Does “The Catcher in the Rye” remind you of other texts?

“The Catcher in the Rye’s” Holden Caulfield reminds me of one of my favorite fictional character “The Outsiders’s” Ponyboy Curtis. Firstly, both Ponyboy and Holden runaway from home, both because something they have done something wrong and want to avoid further consequence. In “The Catcher in the Rye,” Holden had been getting bad marks at his boarding school and had been kicked out. Two days before he was supposed to leave his school, he runs away, trying to escape the ‘phonies’ and to have some time alone before his parents find out he has been kicked out of school. In “The Outsiders’s,” Ponyboy and his friend Johnny get jumped by “The Socials” (upper class kids). They get into a fight, and one of the socials is killed. To avoid getting in trouble, Johnny and Ponyboy runaway from home. Secondly, both boys are violent at some point in the novels. Holden, in “The Catcher in the Rye” has quite a few violent outburst. For example, when him and Stradlater fight at the boarding school, and he also explains that the night he found out Allie died, he smashed all the windows in his garage. Ponyboy, in “The Outsiders” also gets into some fights, as the book is centred around the rivalry between “The Greasers” and “The Socials.” For example, at the end of the book, Ponyboy joins the fight between the two gangs. Thirdly, both characters feel isolated from society. Holden has difficulty making personal connections and is constantly feeling very alone. Ponyboy is apart of a gang called “The Greasers,” the outsiders of society. They don’t fit in with the upper class “Socials”, as they are from broken homes. Ponyboy also feels as if he is isolated from his own group as well because of his love of movies, books and nature, something the other boys don’t find interesting. Lastly both boys realize that nothing good can stay forever. By the end of the book, “The Catcher in the Rye,” Holden realizes that childhood innocence and purity cannot stay forever, as almost every child “falls of the cliff” into adulthood. At the end of of the book “The Outsiders”, Ponyboy starts to realize ‘nothing gold can stay.’ The word gold represents innocents and purity. After the death of his friend Johnny, Ponyboy realizes that he has to face harsh realities in the world as he grows up and looses his childhood innocence.