Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye

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Recommended: Use of Symbolism

One definition of a microscope is "an optical instrument that uses a lens or a combination of lenses to produce magnified images of objects." Holden Caufield can be symbolized by a microscope and its parts: the field of view, the focus, and the magnifier.

Holden is like the whole of the microscope in three ways. Firstly, a microscope is delicate and needs great amounts of care to keep it in good shape. Holden is also like this. He needs interaction with people to keep him healthy. Secondly, a microscope views things with scrutiny and is used to see things that may not be seen by the naked eye. Holden does this by being true in his observations about people and his surroundings. Thirdly, although a microscope can provide large amounts of information, it gives a false sense of how large objects really are. Holden, in his interactions with others, also does this when giving false names to people.

The magnifier of the microscope has three magnifications (4X, 10X, 40X) and can increase when the user wants a closer look at the object he is viewing. The higher the magnification, the more information the user can obtain about that object. Holden does this in his interactions with people. If the person seems interesting, he wants to know more about them and tries to get closer to them. But if he considers them to be phony, he is not inquisitive and does not feel that he must take a closer look at them, other than what he sees on the surface.

The focus of the microscope has both a fine focus and a coarse focus. The coarse focus knob changes the vie greatly while the fine focus tunes the view relatively little. If the wrong focus knob is used, the focusing range on the object may be lost. Holden is like these knobs. He must be listened to and attended to at certain levels, and if he is not, all perspective and understanding about him could be lost. It takes the ability of someone such as Phoebe to have the skill to adjust to Holden carefully.

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