Reality Catcher In The Rye

J.D Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye, is the home of one of the most complex and intriguing characters in literature, Holden Caulfield. Holden seems to always be running away, always trying to escape reality. He desperately tries to handle his life and emotions, but he can hardly do it. The novel depicts Holden frantically trying to cope by creating a fantasy world, filled with perfect and simple people that he idolizes. He places himself in this world, making himself into a hero. Whenever these mechanisms began to fail, he would dream of running away, and as a last resort, Holden will actually run away.

Holden has created fantasy world as a form of escape. The fantasies Holden Spends the most time talking about are running away, to

Jane is a large part of this world, and has become an ideal girl to spend his life with. Holden only knew Jane for a short time, but according to him, they were very close. He has not seen her since “the summer before last” when their lake houses were next to each other (35), yet he has built her up to a pure and undefiled figure, resembling the Virgin Mary. A part of the reason he idolized her so much is that he longs to go back to their childhood and that time of innocence, and to see her so once innocent again. She and Holden were close, emotionally and physically, but he never saw her uncorrupted by sex. When describing their relationship, he says, “I really got to know her quite intimately. I do not mean it was physical or anything - it wasn’t - but we saw each other all the time. You do not always have to get too sexy to get to know a girl.” (85) Since the farthest Holden ever got with Jane physically was “kissing her all over - anywhere - her eyes, her nose, her forehead, her eyebrows and all”, he saw her as an innocent and uncorrupted girl (88). Holden’s imaginative world begins to fall apart as the narrative goes on, and when he has the chance to see Jane again, but does not. When Stradlater asks Holden why he isn’t going down to see Jane, he says “‘I’m not in the mood right now’” (37). He even admits how angry it made him to think about Jane being intimate with Stradlater, later saying, “Every part I got to the part about her out with Stradlater in that damn Ed Banky’s car, it almost drove me crazy.” (89) His mental state is so fragile that if Jane is not as perfect as he expected, which she can not possibly be, he could not cope, and his world began to crumble even faster around