There are countless ways to interpret the character of Holden Caufield. I think the best word to describe him is protective. Which leads me to the first innermost circle, the name Holden in a case. Throughout the book, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger, Holden has tried to preserve innocence and the case around his name shows his protective personality. Located in the second circle are for me the two most important symbols about Holden in the book. The first item is Allie’s baseball glove; this shows him trying to catch the innocence in that of a young child. Also the glove is a memory of his brother Allie who he was close to and died. The second symbol is a museum; representing holding onto and preserving the innocence in…
"The Catcher in the Rye" opens with Holden Caulfield at Pency Prep, his high school, where he has just been kicked out for failing almost all of his classes. Holden, as a lost and frustrated teen, goes to his room for his last night before planning to run away from Pency Prep for some "alone time" before telling his parent he was kicked out of another school.…
Holden has been through many difficult times in his life, especially after he lost his little brother Allie Caulfield who had pneumonia, but there are these main symbols that describes Holden as a person, his past and most importantly these symbols gives special meaning to his life. In the Catcher of the Rye, J.D Salinger highlights Holden’s journey of growing up by showing the three symbols and they are the lake, Carossel and the red hunting hat.…
The hat symbolizes his independence and confidence he has. Allie’s baseball mitt symbolizes his love for his brother to have as a memory. The museum symbolizes Holden’s childhood and wants everything to stay the same. Everytime Holden returns to the museum he has changed his personality. Holden wants to live in a fantasy world like “Catcher in the rye”. Holden does not want to grow up and wants his sister to remain with her innocence. I think that he thinks this way of wanting everything to remain the same because he misses his brother. After his death, Holden's childhood was ruin and can not make it up. He wishes his brother to be back with him but only has the memories they…
Allie 's baseball glove reminds Holden of his deceased younger brother who died of leukemia. The idea that his brother died often torments Holden and when he thinks about it, his prospect on life changes. Holden feels a lot worse about Allie 's death because he was one of the few people Holden thought was not a phony in a place where everyone around him was. Also, the Museum of Natural History is important to Holden. Every time he went, there would be something different about him but the place would remain intact, nothing would change, everything was in the exact same place where it was the last time he was there. This place is symbolic because it reflects Holden 's desire for things to stay the same way they are, whether they are in a crystal case or on the floor. In addition to that, Holden wishes things would be less complex and maybe he would be able to solve the problems in his…
Holden’s sadness over Allie’s death is one of the most important things in the story and helps understand Holden’s emotional and mental state. Holden’s inability to deal with his brother’s death and trying to live with the feelings of loss, is the main cause of Holden’s problems with people and failures in school and another reason why the mitt is important and symbolic is because Allie had written poetry on it. Holden shows that writing poetry on the glove is symbolic of Allie being a special person. He thinks that his brother was more smarter than he is and feels guilty that he is healthy and alive, while his brother, who was kinder and smarter, is dead. It is so special to him that he keeps the baseball mitt hidden in a suitcase and only…
The title, The Catcher in the Rye, directly indicates the reoccurring theme of the novel, to protect the innocence of the younger generations. The novel is structured on Holden’s desire to protect all the innocent children in the world from growing up because with age comes experiences that lead to corruption and the loss of innocence.…
J. D. Salinger published Catcher in the Rye in 1951. Later, he wrote several short stories after. The story takes place in New York City in the late 1940s, after WWII. Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye is faced with the problem of growing up in New York. Throughout the book, the theme of growing up is showed. In the story, New York is a society in which there are a lot of phonies. Holden constantly resists the pull of adulthood as it faces him in life. J. D. Salinger develops the theme of growing up through New York and Holden’s resistance to the society.…
Three seconds remain in the tied basketball game. The point guard shoots and scores right before the buzzer sounds off. I bet for a long time, that player worked hard in the gym to practice and perfect his shooting for game time situations like that. It just goes to show that nothing great can ever be achieved without hard work. Holden Caulfield from The Catcher In The Rye, however, does not quite understand this saying. In the story, Holden does not apply himself to his education at Pencey Prep, which results in his expulsion from school. Throughout the story, Holden, as well as a few other characters, represent the terms expressed in Freud’s Theory of Personality known as the id, superego, and ego.…
The genuine joy Holden gets from watching Phoebe is a striking image of his fantasies of innocence and his collapsing psyche. For a moment Holden sees the joy that he envisions all the children of his rye field are like. Within Phoebe’s happiness Holden is transfixed and distraught, because the sudden realization that he is transitioning to a world he does not feel equipped for triggers the end of his ambivalence. As the carousel spins so does Holden’s reality, he loses sense of even further sense of himself. The Catcher in the Rye is a bildungsroman, but it is unique in how Holden not only resists growing up, but also he ends the novel more unstable and lost than he started off as. A quest or journey is supposed to lead to a literal or metaphorical…
Themes in stories can be developed through many different means. It can be openly stated or just simply implied. Throughout history symbolism has been used to develop stories. Even in the bible there are multiple symbols that can be found. J.D. Salinger uses symbols to help readers understand the overall message and theme of his book The Catcher in the Rye. From Holden’s red hunting hat to Allie’s baseball mitt, symbols are constantly being thrown into the story. One other symbol that I think is highly significant is the ducks in Central Park.…
This passage from the book Catcher in the Rye occurs when Holden Caulfield is visiting Mr. Spencer. Since Holden was leaving Pencey Prep as a result of not passing four courses, Mr. Spencer wanted to say goodbye to him before he left. Before Holden's departure, Mr. Spencer asked Holden if he had told his parents about getting kicked out of Pencey Prep and how they felt about it. Holden responded that they will be quite irritated since this is the fourth school Holden had attended. Holden goes on to say that for his age he has a lousy vocabulary, therefore, making it seem that he was a twelve or thirteen-year-old. Ironically as a result of gray hairs, he looks much older than he actually is. In the end as a result of the irony of his character,…
J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is about a young Holden Caulfield’s growth into maturity. Caulfield begins the novel as an inexperienced boarding school student attending Pencey Prep, a private boarding school located in Pennsylvania, who is struggling academically and socially. After getting kicked out of yet another boarding school, Caulfield travels to New York City before going home. After staying in New York for the time period between when he got kicked out and when he can return home Caulfield learns the struggles of living in the adult world. As he experiences New York, it opens his eyes to the painfulness of growing up and he wants to escape it. A major theme in this story is keeping innocence, which is portrayed through Caulfield’s theory about the catcher in the rye, his need to protect his sister, and the red hunting hat.…
The title of the novel The Catcher In The Rye, by JD Salinger, has a…
Holden's love for children first shows itself in his description of his young sister, Phoebe. All of his thoughts up to those of his sister are dark and unsettling. Phoebe's description is so outrightly loving that the reader is shown an entirely new side to Holden, one that shows he is not entirely incapable of happiness. Phoebe's role as a minor character in the novel is to keep Holden anchored to reality; to prevent him from ruining his life completely and losing all hope in his future. It is because of his fear of what Phoebe would do without him that keeps Holden from moving out west.…