How Does Holden Preserve Innocence

While New York City teems with life, it is also plagued with imitation. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is a novel about protagonist, Holden Caulfield, and his inability to cope with the “phoniness” in the world around him. Throughout the book, Holden encounters numerous acts of inauthenticity, catalysing Holden’s unsatisfied peer connections while also additionally serving as the impetus for his increase in depression. Despite the outreach from supportive characters such as Mr. Spencer and Mr. Antolini, Holden continually favors acts of rashness over the transition to maturity and responsibility. When the last of Holden’s innocence is challenged by the adult world, Holden denounces all logic and desperately tries to preserve the ingenuousness of not only his …show more content…
By analyzing Holden’s ambition to preserve innocence, we can see that Wilhelm’s Stekel’s quote mirrors Holden’s rash martyrdom, which most people don’t see; this is important because most readers dismiss Holden’s bias towards phoniness as hypocritical when really Holden is committed to dying for the cause.
Throughout the novel, Holden is actively ambitious in preserving childhood innocence. This allure is represented through Holden’s younger deceased brother, Allie, who not only functions as Holden’s perfect anima, but the impetus for Holden’s entire compulsion to protect guileless qualities. As Allie passed due to leukemia at a young age, Holden’s perception of Allie remains untainted of phoniness, leading Holden to continually view him only as both “the most intelligent member in the family” and “the nicest, in lots of ways” (Salinger 38). Similarly, the survivor’s guilt associated with Allie, whose pure qualities Holden wants to uphold but falls