Analysis Of J. D. Salinger's Catcher In The Rye

Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, is

going through a crucial time in his adolescence – his teenage years. Holden often

struggles with maturing, although he wants to appear comfortable. Holden drinks and

smokes, but struggles with sex. In the same way, Holden uses words such as “bastard”

and “ass”, but “fuck you” written on school museum walls cross Holden’s lines.

Salinger uses the “fuck you” graffiti to express Holden’s difficulty with the

inevitability of growing up and the loss of youth and innocence.

Holden is inside of his school, on the way to deliver a note to his sister when

he sits down and notices the first “fuck you” written on a wall. “Somebody’d written

‘fuck you’ on the

Earlier in the novel, Holden talks about the museum he often visited as a child.

“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right

where it was… The only thing that would be different would be you,” (Salinger 121).

Holden liked the museum because no matter what happened or changed in his own

life, the museum would always be exactly the same. It helped him capture his

childhood.

After Holden left the school, he goes to where the letter told Phoebe to meet

him – the museum. He sits next to a tomb, and feels “so nice and peaceful,” (Salinger

204). Then, he sees another “fuck you”. “It was written with a red crayon,” (Salinger

204). Salinger uses the crayon, a writing utensil mainly used by children, to show the

reader that the “fuck you” was most likely written by a child. Here, Salinger

implements irony into his writing, because Holden is trying so hard to save the

children from this evil, when the children themselves are causing it. This further

enhances Salinger’s point of Holden using children as an excuse for preserving his

own innocence, which goes on to show Holden’s difficulty with loosing