Fatemeh Aziz Mohammadi - Ph.D in English Literature English Department, Faculty of Foreign Language Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel by J.D. Salinger. In this novel Salinger depicts the tale of Holden Caulfield a seventeen-year-old teenager. Holden the narrator and the novels protagonist during the three days tries to find his real identity and the safe place in a modern industrial society of the United States of America. The present study aims at investigating the traces of Iron cage which coined by Max Weber a German sociologist who focuses on the negative elements of a modern world on humans life. To him, the world is an Iron Cage where nobody can escape. To Weber the system of capitalism remains in every social system and become central to shape social life, that is why modern man can not find any way to escape, moreover, he/she looses his/ her true identity in this system. Weber argues that the technological, industrial, and economic relationship become fundamental forces in the society. He claims if you are born into this kind of system, so you can not change the system. Holden the novel main character, as Weber believes live in an Iron Cage. He lives in the capitalist system which is around him. Holden can not escape from this system because the system shapes his life, so he can not change anything

Society, Sociology, Modernism, Weber, Iron Cage, Capitalism system, Identity