Comparative Essay The Catcher and the Rye vs. The Curious...

The Struggle to Be Normal In today’s society, many teenagers struggle in their everyday lives due to the fact that they have different qualities than others. The novel, Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, is about a young man named Holden Caulfield, who suffers from multiple mental illnesses, causing him to be treated different by others. Due to tragedies he has suffered from in the past, and all that is going on in is present life, Holden can no longer cope and runs away to New York. Christopher Boone, from the novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, also suffers from multiple mental illnesses and has experienced life changing tragedies over the years. For many years Christopher’s father has been†¦show more content†¦He rarely socializes when he is at school or out in public, and when he is at home, he prefers to be alone his room with his pet rat. â€Å"And I really like little spaces, so long as there is no one else in there with me.† (Haddo n. 50). In the rare occasion that Christopher associates with people out in public that he does not know, the interaction usually ends quickly due to Christopher feeling uncomfortable and leaving in a hurry. When he had no choice but to engage in conversation with a neighbor who was nothing but friendly to him, he began to think of every possible thing that could go wrong and quickly decided to leave. â€Å"And I thought she might be ringing the police and then I’d get into much more serious trouble because of the caution. So I walked away† (Haddon. 40). Even though Christopher does lack social skills, there are still ways he can learn to become more social and ways of interacting with others to better him. Unfortunately he does not put any effort into increasing his social skills, and neither do any of the few people he has a relationship with, causing him to resource to isolating himself because that is what he has always been used to doing. Overall, isolation plays a major role in both novels, causing both main characters to isolate themselves in similar ways. With both characters choosing to isolate themselves comes a great deal of independence. The amount of independence a person has varies based