Holden Caulfield's Red Hunting Hat

Every person has a prized possession that reveals something significant about themselves. In the Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, the protagonist, Holden Caulfield cherishes his red hunting hat. The reader’s first encounter the red hunting hat in chapter three where Holden describes how he got it in his hometown of New York City after losing his fencing foils. Salinger never clearly wrote in the story why Holden holds dear to it. However, there were several references in his novel about this particular hat which puts a thought in the reader’s mind that it holds a symbolic meaning to it. The hunting hat’s significance in the novel is that by wearing it, it helps Holden manage his feelings, indicate his self assigned duty as “the catcher …show more content…
He utilizes his red hunting hat to communicate his emotions like while he was writing a composition for Stradlater’s English class. After Holden had come back from his night out in Agerstown with his acquaintance, Ackley, and friend Mal Brossard, he decided to concentrate on writing Stradlater’s essay. However before he began writing, Holden “put on [his] pajamas and bathrobe and [his] old hunting hat”(Salinger, 37). Holden puts on the red hat in order to write about his deceased brother Allie and his baseball mitt. Throughout the novel, Holden has never mentioned the hat being a part of his nightwear, therefore one can infer that he put it on specifically for Stradlater’s paper about his brother helping him to organize his thoughts. Also, that same night before Stradlater left the house, he mentioned that he was going on a date with a girl named Jane Gallagher, a girl Holden was neighbors with and sincerely liked. When Stradlater came back to the dormitory, a fight emerges between the Holden and him leaving them both hurt. Holden is laying on the floor waiting for Stradlater to leave and states, “I got up. I couldn’t find my goddam hunting hat anywhere. Finally I found it. It was under the bed. I put it on, and turned the old peak around to the back, the way I liked it,”(45). The little rumble between both roommates was about how Stradlater went out with Jane. Holden got angry at the thought that Stradlater would take away Jane’s innocence. As soon as Holden puts on his hat, he is able to calm down and keep Jane along with his injury off his mind. Along with Holden’s hat which allows him to handle his feelings, it also allows him to express them. When Holden was leaving Pencey, his boarding school, he was slightly depressed. He narrates to the reader, “I was sort of crying. I don’t know why. I put my red