Themes Of The Catcher In The Rye

Throughout this novel many themes appeared in The Cather in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, a story about a 17-year-old boy who deals with constant heartache and tries to find himself. Unfortunately it takes many hardships to really figure out why everything happens in his life. The three main themes that occurred throughout this novel are the phonies of the world, childhood innocence, and mortality. These themes really give an idea of why the main character is who he is.

Holden the main character throughout the novel relied on the fact that every single person he had met was a complete phony. As Holden is talking to Mr. Spencer he really started to get into why he really dropped out of his two other schools. For example, “One of the biggest
As Holden goes through the book he realizes he doesn't have much childhood innocence left. For example, “Hey how old are you anyways?” "Me? Twenty-two." "Like fun you are. "It was a funny thing to say. It sounded like a real kid. You'd think a prostitute and all would say, "Like hell you are" or "Cut the crap" instead of "Like fun you are." (Salinger 105,106) This shows Holden notices that ironically sunny the prostitute still has some innocence left. In addition, this really affects him, how can someone so young act this way. Younger children really got to Holden. They were so young and had so much ahead of them. For instance, “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deer’s would still be drinking out of that water hole.” (Salinger 135) This shows that Holden wishes he didn’t have to grow up. He continually looses his childhood innocence everyday. The life lesson I concluded from this theme is that eventually we all have to grow and just because are childhood goes doesn’t mean our innocence
Holden wasn’t really into talking but he always had an excuse for something because of Allie. He was a very lonesome person all because of the death he had to deal with as a young child. For example, “He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You'd have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent. He was terrifically intelligent. His teachers were always writing letters to my mother, telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Allie in their class. And they weren't just shooting the crap. They really meant it. But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways.” (Salinger Chp 5) This shows he loved Allie and spoke very highly of him and questions why something like this could happen to someone so amazing. In addition, Holden would always bring the death of Allie up or something about death; he never had anything positive to say. For instance, “Finally I sat down on this bench, where it wasn't so goddam dark. Boy, I was still shivering like a bastard, and the back of my hair, even though I had my hunting hat on, was sort of full of little hunks of ice. That worried me. I thought probably I'd get pneumonia and die. I started picturing millions of jerks coming to my funeral and all.” (Salinger chp 20) This shows that since Allie died he wishes upon a