How does Salinger present Holden’s attitude to ‘childhood’ and ‘growing up’ in your three chosen extracts? [Draft Essay]
‘The Catcher in the Rye’ was written by J.D. Salinger and published in 1951. Throughout the novel a number of different themes and issues are addressed, however in this essay I will focus on ‘childhood’ and ‘growing up’ and how Holden feels about them. The theme I shall be focussing on is addressed several times in the novel but I shall only focus on three times the theme is referred to.
A significant point where Holden has an unusually positive outlook related to the theme is in chapter 12. Holden is taking a cab; it was “a vomity kind of” cab that he gets if he goes “anywhere late at night.” It is clear that Holden is being his usual cynical and negative self, indicated by the word choice of the adjective “vomity”. He thought that the cab was so disgusting that it could cause him to vomit. This is a vulgar term typical of Holden’s vocabulary which generally shows his blunt and rude point of view. His mood did not improve when he noticed “a bunch of hoodlumy-guys and their dates, all of them laughing like hyenas at something you could bet wasn’t funny.” Sallinger has adapted a noun, ‘hoodlums’ to be an adjective. It reflects that Holden thinks that the people he is seeing are nothing but petty gangsters or ruffians that are of no importance; this is an example of when Holden judges people and believes he is better than them. Furthermore, the use of the simile “laughing like hyenas” implies that Holden finds their laughing annoying but when he uses the declarative of them laughing at something that isn’t funny, it gives a different interpretation. It represents him as trying to be mature and thinking that they are the ones acting like children, this acts the stimulus of finding them irritating or just seeing them as insignificant. In his eyes, Holden thinks he is acting grown up but from the readers’ point of view all he is being is a rude young man thinking he is better than someone else.
Nevertheless, as the extract proceeds the tone changes. Holden shows a more youthful side to himself and a willingness to encounter mysteries, and this does not happen often when it comes to Holden. Holden asks Horowitz whether he has ever passed “the lagoon in Central Park? Down in Central Park South?” Holden then continues to ask if Horowitz knew about “the ducks that swim around in it?? In the springtime and all? Do you happen to know where they go in the wintertime by any chance?” The ducks and their pond are symbolic and create many connotations. The fact that the pond is “partly frozen and partly not frozen” signifies a transition between two states, or in Holden’s situation his transition from childhood to adulthood. The frozen state of the pond also shows Holden’s awareness of an inhospitable environment that Holden finds himself in; being in New York with nowhere to go and his transition into adulthood. The disappearance of the ducks in wintertime but then coming back in spring represents vanishings that aren’t temporary but cyclical; it represents a fantasy that Holden wants as we know that he was traumatised about his brothers’ death. He was going to be “psychoanalysed and all, because he broke all the windows in the garage.” Consequently the reappearance of the ducks is technically assuring for Holden as from the death of Allie, the reader knows that Holden finds vanishings hard to deal with. Overall, this extract represents a more childish side of Holden who is curious about change.
Further on in the novel though, Holden’s attitude to change differs. In chapter 16 Holden has a feeling of nostalgia and recalls a time he went to The Natural History Museum as a child. According to Holden “the best thing, though, in that museum was everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move.” Holden exaggerates and says you could visit the museum “a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still just be finished catching those two fish, the birds will still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of the water hole,” All the displays are symbolic of being frozen in time and Holden finds peace in this. His ‘catcher in the rye’ fantasy of nothing changing is being represented by the Museum which brings about the theme of nostalgic love. It exposes Holden’s hopeless fantasising and inability to deal with reality as the museum gives Holden a vision of life that he can deal with. In contrast with the first extract, Holden asking about the ducks showed curiosity toward a world of change but while thinking about the museum he dismisses change and is shown to find contentment in the fact that nothing changes in a museum; as usual he is contradicting himself. This view of change however, seems more genuine as it is demonstrated by the language choices chosen by Salinger. The use of the superlative “best” represents Holden’s positive and favourable view of what he talking about (a rare occurrence in the novel), many simple concrete nouns are used too e.g. “birds”, “deers” to name the exhibits. Concrete nouns reflect simplicity which is inevitably mimics the simplicity of Holden’s fantasy of an infinite world where nothing changes. The extract then takes a turn into a more sinister tone where Holden that explains that even though nothing changes in the museum, “the only thing that will be different would be you” The use of the pronoun “you” rather than “I” shows that Holden is trying to distance himself from the change, this represents his discomfort and fear toward change which further implies his dislike of the transition between childhood and adulthood.
My final extract is in chapter 22 when Holden tells Phoebe about his 'catcher in the rye' fantasy and for the reader this declaration elucidates the metaphoric title of the novel. Phoebe was being very childish and exclaiming that "Daddy's going to kill you" to Holden because he has been expelled from Pencey, but he wasn't listening because he "was thinking about something else- something crazy". If he had his own "goddamn choice" he would "be the catcher in the rye and all". The word choice of "goddamn" is there for emphasis. It is an interjection that reflects the height of Holden's emotion at this stage. It also reflects his view on choice, he believes that he has none; he has no choice when leading his life. This explains to the reader in a very simplistic way of why he is struggling at the moment, it is simply because he thinks he has no choice when it comes to his life. He believes he will turn into the phony he perceives everyone else to be.
Holden goes onto explain this fantasy and makes reference to a poem written by Robert Burns called "Comin' Thro' the Rye'. He asks Phoebe if she had heard of the song "if a body catch a body comin' through the rye" but Phoebe corrects him. In fact it is "if a body meet a body coming through the rye". This mistake could be seen as deliberate as the verb "meet" in the context of the song is sexual but Holden says "catch" instead. His error shows him wanting to maintain the innocence within his fantasy which he goes onto explain. He imagines "all these little kids playing some game in this field of rye and all", Holden is "standing on the edge of some crazy cliff" and he has "to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff" and that is what he would do all day. This is symbolic in many ways. Firstly, the field of rye symbolises childhood and the "crazy cliff" symbolises adulthood. Holden has chosen to describe adulthood as falling off of a cliff because he is at that stage right now in his life. This metaphor creates the idea that Holden finds adulthood an extremely large impact on his life. A consequence of this impact is the creation of his fantasy, he feels obligated to stop children from falling into adulthood. This obligation is clarified by use of the auxiliary verb "have". He says "I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff." He says that he would do this all day therefore supporting his satisfaction with simplicity which was represented in my previous extracts. However, a negative connotation of this fantasy is that Holden repeats the use of the word "crazy". He says he was thinking of "something crazy" or he knows that his idea is "crazy". Even though he is so passionate about this idea, he can't bring himself to accept it because he is just clarifying on what he thinks people think of him.
To conclude, Salinger presents Holden's attitude to 'childhood' and 'growing up' in a number of different ways. In my first extract, taken from chapter 12. Holden shows a youthful side to himself and he expresses it through curiosity, but in the second extract from chapter 16 we see a Holden who is afraid of change. Finally, in the third extract from chapter 22 Holden is brutally honest to possibly the only person he can be: Phoebe. Overall, in the three extracts it is shown that Holden adores childhood and wants to hold onto it (reflected by his nostalgic love of the museum) but this passion is causing him to be afraid of change and have a negative perception of adulthood. Ultimately this is causing him mental strain, and acting as the stimulus of Holden's mental illness.