The transition between childhood and adulthood and the process of gaining maturity are themes that have been written about in a positive way countless times. J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye does just the opposite; it portrays the loss of innoncene and the perversions of adulthood through the eyes of it’s antihero adolescent protagonist, Holden Caulfield. Holden’s opinions about growing up are an important aspect around which the whole storyline revolves, and this essay will concretely demonstrate the presence of this theme throughout the book.
First of all, the most evident portrayal of the importance of children’s loss of innocence in the novel is it’s title, The Catcher in the Rye, and the explanation surrounding it in chapter 22, when Holden tells his sister Phoebe about a dream he has. The dream goes as such: "Anyway, I keep picturing all 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. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be." This dream of Holden’s is an elaborate metaphor; his dream of catching children before they fall off a cliff and die represents his desire to stop children from growing up, to stop their childhood from dying. Thus, to him, adulthood is something completely negative, like death, which should be prevetend.
Second of all, the negative side of gaining maturity is represented in the book through Holden’s resistance against this natural process. Although he has some adult sides to him, for example calling a prostitute, drinking and wandering throughout New-York alone, he continually denies his adulthood and thinks like a child, concrete examples of this being his straightforward comments about everything and anything and his random wonderements about where the ducks go when the pond freezes over in the wintertime. Furthermore, Holden sees the world in black and white, with no shades of grey in the middle, as children do. For example, to him all adults are ‘’phonies’’ and hypocrits and childhood is a perfect state, with no room for honest adults or the bad aspects of being a child between this. Also, he resists maturity by only confiding in his younger sister Phoebe and putting her on a pedestal; except for her, Holden is close and honest to no one.
To conclude, in writing this novel J.D. Salinger was able to represent the difficulties of letting go of our past as children and the feelings of loss and alienation that go hand in hand with this process. Although this novel was written over 50 years ago, Holden’s thoughts and loneliness defy time as they still mirror most adolescents’ inner feelings, as is proved by the fact that this classic is read in almost all high schools throughout North America. This book therefore reaches out to people, because as Mr. Antolini said to Holden, he’s not "the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior."
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