A Comparison Of The Catcher In The Rye And The Adventures Of Huck Finn :: essays research papers

The forthcoming of American literature proposes two distinct Realistic novels portraying characters which are tested with a plethora of adventures. In this essay, two great American novels are compared: The Adventures of Huck Finn by Mark Twain and The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger. The Adventures of Huck Finn is a novel based on the adventures of a boy named Huck Finn, who along with a slave, Jim, make their way along the Mississippi River during the Nineteenth Century. The Catcher In The Rye is a novel about a young man called Holden Caulfield, who travels from Pencey Prep to New York City struggling with his own neurotic problems. These two novels can be compared using the Cosmogonic Cycle with both literal and symbolic interpretations. The Cosmogonic Cycle is a name for a universal and archetypal situation. There are six parts that make up the cycle: the call to adventure, the threshold crossing, the road of trials, the supreme test, a flight or a flee, and finally a return. There are more parts they do not necessarily fall into the same order, examples of these are symbolic death and motifs. The Cosmogonic Cycle is an interesting way to interpret literature because is Universal or correlates with any time period and any situation. The Call to Adventure is the first of the Cosmogonic Cycle. It is the actual "call to adventure" that one receives to begin the cycle. There are many ways that this is found in literature including going by desire, by chance, by abduction, and by being lured by an outside force. In The Adventures of Huck Finn, Huck is forced with the dilemma of whether to stay with his father and continue to be abused or to leave. Huck goes because he desires to begin his journey. In The Catcher In The Rye, Holden mentally is torn between experience and innocence, it would seem to him that an outside force is luring him to do something but in actuality he is beginning his journey because of his desire. The Call to Adventure is the first step in the Cosmogonic Cycle, it is the step at which the character or hero is brought into cycle. The Threshold Crossing is the second step, it is the place or the person that which the character crosses over or through into the Zone Unknown. The Zone Unknown being the place where the journey takes place. The threshold crossing is often associated with a character change or an appearance change. An example of this is in The Wizard of Oz, when the movie goes from black and white to color, showing a visual