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In JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, a troubled teenager named Holden Caufield struggles with the fact that everyone has to grow up. Holden has a fixation on childhood, which shows itself in many forms. The idea of protect innocence of Holden Caulfield has been clearly shown throughout the book The Catcher in the Rye by Holden s misinterpretation of the song, his glorification of children, inordinate admiration of Phoebe, idealization of his dead younger brother Allie. While walking through the busy streets of New York, Holden notices a lighthearted little boy who is walking and humming, If a body catch a body coming through the rye (Salinger 43). Holden finds it humorous that a little child can hum so nonchalantly as the cars on the busy streets honk at him. Despite the fast-moving cars, which represent the average phonies in the world, the child pays no attention to them.
When Holden sees that the little boy will not allow himself to be pulled into the average crowd of people, he realizes that not everyone wishes to fall from their simple childhood into adulthood. From Holden s encounter with this little boy, he wants to become the catcher in the rye. He says to Phoebe, 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. (Salinger 173) By saying that he wants to catch all the children that are running and not looking where they re going, Holden is saying that he wants to save all the little children from the fake behavior of the adults in the world.
He wants to prevent the children from entering the world of destruction and phoniness and keeps them in a state of arrested innocence. Ironically, the lyrics of the song is Gin a body meet a body comin thro s the rye, Gin a body kiss a body, need a body cry? Which sarcastically annotated the eager of Holden wanting to protects the children, and his immaturity. Holden does not want children to grow up because he feels 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 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 theyd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them- all cockeyed, naturally- what it meant, and how theyd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever written it. I figured it was some poverty bum that 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 Id smash his head on the stone steps till hew as good and goddam dead and bloody. (Salinger 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 believes that children are innocent because they viewed the world and society without any bias. You take adults, they always look lousy when they re asleep with their mouths open, but kids don t They look all right. Kids like phoebe shut up when they haven t anything to say. They even say thank you when you tighten their skates, and they don t go behind a post to button their pants. ; (Costello 7) Holden admires how Phoebe keeps her mouth shut sometimes, which he considered as non-phony Both Jane and Holden s younger brother Allie, who died at eleven years of age, function for Holden as symbols of goodness. ; (Salinger 317) Holden s dead brother Allie never appeared in the novel, nevertheless, he is always in Holden s consciousness, which showed Holden s admiration towards Allie. Holden s obsession with innocence and youth is a result of his younger brother Allies death. Allie represents the unchangeable youth of which Holden must let go if he ever expects to maintain sanity.
When Stradlater asked Holden to write something descriptive for him, he immediately thought about Allie s baseball glove, and the poem on it. Throughout the book, Holden tried to save all children from growing up and losing their innocence. When he realized that he could not achieve this goal, he had a nervous breakdown and could not deal with it. However, it is an inevitable fact that everyone has to grow up, and Holden realizes that he cannot stop people from growing.
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Research essay sample on Catcher In The Rye Brother Allie
