Holden's Fear Of Growing Up In The Cather In The Rye

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Holden Caulfield and his fear of growing up
The Cather in the Rye introduces the reader to a confused, Holden Caulfield, who is torn between his curiosity to grow up, and his want to stay young and maintain innocence. The novel displays symbols and imagery through Holden’s interactions with his sister Phoebe, The red hunting hat in which Holden thinks is comical looking, the baseball mitt and the Museum of Natural History. Holden uses these to express his rejection to change and growing up. Through the further examinations of these symbols and images, we can begin to understand the mind of Holden Caulfield and his fear of growing up.

Phoebe, Holden’s younger sister, is the symbol of childhood innocence that Holden hopes to protect from this phony world that is filled with filth and a disgusting reality. Holden believed that children were innocent because they viewed the world and society without any bias. Through out the novel, Holden hangs on to memories of Allie as a innocent child, but can’t do anything now because Allie is dead. He now puts his greatest efforts in keeping Phoebe’s innocents by nurturing her and always surrounding her with childish events. Nevertheless Holden finds much joy seeing her in these types of environments. Because Holden has been exposed to this phony world, and cannot gain his innocence back, he feels that bringing Phoebe to a carousel ride will help preserve her childhood. Holden thinks it is important for Phoebe to keep her innocence and stay a child as long as possible because in Holden’s personal experience, he had never really showed a liking into anyone except for a small handful. He saw bad in almost everyone and viewed the world as corrupt, which is why Holden Caulfield has a fear of g...

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... museum because although life went on and things happened in the real world, he could always return to the museum and expect the same that he did the last time he was there. Yet although Holden loves this about the museums he hates the fact that with every time he comes back, he is older and more mature. He is coming back with a little less innocence that he did the previous time.

Now having identified and explained all of Holden Caulfield’s emotional struggles between his curiosities with growing up and his need to preserve innocence through symbols and imagery, Holden begins to realize this efforts are useless. He is aware life goes on and everyone will be exposed to the cruelty and phoniness of the world at some point or another. He just believed he could postpone the inevitable truth for the ones he considered to be still innocent including himself.

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