What Is The Catcher In The Rye Theme Of Loss Of Innocence

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel about a boy named Holden Caufield, whose continual struggle throughout the novel of when to act like an adult or a child provides many situations in which his paradoxical personality, thoughts on innocence, and three major themes come out which in turn help provide many lenses for those two ideas. The three themes of loss of innocence, search for identity, and pursuit of happiness are the three main means in which
J.D. Salinger demonstrates Holdens layered personality. Throughout the novel Holden gets himself into situations that question his innocence, and the way he handles himself and his demeanor in those scenarios show what he is truly thinking, or possibly the direction he is going. What Holden values

While at Allie’s grave, Holden says this. “but twice we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone… It rained all over the place. All the visitors that came started to run like hell to their cars. It bothered the hell out of me” (Salinger 155-156). This shows that while Holden should be focusing on seeing Allie and thinking about all the good memories they had, all he can see are the people running to their cars. This quote demonstrates Holdens pursuit of happiness, or his extreme struggle to be actually happy. Later on though through parallelism, his happiness is actually achieved, or at least the beginning of his redemption. This is when Holden walks to the carousel with Phoebe and she decides to ride on it, but it begins to rain. “Boy, it began to rain like a bastard… all the parents went and stood right under the carousel, but I stuck around on the bench for a while. I felt so damn happy all of a sudden” (Salinger 212-213). This shows that even in the pouring rain getting soaked, Holden is able to be happy and focus on the thing he loves most, Phoebe. This is extremely important because it is direct parallelism from the scene where Holden is at Allies grave and it started to rain. The key differences between the two scenarios is that Holden is with Phoebe, not Allie, and that he is actually able to be happy. As a result, Holden has achieved the pursuit of happiness. Through that, he is able to focus on other aspects of his life, such as the thought of