Holden Caulfield's Maturity

In the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the protagonist, Holden Caulfield is portrayed as a brave individual. Throughout the novel, Holden struggles to find his way in a world which he feels he doesn’t belong. In order to protect himself, he shows contempt towards others and remains in constant isolation. Holden is brave through the aspect of his uniqueness and individuality. He tries to connect with other individuals, but is prevented as a result of his protective bitterness. Furthermore, Holden struggles with the issues of growing up and dealing with the death of his brother. As he ages, he sees the superficiality, hypocrisy, pretension, and the shallowness of the world around him. In order to combat this, Holden tries to resist

Holden’s central goal is to resist the process of maturity itself. He is quite immature through constantly wanting everything to be easily understandable and eternally fixed. An example of Holden’s maturity would be when he was at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. While looking at the statues of the Eskimos and Indians, he thought of their simplicity. Following this, Holden contemplated a world where everything is simple and understandable. The purpose of adulthood is to understand differences and to contemplate the complexity of the world around us. As Holden grows up, he sees the superficiality, hypocrisy, pretension, and shallowness of the world around him. After this realization, Holden invents a fantasy that adulthood is a world of superficiality and hypocrisy where adults are inevitable phonies, and they cannot see their own phoniness. In comparison to this, Holden sees childhood as a world of innocence, curiosity, and honesty. In his personal fantasy, he sees children running around a field of rye, which represents childhood. A cliff by the field of rye represents adulthood, as the children will have a fatal cliff fall. Holden’s fantasy is becoming the catcher in the rye, or “saving” these children from the inevitable adulthood. In continuation to this, Holden’s youthful search of ducks represents a lack of understanding as the ducks appear and disappear over the season. The ducks represent how some things only vanish temporarily. This connects to Holden’s brother Allie’s death as he lost his brother permanently. The pond represents a transition between childhood and adulthood as the pond is “partly frozen and partly not frozen”. In conclusion to this, Holden’s bravery can be seen through the difficulty of facing adulthood and comprehending the death of his brother,