Holden in Search of Identity: Recreating the Picture of the Flaneur.

The narrative of The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, happens in the metropolis of New York in the tumultuous decade of 1950s. The protagonist, Holden Caulfield, following his archetypal model, Ulysses, undertakes a journey of initiation in the heart of the city in order to become aware of the ambiguity of modern life, and of his own identity. Like many other novelistic heroes, Holden can be regarded as an incarnation of the character of the flaneur in the works of Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin: a slow stroller of the streets and arcades who tried to read the cityscapes like a text and aimed at restoring legibility and clarity to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]