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  • Essay / Similarities and differences between Holden and Catcher...

    Huck believes the stories Tom Sawyer tells him and the ones he reads at school. School was a luxury for children like Huck, as many adults did not have the same opportunity; this gives Huck the advantage of being able to understand the stories. Tom Sawyer thinks his gang must follow the exact story for them to imagine it's true. When they question him, he replies: “Because it’s not in the history books.” Although they have an education, the non-standard “is not” shows that the education they receive is not very advanced. Huck likes to believe in these stories, so he adheres to the "storybooks" for a long time, which allows him to escape, living for a while a version of someone else's fictional life. Huck needs to hear the stories because he can't invent a believable identity on his own, he needs the input of a fictional character to be able to get around this problem. For Holden, he says he is very against movies because the actors are all "fools", but there are many moments in the novel where he is attracted to them, either going to see them or pretending that he is there himself, which makes him the greatest falsehood and the greatest dichotomy of all. This is ironic because by saying he hates impostors; he implies that he hates himself too. This could lead him to invent identities to try to escape his hatred. If Holden becomes someone new, he will have no reason to hate himself for being a fake because he is no longer himself. For example, he says, “I was imagining myself getting out of that damn toilet. » The adverb "damn" suggests that he tries to resist the movies and imagine these situations, but he is still attracted to them because they attract him more than to his own life which he struggles with because He constantly tells us he's depressed. The difference between the two characters is that Holden does not need a source of