Innocence In Catcher In The Rye, By J. D. Salinger

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Just when does one leave the safe clings of innocence and venture into a brave new world? Salinger argues that the desire to preserve people's’ innocence is first encountered when the individual crosses with the experience of corruption. Since Salinger uses Holden to project his own personal insight about life “[He] was half in love with her by the time [they] sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy” (Salinger 137). Salinger reflects on the average adolescent males mind, a state of innocence, and displays their habitual tendency to envision the perfect fantasies of love, unattainable through simple encounters. This often allures the male into falling for and being corrupted by his unrealistic ideas. This leads Salinger into believing “most adolescents eventually come to terms with things as they actually are. They. They give up their idealistic ideas of working any radical changes in social structure or in the cultures value statement”(A study on the painful transition of adolescense in J.D. Salinger’s writing). This displays that Salinger believes that people preserve innocence to connect with their past imagination …show more content…

After all, Salinger believes “certain things should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone [He] knows that’s impossible, but it’s too bad anyway” (Salinger 122). Obviously this point is underscored when the protagonist Holden, Professes certain things should remain the way they are. He believes these show cases should be held in stasis forever like the days when Allie, his idol of innocence was alive, when he frequently visited this