How Does Holden Lose His Innocence

He couldn’t give a single, solid answer to the question. All he said was Allie. But Allie is gone, and Holden is holding on the the past, a place where he feels, or felt, safe and wants to go back to his times with Allie, who he misses very much. This conversation with Phoebe made Holden really think about what he was been doing for the past years, pushing everyone to the side, not caring about anyone or anything; no friends, failing school, and he comes to recognize that childhood was good, not adulthood or this awful in-between that he is stuck in.

Holden has not proceeded with his desire to have “the time,” even when he hires the prostitute, Sunny. When Holden first sees her, he loses the urge and desire to finally have sex. Holden sees other women seeing her as your average girl shopping and sunny deceiving them by her looks; “I took her dress over to the closet and hung it up for her. It was funny. It made me feel sort of sad when I hung it up.

Literature has always relied on techniques to catch the reader’s attention and format the story, and “the Catcher in the Rye” is no exception. Salinger brought many different writing styles into his novel to make it a bestseller. With his knowledge, Salinger was able to depict the persona of Holden to the reader without directly stating his characteristics. Salinger proves Holden is a lonesome figure who wanted to fit in but struggles to be accepted. The Catcher in the Rye depicts Holden as one who struggles with his sexuality and adulthood and wants to save children from adulthood because of the difficulties that it has brought himself. Salinger greatly expresses Holden through the use of metaphor, imagery, symbolism,

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.

life. Allie had always been there. This causes Holden to associate change with negative emotions. As Holden is walking to the Museum of Natural History he begins to recollect memories of the museum. Holden talks about the exhibits of Indians and animals but says the best thing was that the museum stayed the same. No matter how many times you visited it never changed, nobody would have moved or become different. Holden felt that certain things should stay the same. He goes on to say “you ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone”.

It takes many experiences in order for an immature child to become a responsible, well-rounded adult. In J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger’s main character Holden Caulfield matures throughout the course of the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Holden is a juvenile young man. However, through his experiences, Holden is able to learn, and is finally able to become somewhat mature by the end of the novel. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield’s story represents a coming of age for all young adults.

In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger tells a story of a young boy, Holden, who never quite understood his stance on life. Throughout the novel, Holden struggles to adapt to the inevitable transition into adulthood, often worrying more about others than himself. In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger uses connotative diction, repetition, and specific diction to convey Holden’s struggle of accepting life changes that led him to becoming mentally unstable.            To start off, Salinger illustrates Holden’s nature by using connotative diction.

In Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is a teenage boy who has been kicked out of his school, Pencey Prep. He is now back in New York City, wandering about since he didn’t tell his parents about his expulsion. Through his journey, Holden discovers the many hardships of adulthood, one of them being the loss of innocence. J.D Salinger uses tone to develop the theme that innocence is short-lived.

There is only one experience that unites every single person in the world. Many people in the world can agree that it isn’t always the greatest experience, and many people have an extremely hard time getting through it, but every single adult goes through the act of ‘growing up’. For many, the transition can be very depressing, and confusing. When a child is young becoming an adult seems to be enjoyable and exciting, but it isn’t until that child is forced into the cruel, harsh world where the innocence of childhood can be appreciated and missed. The novel Catcher in the Rye explores how teenagers who are nearing adulthood see the adult world to be incomprehensible. J.D Salinger illustrates the confusion of a teenager when faced with the challenge of transitioning into adulthood using Holden Caulfield.

The relationship between Holden and Phoebe forms a major theme that the novel aims to deliver. The fact that he is having this conversation with Phoebe, a child who is anything but simple and innocent, reveals the oversimplification of his worldview. Holden himself realizes this to a degree when he acknowledges that his idea is “crazy”, yet he cannot come up with anything more pragmatic; he has trouble seeing the world in any other way. His “catcher in the rye” fantasy reflects his innocence, his belief in pure, uncorrupted youth, and his desire to protect that spirit. On the other hand, it represents his extreme disconnection from reality and his naïve view of the world. Phoebe exposes to Holden a living embodiment of childhood. And it is a scene with her where she exposes to Holden the illogical nature of his supervisory actions, indicating that his desire to preserve her innocence will only halt her own inevitable development. Phoebe is the Greek word for “protector of children” (Bloom 2009, p185). Within the novel she is Holden’s protector. She comforts him, provides him with financial security, and protects him from getting in trouble with their mother. Reiff describes this reversal of roles between Holden and Phoebe as “Now, instead of saving the world by protecting the children, Holden wants to reject the world and shut himself off from evil by becoming a ‘deaf-mute’ in the West. It is Phoebe who rescues him from this total withdrawal” (Reiff 2008, p71). Phoebe forces Holden to view her as a human—living and progressing— rather than as a forever preserved child, and it is this humanization that causes Holden to accept her eventual progression into

Salinger uses prostitution as a symbol for Holden’s yearning for intimacy and maturity. One night when he is arriving back at his hotel, a man approaches him offering a prostitute and Holden accepts. Holden then reveals to the reader that he is a virgin, but he tries to maintain his smooth attitude by saying he has “had quite a few opportunities to lose [his] virginity and all, but [he’s] never got around to it yet” (Salinger 92). He wants people to see him as sexually experienced because sex depicts his idea of manhood. When Sunny the prostitute arrives in his room, he gives her the fake name Jim Steele because he believes it makes him sound older and manly. Despite

The death of Holden’s brother also take a significant toll on him and his innocence. The death of his brother sparks off the road to the loss of Holden’s innocence, and Holden starts realizing the phoniness in people. Holden labels everyone who is “corrupted” and not pure to themselves as phonies. Holden depicts almost everyone as fake and not true to themselves, except Allie and Phoebe. When describing Allie Holden says “it wasn’t just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest …. God, he was a nice kid, though”. In Holden’s eyes Allie represents innocence and this confuses Holden because how can something so innocent die so young? Another death that changed Holden is James Castle a boy that committed

Phoebe says, “’Gimme the pieces. I’m saving them,’” (181). Holden comes to her for emotional support and comfort. Holden thinks the best way is to shut people out, but even though Phoebe still wants to be his sister, she is willing to make his life better; someone to pick up the broken pieces.

J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye took place in the 1950s. When the story first started, it was in a mental hospital where Holden was. Also, it was at Pencey Prep in Agerstown, PA, the school Holden was attending. Additionally, it took place in New York, where Holden resided (sparknotes.com). One of the major themes discussed in The Catcher in the Rye is how to protect innocence and how Holden wants to keep it.

It is not incorrect to say that over the course of the novel, Holden Caulfield embarks on a crusade to protect the innocence of children he encounters, especially that of his younger sister. Returning to his hotel after a night of consuming alcohol, Holden accepts an offer for a prostitute from an elevator operator. The prostitute calls herself Sunny and is skeptical of Holden’s attempts to act older than he truly is.