Catcher In The Rye By Salinger

In JD Salingers’ Catcher in the Rye, a troubled teenager named Holden Caufield
struggles with the fact that everyone has to grow up. The book gets its title
from Holden’s constant concern with the loss of innocence. He did not want
children to grow up because he felt that adults are corrupt. This is seen when
Holden tries to erase naughty words from the walls of an elementary school where
his younger sister Phoebe attended. “While I was sitting down, I saw
something that drove me crazy. Somebody’d written ‘Fuck you’ on the wall. It
drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids
would see it, and how they’d wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally
some dirty kid would tell them- all cockeyed, naturally- what it meant, and how
they’d all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I
kept wanting to kill whoever’d written it. I figured it was some perverty bum
that’d sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then
wrote it on the wall. I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I’d
smash his head on the stone steps till hew as good and goddam dead and
bloody.” (201) His deep concern with impeccability caused him to create
stereotypes of a hooligan that would try to corrupt the children of an
elementary school. Holden believed that children were innocent because they
viewed the world and society without any bias. When Phoebe asked him to name
something that he would like to be when he grew up, the only thing he would have
liked to be was a “catcher in the rye.” He invented an illusion for
himself of a strange fantasy. He stated that he would like to follow a poem by
Robert Burns: “If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye.” He kept
“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, but that’s the only thing I’d
really like to be.” (173) Holden wants to stop children from
“falling” into losing their innocence and becoming an adult, and he
takes pleasure in the attempted thwarting of maturation. In the beginning of
Catcher in the Rye, his initial character is one of a child. Throughout the
book, he takes steps and the forces of change take a toll on his childish ways.

In the end, he seems to be changed into a man. Holden is definitely extremely
immature in the beginning of the book. He characterizes almost every person he
meets as a “phony”. He feels that he is surrounded by hypocrites in a
school filled with fakery. Principal Thurmer, the principal of Holden’s high
school, Pencey, was the leader of the whole charade. During a teacher/parent
day, Principal Thurmer would only say hello to the wealthy parents of students.

He would not associate himself with those that were not financially stable,
because he was a phony. Holden also maintains a lack of responsibility
throughout the whole book. He was the equipment manager of the fencing team at
Pencey, but he lost the equipment on the subway. He also failed out of two
schools for lack of effort and absences from classes. Holden also had a daydream
about two children who never grew up, whore main in a perfect world forever.

This daydream is a result of his younger brother Allie’s death. Allie represents
the unchangeable youth of which Holden must let go if he ever expects to
maintain sanity. Holden has a fixation on childhood, which shows itself in many
forms. His glorification of children, inordinate admiration of Phoebe,
idealization of his dead younger brother, and the joy he gets from reminiscing
about his own childhood all contribute to his obsession with innocence and
youth. Throughout the middle of the book, forces of change unfold on Holden.

While waiting for an old friend of his, he