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Both The Little Prince and The Catcher in the Rye are tender stories of loneliness, alienation, and loss; with Romantic protagonists in need of friendship, understanding, and love. They view the world around them as mechanical, mass-oriented, objective, cold, depressive and very oppressive. Their sensitive nature forces them to fancy themselves as saviors in an attempt to redeem. Although self-deluded, they are lovable and tender characters with a vast dream to reach the ideal: a dream to be the catcher in the rye or the redeemer of the stars. They are the idealists who put much emphasis on values and constantly want to keep up the nature of childhood. They view adult's world as absurd, mindless and insensitive to the authenticity of childhood and meaning of life. The society they escape from is packed with phony people who pay no attention to stars, ducks, and roses; in summary to nature. Nature awakens in these protagonists reverence but what worries them is that it can wear off and vanish; hence, they endeavor to preserve it. They are lovers of immortal beauty, innocence, purity, and the ideal. Natural objects give them delight, trigger their imagination, and are the reminder of the simplicity of childhood. Therefore, we can easily trace the Romantic elements of isolation, idealism, exaltation of children, emphasis on the individual's imagination, individuality, and emotion, and a significant attention to nature present both in The Little Prince by Saint-Exupery and The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger.
Keywords: Nature, Imagination, Alienation.
Introduction
This essay approaches The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry and The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger through the lens of Romanticism. The Romantics discussed about the importance of imagination. Neo-Classic authors, in opposition to the Romantics, believed that the use of imagination instead of reason leads to madness. Dr. Haghighi discusses the contradiction between the Romantic and Neoclassic views by stating, "The verbal battle has gone on between the two for a long time, a battle in which no side has conceded defeated." He adds that this battle applies to some opposite elements such as subjectivity, personal, irrational, emotional, and individual for the Romantics and objectivity, impersonal, rational, orderly, and social for the Neoclassics (37). In support of this view, the general features...