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What Does Holden Symbolize In Catcher In The Rye

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Just like many men in the 1940’s, the famous author J.D. Salinger was drafted into the United States Army. Salinger was placed in one of the most bloody battles in the war, Battle of the Bulge. Salinger did not escape the war without trauma. He suffered a nervous breakdown, and during that time period, he created the character Holden Caulfield. Salinger’s emotions and attitudes were projected onto his character, Holden who suffers with mental health issues and projects his emotions on innocent ducks that live in Central Park. In “The Catcher in the Rye,” there is a great deal of symbolism used. Salinger uses the ducks throughout the novel in order to symbolize and foreshadow how lost Holden Caulfield is, and to showcase his given mental state. …show more content…

Holden has a conversation with Mr. Spencer, his history teacher, and they discuss why Holden failed. Mr. Spencer asks Holden how is he going to tell his parents, instead of answering, Holden drifts off into another thought, “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 will be frozen when I got home, and where did the ducks go” (Salinger 16). Just like the ducks are frozen off from their home, when Holden uses the term frozen, it signifies the overarching question for Holden if he will be frozen out from his family when he gets home and shut out for flunking out of school again. His daydream is a break into thinking about going back and having to face his parents. Holden continues to daydream about the ducks and thinks “if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something” (Salinger 16). The guy and the zoo represent how his parents repeatedly sent him off to boarding schools and was always distanced from him. Holden lacks the same amount of attention his other siblings received. His lack of attention and isolation away from his family creates a barrier between Holden and his parents explaining his fears and avoidance of telling them he flunked out. To add on to Holden’s avoidance and his panicky attitude toward telling his parents, the ducks also represent Holden’s coping mechanism for his ever-changing mental

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