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How Does Holden Mature In Catcher In The Rye

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The novel, “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, is a Coming of Age story surrounding Holden Caulfield who is the protagonist that likes to stay innocence but wants to involve in sexual activities with adults as he is growing up and becoming a young adult. Holden tries to preserve his innocence while battling with his maturation when he wears his red hunting hat, visiting the carousel, and wondering about the ducks. Preserving innocence is what Holden desires but at the same time he is battling to overcome his maturation, he wears his red hunting hat nearly every day on a daily bases and this shows that the hat is a symbol, he is holding on to something he cannot let go. On days where Holden feels really gloomy he will, “put it on and …show more content…

He worries about the ducks and what happened to them at central park to the fact that he will ask the cab driver about it as well, “By any chance do you know where they go? The ducks when it gets all frozen?” (Salinger 78). He asked with details specifically about where they actually go in the winter, the ducks first remind him when he is saying goodbye to his old teacher, Mr. Spencer before he leaves to go home from Pencey. Holden then mentions, “I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away” (Salinger, 13). Vanderbilt had said, “He broods over the insecurity of the ducks in the winter and clings to the symbols of security and changelessness: the monastic life.” Because Holden is obsessed with ducks so much, he doesn’t realize that he has the same situation with the ducks himself. It shows that whenever Holden leaves anywhere such as Pencey, the ducks also randomly disappeared making a strong connection between them both but he does not understand where they go. The ducks in some way symbolized the changing happening to Holden but he is afraid to change and does not want to become an adult because he thinks that most adults are

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