salinger emphasizes on the conflicts between the spirit and material, the reality and imagination, the living and the death.Ihab Hassan comments on Salingers novel saying that “It is the new look at the American Dream especially dramatized by the encounter between a vision of innocence and the reality of guilt, between the forms love and power have tended to assume in America. The natural locus of the conflict in the work of Salinger is childhood and adolescence. In them the cou