Loss of Childhood Innocence: the Transition to Adulthood

When we grow up we’re raised to do our best and to be mature. People know their right from wrongs. Throughout the novel The Catcher in the Rye by, J.D. Salinger the main character goes through a difficult life and time growing up. Growing up too fast is not the answer for everything. The main character Holden Caulfield is a misfit because he is very dramatic, he avoids facing things, and he shows reckless behavior.

    Holden Caulfield sees childhood as the ideal state of being. He thinks adulthood is filled with corrupt people. The only way anyone can win in the adult world is if the cards are stacked in his favor. The characters in The Catcher in the Rye play a diverse set of roles in the war between childhood and adulthood.

In the novel The Catcher In The Rye, the protagonist Holden Caulfield views his surroundings with hypocrisy and contempt in an attempt to avoid the corruption of adulthood. Holden places himself above the crowd because he believes everyone acts phony. In the process, Caulfield reveals his true problem: his refusal to change.

Holden Caufield emphasizes on the loss of innocence in children. He feels that once they lose their innocence, they will soon turn into phonies like everyone else. The loss of innocence is very common in the development in human existence. It is caused by many factors. Past a certain age, children are either forced or led unintentionally into a pathway of corruption. A child is also known to lose their innocence by desires, fantasies, and attention. But once they lose their innocence, they tend to desire to go back and pretend to be young again. In the Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden discusses the importance of innocence in children's lives. He feels that once a child loses his/her innocence, he/she will soon be leaded to a

Every human actions meets in nature and they find their own characteristic feature in a good or bad way. Not everyone can say it is a pleasant experiment, but no one can deny that it happened. This single event is ‘growing up’. The transition between childhood innocence and adulthood is long and confusing, often uncovering questions that cannot be answered. During this time the adult world seems inviting and free, but only when we become members of a cruel, society can the happy ignorance of childhood be appreciated and missed. The novel Catcher in the Rye examines how adult life appears complex and incomprehensible to teenagers on the brink of entering it. Through the main protagonist Holden Caulfield, J.D. Salinger captures the confusion of a teenager when faced with the challenge of adapting to an adult society.

In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye, Holden Caulfield, a seventeen-year-old boy, transitions from childhood to adulthood. The death of Holden’s little brother signifies the beginning his loss of innocence and growth of maturity. As he enters adulthood, Holden views society differently from his peers by characterizing most of his peers and adults he meets as “phonies.” Thus, Holden takes the impossible challenge of preserving the innocence in children because he wants to prevent children from experiencing the corruption in society. The Catcher In The Rye embodies Holden’s struggle to preserve the innocence of children and reveals the inevitability of and the necessity of encountering the harsh realities of life.

Holden was alienated by society because of society’s morals. In the book Catcher in the Rye, readers are able to watch sixteen-year old Holden Caulfield tackle everyday tasks while witnessing his deterioration in mental state. After being expelled from his school, Holden was left on the path of self discovery. This ultimately lead to Holden’s various mental breakdowns, as he had no one to reach out to in his time of need. The book was written in the early 1950s, and the content of the book was deemed ‘scandalous’. This lead many to question the true intentions of society’s morals. Catcher in the Rye suggest ideas alluding to society’s idea of a ‘perfect man’. Fresh off the heels of World War II, the ‘ideal man’ would have been considered confident with a degree from a prestigious school. Holden has neither confidence nor a highschool

The journey between adolescence and adulthood is one of great discovery and introspection. As the blissful innocence of childhood is washed away by the passing of time, a long and confusing period of discovering one’s identity takes center stage. Prior to the process, the adult world seems one of great freedom and opportunity and is treated with a sense of keen enthusiasm. But, only as we become members of this cruel and unjust adult society, does the veneer of privilege corrode away, and the simplicity and innocence of childhood truly appreciated. As such is explored in The Catcher in the Rye, where a young teenager in New York City is faced with the daunting task of transitioning and maturing to an eventual adulthood, one that terrifies him. Holden responds to adulthood with resistance, fear andidealism, before slowly but surely succumbing to its certainty.

Growing up is a complicated and emotional phase that everyone has to experience. Our innocence is like a mask that blinds us from perceiving life as it really is. As we grow up, we lose our sense of innocence and begin to see the world differently. In the book The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is a teenage boy who fears maturity for himself and the children around him. The theme of innocence is found throughout the novel, as Holden struggles to protect the innocence of children from the superficiality and shallowness of the adult world.

In Holden Caulfield’s mind, he lives in a world that can be split into two halves: the world of the innocent and the world of the corrupted. These worlds are equated with children and adults, respectively. He despises “the adult world and its cruelty and artificiality” (Chen) otherwise known as “phoniness”. With The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger explores an adolescent’s journey as he navigates through the gray area of an otherwise black and white world. Throughout the book, Holden frequently tries to blend in with either side of the spectrum, only to be pushed back into limbo. Despite Holden’s glorification of the purity of a child and detestation of the impurity of an adult, he doesn’t

In The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield’s life is composed of a great amount of contempt; he perceives society through pessimistic lenses, continuously dismissing its ways. Trying to veer off his path to adulthood, Holden often holds people accountable for their “phony” ways. He aims to “save” the children from such an outcome that he makes it his responsibility. The pivotal moment of which he transcends to maturity occurs is when he witnesses the children reach for the gold ring. Rather than blindly believing that he can save the children from sinking into the “evils” of the world and maintain their innocence, he ultimately decides to let them make their own decisions and grow up.

Growing up does not mean you are perfect in any aspect; however, growing up does mean to mature and face the real world you are living in; although, it might not be suitable for one to live in due to its corruption. In J.D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher In The Rye, Holden Caulfield (protagonist) dealt with problems early in his childhood which impacted not only him as a human being but also his paradigm on adults. (phonies) Not only does Holden distrusts adults because they are insincerity, hypocrisy, and superficiality, but also because of the corrupted world they have created.

     Throughout “The Catcher in the Rye”, Holden Caufield longs for intimacy with other human beings. One of Holden’s main problems is that he sees childhood as the ideal state of being. He thinks that all adults are phonies.

In the novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the protagonist Holden Caulifield views the world as an evil corrupt place where there is no peace. Holden has a phony phobia that restricts him from becoming a fully matured adult. In Holden's attempted journey in becoming a fully matured adult, he encounters many scenarios involving friendship, personal opinions, and his love of children. His journey is an unpleasant and difficult one with many lessons learned along the way; including the realization that he is powerless to change the world.

In J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, a young man named Holden Caulfield is on the edge of adulthood. He is a bright kid but struggles with many mental diseases mainly because of the passing of his brother Allie. This has caused him to not focus on school and has got him kicked out of many schools. He did not have many friends and he did not like many people. He thought of everyone as phony. Holden does not want to confront adulthood in fear of losing his childhood because of the fear of change, conformity to the phony world and the passing of his younger brother Allie.