Catcher In The Rye Analysis

Holden is still not convinced that he cannot stay a child forever. Holden shows this in his response to Phoebe's chastisement. "...I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff-I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them" (Salinger 173). The ledge Holden wants the children to stay on is childhood while the pit they will eventually fall into is adulthood. He wants to keep everyone, including himself, from becoming an adult.

Consequently, on multiple occasions Holden contemplates suicide. For example, after he gets wrongfully attacked by Sunny’s pimp, Maurice, he says that he would not mind ending his life. He states that the only reason he rejected the idea is because he remembers James Castle’s suicide. Holden does not want people staring at his corpse. Another time he desires committing suicide when he talks after he talked about his brother D.B.’s experience with going to war. Holden thinks, “I’m sort of glad that they’ve got the atomic bomb invented. If there is ever another war, I’m going to sit right the hell on top of it. I’ll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will” (156). This quote is saying that Holden wants to kill himself in an extremely dramatic and graphic way. In the past few days Holden’s emotions have been abused and he has

Yet another demon that Holden avoids is the process of having to grow up. Throughout the book, he seems hesitant to develop any real ambitions or goals. He is a perpetual failure at school. He refuses to associate himself with mature ways of living, and so isolates himself from anyone his own age or older. This is all directly connected to Holden's picture-perfect image of his childhood. He sees this particular period of his life as his own personal paradise. He does not want to finalize the fact that he has to concede it's innocence in the end. Towards the end of the book, Holden shows his desire for life to remain as it was by saying, "...certain things should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone." Holden does not want to join a world of phonies and greed, a world lacking in carelessness and irresponsibility. He won't, whether consciously or not, accept the fact that he has no choice.

In The Catcher in The Rye, by J.D, the main character, Holden, can be seen as a troubled teenager growing up in a less than perfect society. Throughout the novel Holden struggles with the fact that many young and innocent kids will grow up and see the world from a different perspective. He naturally becomes worried for all future generations who will one day grow, as he did, and loose their innocence. The fixation of youth and innocence can be seen in the title of the book, as well as throughout the novel.

Holden has numerous distinct attributes pertaining to both childhood and adulthood. His transition from growing and relational life, to an uncontrolled spiritual realm, this stresses him. He has instances of introspection that helps him encompass a realization for his own livelihood. When he shares with his sister Phoebe what he would sincerely like to do with his life he says “I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.” (Salinger 173) That quote reveals the reasoning for the title of the book because Holden wants nothing more than to protect the innocence of children.

When his visiting Phoebe’s school he discovers crude language written on the wall. Holden immediately thinks of ‘Phoebe and all the other little kids’ and how he would hate them to see the foul words. This proves that Holden has a natural protective instinct and symbolically takes on the persona of ‘catcher in the rye’ as he wipes the words off the wall. Holden wants to shield the children from seeing the obscenities of adulthood prematurely, just as the catcher wants to protect children from falling off the ‘cliff’. At the end of the novel Holden appears to have more acceptance of the idea of growing up. As he watches Phoebe on the carousel he deduces that sometimes you ‘have to let them fall’ (referring to the children on the carousel.). Holden now understands that growing up is inevitable and fighting it is useless. However, regardless of this new found clarity, he still obsesses about living in an uncomplicated world. He delights in the fact that the carousel goes ‘round and round’ because it continues to fuel his fantasies of staying in one place forever. It would seem that even though he has made progress, Holden still struggles with letting go of the life he wishes were

Holden’s view of life is that it can be very cruel and unfair. The origin of this thinking is from his younger brother Allie. He feels guilty that he is essentially wasting his life away, while Allie died so very young of Leukemia. This is a huge part of his entire journey. Holden always describes Allie as a very smart and kind person that he looked up to, which is why he feels life is so cruel.

One can see this because he clearly states in the dialogue that he felt like jumping out the window. Holden’s mental state of mind can literally visualizes his own suicide and how and where it would take place. This quote represents the extent of Holden’s depression and loneliness and how much of it consumes him.

Holden again references the “Catcher in the Rye” when his little sister, Phoebe, asks him what he would like to be when he grows up. He answers, "I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody 's around -- nobody big, I mean -- except me. And I 'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff -- I mean if they 're running and they don 't look where they 're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That 's all I 'd do all day. I 'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it 's crazy." (Page 191) This quote by Holden allows the reader to understand what Holden was thinking when he came into contact with the singing

This shows that holden never take things seriously being stubborn and never focuses to what people says that he can use to do well in life. Another example is when Holden is on a date with sally, Holden is very happy getting along with sally causes him to think of an idea. ”I was getting excited as hell, the more I thought of it, and sort of reached over and took old Sally’s goddam hand. What a goddam fool i was. ”No kidding,” I said.

(Pg. 84) This clearly shows how Holden is feeling stress and fear, and wants to escape from the phony world he lives in. In our society today the rate of committing suicide increases

Holden Caulfield plays a timeless character in the sense that his way of life is common for the American teenager, in his time as well as now. Today parents dread the terrible and confusing adolescent years of their child's life. In J.D. Salinger's book, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is in this terrible and confusing point of his life. At this point in his life, as well as in modern teenager's lives, a transition occurs, from child to adult. Holden takes this change particularly rough and develops a typical mentality that prevents him from allowing himself to see or understand his purpose in life.

Holden misses his childhood and also doesn’t want to let go of it. He usually watches kids and talks about them as they are very innocent joyful and nice to watch. “I passed by this playground

Holden begins to think that the world is evil and fake because of the death of his little brother and because Holden always gets expelled from many different schools. When Holden looks back at his childhood field trips to the Museum of Natural History, he begins to feel comfortable knowing that nothing in the museum has changed, ("The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move") (pg.121). This quote makes it obvious that Holden is afraid of becoming different, by growing up into an adult. Holden reminds himself of his childhood because he wants to remember how simple things used to be. There were no phonies, no classes to attend, and barely any responsibilities to maintain, ("Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. This shows that Holden is trying to protect the small amount of innocence he has left by hanging onto his youth. I know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway.") (pg.122). The museum symbolizes as a place where Holden

The poem is originally called Comin’ Thro’ the Rye and it is first heard when Holden hears a little kid singing it in Chapter 16. “He was singing that song, ‘If a body catch a body coming through the rye.’ … It made me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed anymore.” (Salinger 125). Holden says that the little boy singing the song made him feel better because, even though no one paid attention to him, the boy was in his own world enjoying the words he himself was singing. Holden romanticizes this poem into a big thought about protecting little kids. The poem, that is basically just asking if casual sex is okay, stirs Holden’s emotions up because he believes that coming to terms with sexuality is perverted and corruptive to children. Holden feels that in order to have sex, he has to degrade girls and treat them like objects, but he is not comfortable with doing that to someone he cares about or even having casual sex. He says that he wants to be “the catcher in the rye”, meaning that he wants to catch the children when they get too close to the cliff, but he will soon realize it is not his responsibility to protect