Catcher In The Rye Literary Analysis

1254 Words3 Pages

Albert Einstein once wrote, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” Albert Einstein is justifying that although people may believe that their fate is the cause of their actions, they are simply deluded. In reality, the universe is the actual creator of fate. Holden Caulfield is consistently concealing the truth with delusions that seem so legitimate that he does not even question them. In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger depicts Holden as a troubled teen who cannot seem to stay in one school long enough before being kicked out. Readers soon understand that Holden has inner complications that he is struggling to overcome; he is mourning his brother Allie’s death, he wants his parents to care for him, he despises those …show more content…

Readers observe that Salinger uses the profanity on the walls, the gunshot wound, and the Museum of Natural History to develop the theme that people should see reality as it is instead of creating illusions to protect themselves from their problems.
Holden’s attempt to erase the profanity off of the walls helps to enhance the theme by signifying that eliminating the loss of innocence is an illusion when in reality, he cannot stop others from maturing. When Holden sits down on the staircase and sees the profanity, he wonders, “I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it” (260). After realizing how all the young children at the school would see what was written on the walls, he decides that he should erase it. He hopes that by erasing the words that he will be protecting all the kids from losing their innocence. Holden’s theory that he will be able to assure the children’s unharmed innocence is purely a deception. In reality, he cannot stop the children from growing up. Once he decides to erase the profanity, he goes down another …show more content…

While thinking about the museum, Holden says, “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move” (157). Holden does not like it when people change. The museum is his way of masking the reality that people do in fact change and grow up with his illusion that he is the only one. Holden likes the idea that whenever he goes back to visit the museum, “The only thing that would be different would be you” (158). Holden enjoys stepping into the museum and finding that everything around him is the same as it was the last time he visited. Holden thinks that if he is the only one that changes, then he does not have to worry about others disappointing him or leaving him. Thus, why he pretends to have everything around him stay, even though in reality it does not. When Holden finally arrives at the museum he decides not to go in, and he says, “When I got to the museum, all of a sudden I wouldn't have gone inside for a million bucks. It just didn't appeal to me - and here I’d walked through the whole goddam park and looked forward to it” (159). Holden decides not to enter the museum because if he does and the museum is different than it was the last time he visited, then he will be crushed to find that his beloved childhood memories are gone. If he goes in, he will also realize how much he has changed, in an inferior way, and he is too scared

Open Document