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The Catcher in The Rye Many people find that their dreams are unreachable.
Holden Caulfield realizes this in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. As
Holden tells his story, he recounts the events since leaving the Pencey School
to his psychiatrist. At first, Holden sounds like a typical, misguided teenager,
rebellious towards his parents, angry with his teachers, and flunking out of
school. However, as his story progresses, it becomes clear that Holden is indeed
motivated, just not academically. He has a purpose: to protect the young and
innocent minds of young children from the “horrors” of adult society. He hopes
to freeze the children in time, as wax figures are frozen in a museum. After
interacting with Phoebe, his younger sister, Holden realizes that this goal is
quite unachievable. Holden wants to be the Catcher in the Rye, then realizes it
is an unreachable ideal. Holden begins his story misguided and without
direction. After flunking out of the Pencey School, Holden decides to leave
early. Before he leaves, though, he visits his teacher, Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer
and Holden talk about his direction in life: “‘Do you feel absolutely no concern
for your future, boy?’ ‘Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure.
Sure, I do.’ I thought about it for a minute. ‘But not too much, I guess,’”
(14). After leaving Pencey, he checks into a hotel where he invites a prostitute
up to his room.
He gets cold feet and decides not to have intercourse with her,
though. Later, Holden decides to take his old girlfriend, Sally Hayes, to the
theater. After taking her to the theater, Holden formulates a crazy plan which
entails running away with Sally, getting married, and growing old together.
Sally thinks that he is crazy, and she decides to go home. During his stay away
from home, Holden drinks and smokes, showing even more misdirection. However,
when Holden returns home and talks to his sister, Phoebe, his direction becomes
clear. Holden wants to be the Catcher in the Rye to protect children from the
world in which he is forced to live. While talking with Phoebe, she asks Holden
what he would like to be. He responds saying: “‘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’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.’” (173)
Holden wants to protect the innocence of his sister and every other innocent
child in the world. Before Holden meets Sally for their date, he stops in front
of the Museum of Natural History and begins to reminisce. He thinks about the
way he visited the museum when he was younger.
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