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Catcher In The Rye Innocence Theme

1124 Words5 Pages

Fifty-five percent of teenagers say they have been emotionally abused by a parent, and eleven percent have suffered physical abuse. The novel, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is about a seventeen-year-old boy, Holden, who has dealt with a lot of trauma from the death of his younger brother. He has been getting kicked out of every school he has been in because of bad behavior and bad grades. Holden never has felt like he fits in, and tries to figure out himself by traveling to New York City. J.D. Salinger uses many literary elements to show the preservation of innocence and youth, including the setting and Holden's life experiences. In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger illustrates the preservation of innocence and youth. J.D. Salinger …show more content…

“I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written 'Fuck you' on the wall... I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they’d wonder what the hell it meant” (Salinger 201). Holden was very angry that all the young kids would see this on the walls. He knew they wouldn't understand what it meant, which would cause them to ask what it meant to others. This quote shows that Holden has a strong belief in the preservation of youth, and this showed him how there is so much exposure to young children. At the school he is at, his very young kids don't understand those kinds of words yet, and it reveals to them at such a young age. Holden himself knows he has been affected by that kind of language, and he doesn't want the same thing for others. He wants the kids just like his sister, to turn out better than him, and he is upset when he sees that they are already exposed, just like he was. The next setting I want to talk about is the schools Holden has been in, and how they have affected him. Holden has always had school forced on him, even when he was going through tough times, and never wants to return. "The only thing that scared me was

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In Holden’s fictional rye field, a child falling off the dangerous cliff represents a child losing their innocence. Since he knows firsthand how terrible it is to be corrupted by the world, his life is consumed with sheltering others from that same fate. This fixation has become so all-encompassing that when Phoebe asks what he will spend his life doing, the only thing that comes to Holden’s mind is a symbolic representation of guarding children’s purity. When he later visits Phoebe’s elementary school, he tells the reader, “I saw... ‘Fuck you’ on the wall. I tried to rub it off...

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His old teacher is agonizing him about his failures at Pencey. He lectures Holden about how important it is to “play by the rules” meaning that if you want to get somewhere and be someone in life you have to be able to compromise and not think that you are better than anyone else. This conversation implies key aspects of him as a character. His contempt for adults is obvious, which is

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In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger illustrates how children mature through their exposure to trauma. Salinger uses character interactions to show the effects of a child's mindset when experiencing childhood trauma. Holden experiments with many different illegal activities including drugs and alcohol, which connects back to his childhood home experience. Holden grew up in a very intense childhood home situation.

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Growing up is difficult and sometimes frightening to imagine as a child. It is not surprising, then, that throughout the Catcher in the Rye, by J.D Salinger, Holden is unwilling to mature into a man and accept his responsibilities. Yet, he feels the need to save children in order to preserve their innocence. As Holden is introduced to different characters and places, he labels them into categories, distinguishing what he thinks is genuine and from what has changed. Holden’s view on adulthood is one of discomfort because of the way people are merged into acting, making them phonies that are abhorred by him.

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The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D Salinger, focuses on a young man–Holden Caulfield–who fears growing up. Throughout the book, Holden struggles to accept that he is entering the “phony” world of adulthood. He has rebelled in various ways to prove that he has control over his life; however, the one thing Holden yearns to control is the inevitable change of growing older. J.D. Salinger uses symbolism and point of view to convey the theme of this book: fear of change and growing up. The fear of entering the adult world can lead somebody to protect themselves to avoid failure of fitting in.

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Holden says that all he want to do is be the catcher in the rye protecting children from falling. The whole novel Holden makes observation around him that are taking away from children's innocence. This is what upsets him the most the fact that everyone will eventually have to grow up. While he is trying to go get Phoebe he is reminded this in the following quote. “I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another "Fuck you" on the wall.

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Another instance occurs in which the violence exclusively appears in silence. At the school he had attended when he was young, offensive graffiti litters the halls. This upsets Holden to the highest degree. He tells himself that he “kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it” (Salinger 201), yet he takes no direct action in uncovering the culprit or causing him harm. Holden has developed a keen sense of when innocence is slipping away, so that he may have a chance to prevent it.

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If the book is read solely on its surface level, it just seems like a book about an annoying teenager who just complains about everything, but the messages it carries are actually profound. For example, near the end of the story Holden is upset by some profane graffiti on the wall at a museum that says “F*** you” (Salinger 224). He is upset by it because he is worried some little kids will see it and wonder what it means, and then be curious enough to find out adn have their innocence stolen. He finds the graffiti multiple times in the museum. The profane graffiti, if looked at beyond the surface level, symbolises the fact that Holden can not do anything to stop little kids from losing their innocence.

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In more depth, this quotes shows his need to save children like his sister phoebe or his dead brother Allie from losing their childhood innocence and becoming adults which he believes are all phonies. In reality, Holden is one person so he can not be the catcher in the rye; despite that he keeps trying to be till he reaches a loin where he is truly lost in touch with reality and blinded. He does however realize that in the back of his mind, which is what leads him on such a destructive path of competing with himself constantly on meeting the idea he believes he is. He does this by drinking, smoking, becoming involved in fights and even attempting to have meaninglessness sexual encounters. However in the end he comes to the realization that he can not be the catcher in the rye despite what he’s done, and what triggers this realization for him is when he sees the word “Fuck you” on the walls of phoebe’s school.

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Holden uses alcohol and violence to escape his problems, which does not work in his favor. Holden gets expelled from boarding school, and after

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Additionally, Holden also shows that he has some sort of standards when it comes to foul language, whilst at his old school. Whilst dropping off a note to Phoebe, Holden sees the words, “Fuck you” on the wall. “You may think there

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J.D Salinger is an author that has been through a lot in his life and still not a lot is known about him or his life. and yet his characters in his novels show how he thinks and what he has gone through in a certain way. In his story, The Catcher in the Rye, we follow the experiences of a young teenager named Holden Caulfield. Throughout the story Holden expresses his experiences, problems, and thoughts which can be compared to those of Salinger. Their youth, schooling habits and experiences, and the way they view the world and the people in it are can be considered very similar.

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Many people harbour a desire to accomplish something specific in life. Sometimes this desire stems from the background of a person, and sometimes desires are developed over time and with age. “The Catcher in the Rye” narrated by Holden Caulfield, who is an overly disturbed teenager, is about the change from childhood to adulthood. Holden, like many, has a burning desire to protect the innocence of children; this desire is tied to the themes of relationships, intimacy and sexuality which are carried throughout the novel. In a stroke of genius, the author, J.D. Salinger, sums up this desire in the title, which is taken from a poem by Robert Burns: Comin ' thro ' the Rye ( 1796).

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In the Catcher in the Rye, Salinger depicts the immature mentality of typical teenagers through Holden’s childish curiosity. Teens experience

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