How Does Holden Protect Innocence

In this excerpt Salinger was able to highlight the “loss of innocence” as Holden Caulfield struggled with the realization that his roommate Stradlater may have taken away the innocence of his long term childhood friend, Jean Gallagher. Holden is in a mindset believing that he can remain innocent indefinitely as well as allow his childhood friends, if they continue to be behave similarly to children. He is unwilling to accept the fact that he must one day reach adulthood which contradicts from Stradlater’s ideology. Stradlater is more than willing to advance into adulthood and uses women as tools to gain experience; in hopes of reaching it sooner. This is supported by Holden’s comments to Stradlater “ I told him he thought he could give the time to anybody he felt like. I told him he didn't even care if a girl kept all her kings in the back row or not, (....)"You don't even know if her first name is Jane or Jean, ya goddam moron!”, showing that Stradlater valued a woman's body rather than her name or ethics and values. Holden believed that Jean was a girl that “kept all her kings in the back row” meaning that she preferred the security of playing safe. Thus, Holden is shocked and even nervous by the possibilities that could have occurred within Ed Banky’s car making him hostile to Stradlater. He is unwilling to comprehend that Jane Gallagher, the girl who always played it safe, may have transitioned into

This reveals Holden trying to keep Janes innocence. Which ties in with the theme loss of innocence, which worries Holden. He feels as if Stradlater may take the innocence of Jane which makes him feeling upset. This is due to the that, he likes Jane and feels being innocent makes him like her more and taking that away might affect the way he looks at her.

In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden’s outlook in life is either the innocence of childhood or the cruelty of adulthood. He believes that the innocence of childhood is very valuable and it should be protected from

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.

Holden uses innocence to describe the kids surrounding him. Phoebe and Allie stand out as examples. “‘I like Allie,’ I said. ‘And I like doing what I’m doing right now. Sitting here with you, and talking and thinking about stuff, and ---’” (Salinger, 171). In Holden’s mind, only children are innocent in this world. Children don’t have sexual desire; they are not fake. However, Allie’s death due to leukaemia destroys his belief in childhood innocence. He thinks that pure kids never die, but his brother’s death goes against his thoughts. To be able to deal with his sadness logically, he always thinks that his brother will come back just like the ducks in Central Park. Holden protects his belief in childhood innocence through the hope that the ducks will eventually return. What’s more, he also mentions he wishes to be the catcher in the rye in his conversation with Phoebe. He imagines children running around in a rye field. He says he would like to catch children before they fall from the end of the cliff. This is symbolism for Holden trying to protect childhood innocence from adulthood

In the novel The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger, Salinger takes us into the mind of Holden, an immature, troubled young boy in 1950’s New York. Throughout Holden’s journey, Salinger expresses his urge to protect the young and innocent. Holden has this urge because when he was going through a traumatic event his parents never guided or helped him, instead they sent him away to a boarding school and he never wanted anyone else to feel as depressed and secluded as he did and is still experiencing. His actions makes us wonder if there is truly an extent to protecting the vulnerable. Should we keep our children sheltered and ignorant to the world, to the point where the do not know the simple meaning of f you or should we push them away, like Holden’s parents, and let them figure things out for themselves? No matter what we feel is right, we can not deny the fact that for a person in a healthy and balanced way, they must be guided by a guardian or a mentor. Whether the mentor or guardian is a good influence or a bad one, they would help mold a child’s personality with their teachings and guidance. Salinger shows us how important it is to remember that however one raises a child, that child will reflect how the guardians personality. Salinger shows us, in a detailed and realistic way, how crucial it is to guide the next generation.

Lies, failure, depression, and loneliness are only some of the aspects that Holden Caulfield goes through in the novel The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger. Salinger reflects Holden’s character through his own childhood experiences. Salinger admitted in a 1953 interview that "My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book.… [I]t was a great relief telling people about it” (Wikipedia). Thus, the book is somewhat the life story of J.D. Salinger as a reckless seventeen-year-old who lives in New York City and goes through awful hardships after his expulsion and departure from an elite prep school. Holden, the protagonist in this novel, is created as a depressed, cynical, and isolated character and he

In The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden is in a rest home, where he speaks about his past and discusses his thoughts and feelings of his memories. Holden tells about his life including his past experiences at many different private schools, most recently Pensey Prep, his friends, and his late brother Allie which led to Holden’s own mental destruction.

As the innocence of people portrayed in the novel seems quite depressing itself, it is the same in the real world. Basically everyone in the world loses their innocence especially during childhood and adolescence. An example of lost innocence is shown by an article that “suddenly, around the end of 5th grade, kids start trying out their new understanding of these “naughty” words and begin to throw around a little language designed to shock teachers and impress peers.”(schuls-jacobson). This relates to the scene in Catcher in the Rye where Holden was walking down the hallway and sees profanity written on the walls of Phoebe’s middle school: “Somebody’d written “Fuck you” on the wall. It drove me near crazy.”(201) Although Holden thinks that

In The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is concerned with maintaining the protection that comes with his innocence. According to Holden, he distances himself from people because they are not worth his time, like the three girls that dance with him at a bar. However, it becomes clear that Holden actually distances himself to protect himself from making mistakes. This is shown when Holden wants to pretend to be a deaf-mute so no relationships are possible, and no one can hurt him. His mistakes can cause him to have to take responsibility, like an adult would, therefore having to get rid of his innocence, as innocence is correlated with children in the book. For Holden, innocence means protection because the reality of life

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is a novel published in 1951 that describes the struggle of the main character, Holden who is a teenage boy that is alienated from everyone around him and struggles to build connections with anyone that he meets. Readers can identify Holden as a lonely and complicated character, and are able to feel the pain that he is going through. Holden Caufiled represents an alienated adolescence who is unable to move on from a painful past and struggles to accept the reality of adulthood. Holden’s red hunting hat is a symbol of his alination that directly represents his attachment to both his past and his childhood.

Loss of innocence is one of the major elements of The Catcher in the Rye that make the novel so renowned. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is about an adolescent named Holden who wanders around New York City after being kicked out of a prestigious boarding school in eastern Pennsylvania. While learning more about himself and the adult world, he experiences alcohol, prostitution, and sexuality. Holden struggles with issues such as identity and maturity. Eventually, he realizes what it means to become an adult and accepts that maturity and development is inevitable. Holden suffers from a loss of innocence when

After reading The Catcher in the Rye, the reader can infer that Holden Caulfield does not have many positive feelings towards adults. This is mainly due to Holden’s desire to maintain innocence in the world. Holden feels that adults are nothing more than hypocrites and phonies, which is why Holden typically surrounds himself with children and teenagers rather than adults. It is shown quite often that Holden is quite passionate about his desire to protect children, especially his younger sister Phoebe, from the harsh reality of the world. As Holden’s breakdown was beginning to become apparent, he explains his desire by saying: “Somebody’d written “Fuck you” on the wall.

In J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye starts out with a teenager, named Holden, at a school called Pencey Prep in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. Holden is describe as being pretty antisocial. The only people he mentions that he talks to at the school are people he does not really like.

Catcher In The Rye is novel set in the 1950’s, a time in America called the era of consensus. Everyone agreed on a social norm and and everyone followed it falling into a lazy state of happiness. But there was rebellion against the social norm, found in the teenagers, which is also found in Holden. Holden's word choice, particularly the use of the word phony, helps the reader understand what Holden truly feels about his society. Salinger writes, "You ought to go to a boys' school sometime.