Holden's Character Development

Throughout the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger one can see the development of the protagonist, Holden’s character. Initially, he struggles with his own changeover into adulthood, having difficulty taking his future into his own hands, yet ultimately he realizes his place in the world, impacting his character and leading to significant psychological development for Holden. This pivotal moment transpires towards the end of the book when he is speaking with his younger sister, Phoebe. He realizes that he would like to be catcher in a field of rye, stopping children from falling off the cliff. This symbolically means that he would like to stop them from falling into adulthood. This essential moment directly influences Holden’s character,

Holden gets very defensive over his childhood friend, Jane Gallagher. Holden’s viewpoint of Jane is that she is innocent. He finds out that his roommate Stradlater is going on a date with her, and that they will most likely become intimate. Holden gets defensive after learning this and attacks Stradlater. In this instance, one can see that Holden took on this role as protector of innocence, prior to his realization of it; however, his actions are irrational, he acted without thinking. Additionally, before the significant occurrence, Holden is disinterested in his future. One can see that through when he is talking to Mr. Spencer, he does not listen to what he has to say. Mr. Spencer is giving Holden advice about his future, and Holden lies to get out of the situation. He says that, “when [he] told old Spencer [he] had to go to the gym and get [his] equipment and stuff, that was a sheer lie.” Holden is not interested in hearing about his future, and thus lies so that he doesn’t have to listen to Mr. Spencer lecture him. Overall, before the pivotal moment, Holden is immature and careless about his

He finds that there are profanities on the wall, this makes him extremely angry that the kids will see them and therefore tries to rub it off. Holden is attempting to capture their innocence by getting rid of the words. One can see that Holden is taking on the role of catcher in the rye to stop the children from seeing something that would take away from their innocence. Here, Holden is purposefully doing something to protect the innocence of children as he has had a realization of what he wants to do with his life, at this part, Holden is preventing them from seeing something that would take away a part of their innocence. One can see the impact of the pivotal moment on Holden, he is more conscious of what is going on around him, in addition to what he is doing himself. Instead of acting without thinking as he did prior to this moment of realization, he thinks it through and decides to start rubbing the words off the wall, though he thinks of acting irrationally, saying that he’d, “smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody,” referring to the man that wrote the profanities. However, rather than just doing this, he thinks it through and decides against it, and acts in a more responsible way showing psychological