Theme Of Growing Up In Catcher In The Rye

Growing up possess difficulties to the vast majority of people by leaving the pure innocent minds of children, to confront the truth of adulthood. The leading character, Holden Caulfield, from The Catcher in The Rye by J.D. Salinger, feels that he needs to protect minors, however, acknowledges he will sooner or later grow up. He has an urge to shield kids from the revolting world. Be that as it may, he is battling in light of the fact that he would want to remain innocent, as opposed to surrounded. He discovers that all children need help from others to remain pure. Holden seeks for stability in his life and that is why he finds the change from childhood to adulthood something so hard to achieve. He is frightened of the future; scared to discover

In Holden’s mind, once you become an adult, you change and become fake and materialistic, unlike children, who are innocent and pure. This is one of the main causes of why Holden has the urge to protect him and the other kids. “I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff”. Holden thinks that his purpose in life is to save children from committing the error of ‘falling’ or of growing up. Even though Holden knows that he will sooner or later grow, he wants to protect others from going through what he is going through. Being the catcher in the rye helps Holden live surrounded by innocence while at the same time understand life from the perspective of an adult.For Holden, taking the innocence away from anyone is an action that has to be punished. When Holden looks at what was written in the bathroom walls, (fuck you) he believes that “it was some pervert bum that'd sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall” (225). Holden cannot imagine that a kid, whose mind is supposed to be clean and pure, wrote such perverted phrases. Thus Holden innately blames it on an adult, once again classifying him as someone that was a pervert with no innocence or respect towards the kids in the school. Holden’s worst nightmare is to become his picture of an adult, but

Not accepting that he was becoming an adult, was only confusing his mind thus making him become an unstable person with many mental issues. The only way to stop Holden’s depression was to accept that sooner or later maturity would have to happen. He finally realizes this when he takes Phoebe to the carousel. Holden not wanting to step in the carousel with Phoebe and telling her that “Maybe [he] will ride next time”(232), shows he has finally decided to mature and take care of the innocence of his sister from outside, until her time to grow up comes. Finally being able to accept that, made Holden realize that life is meant to have changed in it and that you can only protect someone to one certain level. “The thing with kids is, if they want to grab the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them.”(230). He finally realizes that in order to find your path in life, you have to let yourself flow to wherever the wind current takes you. This final closure to the process of coming of age changed Holden’s way of viewing the world. He could finally say that he felt so “damn happy all of a sudden”( 233), rather than saying that everything he saw made him feel