What Does Holden's Hat Symbolize

Holden Caulfield, the teenage protagonist of Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger, struggles with having to enter the adult world. Holden leaves school early and stays in New York by himself until he is ready to return home. Holden wants to be individual, yet he also wants to fit in and not grow up. The author uses symbolism to represent Holden’s internal struggle. While in New York with the fencing team, Holden loses all of their equipment, then buys a red hunting hat. Holden describes the hat as a, “red hunting hat, with one of those very, very, very long peaks… The way I wore it, I swung the old peak way around back - very corny, I’ll admit, but I liked it that way.”(Salinger, 24) The hat makes him stand out and seem like a unique person.

I don’t know why, I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice ‘Sleep tight, ya morons!’”(68) Putting the hat on comforts him and gives him the confidence to yell and wake everyone up. In private he uses the hat to make himself seem more individual and to give himself confidence. He puts the hunting hat on again once he leaves Pencey, “I didn’t give a damn how I looked. Nobody was around anyway.”(69), but once he gets on the train, “All I did was take off my hunting hat and put it in my pocket.” (70). Holden likes how the hat makes him feel individual but he is still embarrassed to wear it in public. He still wants to fit in with all the phonies and

He often wonders about the ducks in central park and where they go in the winter. Holden asks a cab driver, “does somebody come around in a truck or something and take them away, or do they fly away by themselves - go south or something?” (107). Just like the ducks must somehow escape winter, Holden must escape the pressure he feels as he struggles with his independence. Should he fly south and escape his life, or get provided for by his parents? Holden wants to be independent but he wonders if it is really the best thing to do. He is too emotionally unstable to address his own issues so he projects them onto the ducks, do they take care of themselves and fly away? Or do they allow themselves to be saved by the truck? The cab driver answers his question by bringing up the fish in the lagoon. He says that the fish do not go anywhere and that they just open their pores so nature can provide for them. Holden wants to be told that someone helps the ducks and the fish through the winter. Holden wants help during his teenage years, but his mother is still grieving over the death of his brother so she is, “nervous as hell” (206). Holden needs to open up to his parents the same way the fish open their pores for nature to provide for