Holden on to Innocence
(Formalist Approach)
Through his emotional roller coaster across Manhattan, Holden Caulfield insists on obtaining something that is impossible: the ability to preserve innocence. From the start of the novel, J.D. Salinger straps us in and keeps us gripping on to the bars by revealing detail after detail of Holden’s life, allowing us to better understand his unwillingness to desert the comfort of innocence and conform to adulthood. For example, while speaking to his younger sister, Phoebe, Holden admits he wants to stand in a field of rye where children play and catch them as they near the edge of a cliff; a metaphor for preventing children from transitioning into adulthood. Salinger conveys Holden’s reluctance to move …show more content…
Often mentioning how much he dislikes change, Holden favors the ease that came with being a child. An example of the aforementioned is when he reveals how much he used to enjoy visiting the Museum of Natural History. The exhibits in the museum were simplistic and never went through any extreme changes. Holden comments “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move… Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.” After making this remark Salinger reveals that in red crayon “Fuck you” has been written on the wall in the museum. Presenting a change in the museum shatters Holden’s philosophy, and perhaps insinuates that children may not be as innocent as Holden perceives them to be. Mentioning the expletive being written in crayon, which is usually associated with children, Salinger is relaying the possibility of children being as obscene as adults could be. Holden refuses to comprehend that the divide between child and adult is rather blurred and is instead disturbed by “adult values.” According to Peter J. Seng in The Fallen Idol: The Immature World of Holden Caulfield, “He sees that the world belongs to adults, and it seems to him that they have filled it with phoniness, pretense, social compromise. He would prefer a world that is honest, sincere, simple.” Holden is …show more content…
Mitchell examines Holden’s younger sister, Phoebe, who bears a name similar to Phoebus, or Apollo, the god of knowledge and poetry. “As pure as Holden makes Phoebe appear, she has wisdom that belies her years,” states Mitchell. While Holden is visiting Phoebe we realize she is very perceptive, perhaps a bit too perceptive for a ten-year-old. Mitchell provides evidence of Phoebe’s wisdom, such as seeing straight through Holden’s “façade of well-being” and requesting him to identify something he likes. Ultimately causing Holden to discover that he doesn’t like anything. When Phoebe’s mother smells smoke in her room, Phoebe is quick to cover up and say that it was her who took just one puff when in reality it was Holden. Similarly, when her mother complains of a headache Phoebe quickly prescribes a few aspirins. Mitchell questions “Does Phoebe’s covert wisdom support Holden’s premise that society is corrupt?” Mitchell suggests that Salinger constructed Phoebe as a flaw in Holden’s thesis. Holden wants to proclaim and preserve the innocence of children, however, as Mitchell reveals, “not all is as easily categorized as it appears” and perhaps not all children are as innocent as they
(Formalist Approach)
Through his emotional roller coaster across Manhattan, Holden Caulfield insists on obtaining something that is impossible: the ability to preserve innocence. From the start of the novel, J.D. Salinger straps us in and keeps us gripping on to the bars by revealing detail after detail of Holden’s life, allowing us to better understand his unwillingness to desert the comfort of innocence and conform to adulthood. For example, while speaking to his younger sister, Phoebe, Holden admits he wants to stand in a field of rye where children play and catch them as they near the edge of a cliff; a metaphor for preventing children from transitioning into adulthood. Salinger conveys Holden’s reluctance to move …show more content…
Often mentioning how much he dislikes change, Holden favors the ease that came with being a child. An example of the aforementioned is when he reveals how much he used to enjoy visiting the Museum of Natural History. The exhibits in the museum were simplistic and never went through any extreme changes. Holden comments “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move… Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.” After making this remark Salinger reveals that in red crayon “Fuck you” has been written on the wall in the museum. Presenting a change in the museum shatters Holden’s philosophy, and perhaps insinuates that children may not be as innocent as Holden perceives them to be. Mentioning the expletive being written in crayon, which is usually associated with children, Salinger is relaying the possibility of children being as obscene as adults could be. Holden refuses to comprehend that the divide between child and adult is rather blurred and is instead disturbed by “adult values.” According to Peter J. Seng in The Fallen Idol: The Immature World of Holden Caulfield, “He sees that the world belongs to adults, and it seems to him that they have filled it with phoniness, pretense, social compromise. He would prefer a world that is honest, sincere, simple.” Holden is …show more content…
Mitchell examines Holden’s younger sister, Phoebe, who bears a name similar to Phoebus, or Apollo, the god of knowledge and poetry. “As pure as Holden makes Phoebe appear, she has wisdom that belies her years,” states Mitchell. While Holden is visiting Phoebe we realize she is very perceptive, perhaps a bit too perceptive for a ten-year-old. Mitchell provides evidence of Phoebe’s wisdom, such as seeing straight through Holden’s “façade of well-being” and requesting him to identify something he likes. Ultimately causing Holden to discover that he doesn’t like anything. When Phoebe’s mother smells smoke in her room, Phoebe is quick to cover up and say that it was her who took just one puff when in reality it was Holden. Similarly, when her mother complains of a headache Phoebe quickly prescribes a few aspirins. Mitchell questions “Does Phoebe’s covert wisdom support Holden’s premise that society is corrupt?” Mitchell suggests that Salinger constructed Phoebe as a flaw in Holden’s thesis. Holden wants to proclaim and preserve the innocence of children, however, as Mitchell reveals, “not all is as easily categorized as it appears” and perhaps not all children are as innocent as they