Holden Caulfield’s Struggle in The Catcher in the Rye

Aristotle once said, “Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing.” This “condition,” as Aristotle says, is adolescence. Adolescence is much like jumping in a lake. One must walk out to the dock and once he or she is at the end, one cannot turn back. If one is to turn back they will be ridiculed as a coward, like a child. The water is ice cold, a freezing ice bath, so one does not want to jump in, but he or she can’t turn back for fear of jeer from friends. Therefore one is in a dilemma of confusion and tension between “chickening out” and braving the polar water of the lake. The land is childhood, safe and comfortable, but gone forever; and the artic water is unknown, unpleasant, and threatening like adulthood. Just like the awkward stage of being in between jumping in and abandonment, adolescence contains the strains and tension between childhood and adulthood. In the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the main character Holden Caulfield, experiences these tensions of adolescence. Holden’s quandary is he is deadlocked in adolescence, unable to go return to childhood but unwilling to progress forward to adulthood. Because Holden is consumed with the impossible task of preserving the innocence of childhood, so he delays the inevitability of becoming an adult. This leaves Holden stranded on the dock, stuck in adolescence; the center of Holden’s problems.

Holden madly wants to protect the innocence and purity of childhood, but of course cannot. After the death of Allie, Holden’s brother, he wants to save others from what was painfully taken away from him. Holden desperately tries to protect children from losing their purity, to protect them from the same ...

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...cape it. Holden, just like Aristotle said, needs time and he eventually begins to grow out of his awkward stage of adolescence. He comes to terms that he does not have to be a child to keep Allie in his heart, which enables him to grow up. Holden’s description of D.B.’s girlfriend gives Holden hope to accept that only some people are phonies and his ability to now move past that. As painful as growing up is for Holden, eventually, he is able to start moving past his quandary of “permanent intoxication,” and be able to embrace adulthood.

Works Cited

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York; Little Brown and Company, 1951

Aristotle. "Quote Details: Aristotle: Young People Are In... - The Quotations Page." The Quotations Page - Your Source for Famous Quotes. Michael Moncur, 1994. Web. 17 Jan. 2011. .