Catcher In The Rye Literary Analysis

In the Catcher in the Rye, Holden who is the main character, makes the decision to help protect the innocence and purity of children. In the book, The author J.D. Salinger, implements objects and other scenes to express Holden’s ideas relating to preserving the innocence of young children. Three of these scenes or objects are: the profane graffiti sprayed in Phoebe’s school and the Museum of Natural History, the frozen pond in the park, and Holden’s analogy about the baseball game. Holden believes the most important thing in a child’s life is his/her purity and innocence.

The first symbol relating to the innocence of children was the profane graffiti written on the walls of both the school walls where Phoebe attends school, and the outer …show more content…
In the analogy, Holden explains how there is a game being played. There are the children falling from a hypothetical cliff while playing in the rye, which represents childhood. The fall the children are taking represents the fall of childhood and the change taken on their way to adulthood and corruption. As the children fall from the cliff, Holden pictures himself wearing a giant catchers mitt, used in baseball, ready to catch kids as they fall off the hypothetical cliff while playing in the rye. As the children fall from the cliff towards the catchers mitt, they pass across a baseball field. The field represents their childhood innocence and purity. As the children pass by the field towards Holden’s mitt, they speed by their innocence without even thinking about what is on either side of them. If Holden was not at the end prepared to catch the children, they would continue to fall until they were so corrupt and no longer possessed the innocence and purity that make a child in the ideal world. Holden represents the attempt to shelter kids from growing up and protect them from the cruelty of the world and the impure vulgarity brought forth throughout