The Characters of Hamlet and Holden Essay -- compare, contrast, compari

To some, this argument may come out the most blatant form of mistruth, horrendous, even, in its lack of taste, a contour of literary sacrilege, in fact. Surely we have reached the end, unitary exponent say, when maven can considerer comparing the immortal Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, with the adolescent protagonist of Salingers The backstop in the Rye. Salingers hero has been compared to galore(postnominal) literary figures, from Huckleberry Finn to David Copperfield. So many different attitudes have been taken toward him. Lets stop public lecture about him and write some thing else. Isnt the subject getting boring? possibly so, but Holden will not go away. He continues to pester the mind, and spell reading A.C. Bradleys analytic thinking of Hamlets reference work, it was hard to compel the idea that much of what Bradley was saying about Hamlet applied to Holden as well. Perhaps the comparison is not as absurd as it early appears. Of course, there is no similarity between the events of the play and those of the novel. The fascinating thing while reading Bradley was how perfectly his analysis of Hamlets character applied to Holdens, how deeply, in fact, he was going into Holdens character as well, revealing, among other things, its potentially tragic nature. After demolishing the theories of other critics, Bradley cogitate that the essence of Hamlets character is contained in a three-fold analysis of it. First, that rather than being melancholy by temperament, in the usual sand of profoundly sad, he is a person of unusual nervous instability, one liable to extreme and profound alterations of mood, a potential manic-depressive type. Romantic, we might say. Second, this Hamlet is also a person of exquisite moral sensibility, allergic to goodness, a m... ...dy view holden as symbolizing the plight of the idealist in the modern world. Most importantly, however, it suggests why Holden Caulfied will not go away, he continues to remain so potent an influence on the now senescent younger generation that he first spoke to, and why he continues to brand himself anew on the young. In fact, in this age of atrophy, in this thought-tormented, thought-tormenting time in which we live, perhaps it is not going too far-off to say that, for many of us, at least, our Hamlet is Holden. Works CitedBradley, A.C. Hamlet. Shakespearean Tragedy. in the raw York St. Martins Press, 1981. 89-174. Sanders, Wlibur, and Howard Jacobson. Hamlets Sanity. Shakespeares Magnanimity Four tragical Heroes, Their Friends and Families. New York Oxford University Press, 1978. 22-56. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York Washington Square Press, 1992.