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. Salinger sets the tone with Holden as his main character, a 17-year-old boy growing up in the late 1940's who doesn't seem to ever want to grow up which has caused him to suffer from what then was thought as a nervous breakdown. Holden has again been expelled from another prep school and in this book recounts the few days in December that he "takes a vacation" before going home to his parent's disappointment. Holden tells his story about his last days at Pency Prep and his excursion to New York City, to his psychiatrist and works as the voice of the novel.

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. Preventing the process of growing up is his passion, it's what he thinks is important. After interacting with Phoebe, his younger sister, Holden realizes that this goal is quite unachievable. Holden wants to be 'the catcher in the rye,' and 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?" Spencer asked Holden. "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 sex with her. Instead Holden later 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. He also tells that every time one visits the museum, he is changed in some way, but the figures in the exhibits always stay the same. He wants to be able to preserve some things in the glass: "Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone," (122).

Holden wants the innocence of children to be frozen behind that glass. When he visits Phoebe's school to give her a note, Holden notices two instances of graffiti on the walls. He succeeds in rubbing one of them off and cannot rub off the other. It depresses Holden to think that someday this kind of graffiti will spoil his sister Phoebe and all of her companions. Up to this point, keeping young children from his dilemma is Holden's sole motive. He soon realizes that this is impossible. Holden sees that becoming the 'catcher in the rye' is an unattainable ideal.

When he meets Phoebe during her lunch break at school, he has made up his mind to leave and hitchhike out west. Phoebe knows this and asks if she can come along. This overwhelms Holden, and he decides not to leave. Instead, he decides