How can the idea of innocence shape the meaning of a person’s life?
Because Holden Caulfield in J. D. Salinger’s the Catcher in the Rye held an innocent view …show more content…
During his date with Sally at an ice rink, Holden came up with the idea of driving out to another state with Sally, getting married and living in a cabin for a while: “How would you like to get the hell out of here?...What we could do is, tomorrow morning we could...stay in these cabin camps...Then, when the dough runs out, I could get a job somewhere and we could live somewhere with a brook and all and, later on, we could get married or something” (Salinger 146-147). Even though Holden had an absurd and irrational idea, he displayed a childlike excitement and optimism towards an unseen future. In addition, during his visit with Phoebe, Holden also displayed an innocent optimism towards his future even though he failed Pencey: “'Nobody's gonna kill me. Use your head. In the first place, I'm going away. What I may do, I may get a job on a ranch or something for a while. I know this guy whose grandfather's got a ranch in Colorado. I may get a job out there,'” (Salinger 183). Again, Holden brings up his idea of moving to another place and getting a job somewhere even though he flunked another school. His adolescence of the future shapes the novel as a whole because he continues with his life on the fantasy that everything will have a good resolution in the end. Despite being miserable with many of his encounters with people and longing to relive the past, his innocent dream of the future gave him hope-a feeling that he doesn’t normally have in the