Catcher In The Rye :: essays research papers

In JD Salingers Catcher in the Rye, a troubled stripling named Holden Caufield struggles with the fact that everyone has to grow up. The book gets its title from Holdens constant concern with the damage of innocence. He did not want children to grow up because he mat that adults are corrupt. This is seen when Holden tries to erase naughty words from the walls of an elementary train where his jr. sister Phoebe attended. "While I was sitting down, I cut just aboutthing that drove me crazy. Some soundboxd written Fuck you on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other elflike kids would see it, and how theyd enquire what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would rank them- all cockeyed, naturally- what it meant, and how theyd all think about it and maybe even vex about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to bug out whoeverd written it. I figured it was some perverty bum thatd sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall. I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how Id smash his head on the stone steps till hew as good and goddam dead and bloody." (201) His deep concern with impeccability caused him to relieve oneself stereotypes of a hooligan that would try to corrupt the children of an elementary school. Holden believed that children were innocent because they viewed the land and society without any bias. When Phoebe asked him to name something that he would like to be when he grew up, the only thing he would have liked to be was a "catcher in the rye." He invented an illusion for himself of a grotesque fantasy. He stated that he would like to follow a poem by Robert Burns "If a body catch a body comin through the rye." He kept "picturing all these little kids play some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobodys around- nobody big, I mean- except me. And Im standing on the edge o f some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they endure to go over the cliff- I mean if theyre running and they dont look where theyre personnel casualty I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.