Secondary Characters In Catcher In The Rye

In most stories and novels, there are primary characters and secondary characters. The primary characters are obviously the main person in the story who the reader listens to during their journey. On the other hand, the secondary characters, help the main character with their adventure. Most of the time, the secondary characters are included to help convey the deeper meaning or the theme of the story. In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is a boy in boarding school who does not have a lot of friends. Because of this, he meets a lot of diverse people during his journey who either try to help him or just do not care for him. Many of the secondary characters do not really help Holden as he is shown as an emotionally unstable character

He responds, saying how he would like to be “the catcher in the rye”(Salinger 225). He then remarks,”Anyway, I keep picturing 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… What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff… I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.”(Salinger 224-225). Although in the story this is literal, there is a message that speaks out about the whole entire picture. He wants to protect the innocence of the children by making sure that they will not fall off the cliff into the world of adultery, on accident. Throughout the story, Holden has always wanted to protect kids innocence, especially Phoebe’s. When he is in the stairwell of the school, he thinks to himself,” But while I was sitting down, 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 then finally some dirty kid would tell them… what it meant...But I rubbed it out anyway, finally.”(Salinger 260-261). His care for other people’s innocence is shown whenever he thinks about Phoebe’s future reactions which is why she is