Holden Caufield Symbolism

Holden Caufield from Catcher in the Rye is very depressed and has many regrets like getting kicked out of school so many times and not letting his now dead brother go on a bike ride with him. In the beginning of J.D. Salinger’s timeless novel Holden is getting ready to go out with his friend and next door neighbor Ackley, while he is waiting he makes a snowball and decides to hold onto it instead of throw it. The symbol of the snowball represents Holden’s inability to act and make life choices, like when he wanted to talk to Jane before her date with Stradlater but is unable to act upon wanting to talk to her, and in not acting Holden is forced to throw out the snowball or in this case let Jane go without talking to her. This decision to not

When he grabs the snowball from his window sill he contemplates throwing it at a car, but decides not to, thinking “the car looked too nice and white”(Salinger, 36) conveying that Holden sees the purity in life and his not wanting to ruin it. This adds to why Holden doesn’t want to ask Jane on a real date as he might say the wrong things and she could reject him. After not making a decision Holden is then forced to act, throwing the snowball out of the bus after telling the bus driver he wouldn’t “chuck it at anybody”(Salinger, 37) paralleling what he did in school, flunking out of four different ones.. He didn’t take control in school by deciding to pick a path in life and by not choosing is chosen for. These decisions of inaction cause Holden to become depressed as he dwells on the past and how things could have been, wanting to move to the middle of nowhere and become a “deaf-mute”(Salinger, 199), looking to set his life on course and instead of following the journey he either wants to stay at the beginning or skip to the end. Holden wanting to live as a child pure and innocent like he sees the kids at Phoebe's school, thinking how they could be tainted by the writing of “Fuck you”(Salinger, 202) on the walls when in reality it was most likely a child who had written it to get a laugh from their classmates, or

Antolini. Both of them give him advice, but Holden decides to take none of it and continues to wing it throughout the rest of the novel. This conveys Holden's immaturity refusing to grow up and take responsibility for his own laziness and unwillingness to do what he needs to so that he can succeed in life. During the novel Old Spencer is meeting with Holden and he says “life is a game boy”(Salinger, 8) explaining to Holden that if he wants to go anywhere he needs to play along with the rules, but Holden disregards his advice and instead goes to New York to booze around the city with women staying in hotel rooms, not being mature enough to begin to act like an adult. Then when he goes to Mr. Antolini’s apartment to spend the night, Mr. Antolini tells him that he has to shape up or he’ll end up “ in some bar hating everybody who comes in”(Salinger, 186), not knowing that Holden had been doing that earlier that night foreshadowing that his “terrible fall”(Salinger, 186) is much closer than Mr. Antolini had thought, and that he would become that 30 year old in a bar sooner rather than later. This conveys that Holden will become like an adult but remain like a child inside as he is unable to be mature enough to grow up and act like an adult while at the same time doing adult things, like drinking alone, and also thinking about being