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Recommended: Sexuality in literature

We all grow up, and for some, it is more tumultuous than others. J.D.Salinger is known for encompassing in Literary form the struggles of the transition from a young adolescent to the experience of living in the adult world and highlighting what is important to a teenager during their journey to maturity. Salinger discusses certain themes important to the average teenager such as the protection of innocence, sexual frustration, and refusal to let go of the world they leave behind when they enter adulthood with diction, narration and symbols.

The main purpose of The Catcher in The Rye is to glorify and show the importance of innocence and why it should be protected. This means that Holden has to choose between the adult life that he will take, or continue to lead a life of childhood. Bryan beautifully summarizes the plot of this novel here: “ Holden is poised between two worlds, one he cannot return to and the other he fears to enter.”(Bryan 4) Holden’s main issue is the he is “hypersensitive to the exploitations and insensitivity of the post pubescent world and to the fragility of children” (Bryan 4) Throughout the entire novel he struggles to understand other character such as Ackley and Stradlater, both are extremes of the personality spectrum. In this spectrum, Ackley is the “Nerd” and Stradlater is the “jock” both are characters Holden doesn’t want to be. He also doesn’t want to become a sex machine, as exemplified with his experience with sunny, a young hooker he hires but only talked to before being extorted and being betrayed by her and her pimp. (Salinger 90) another sign that Holden doesn’t want to grow into a sexual being is that Holden is disgusted more from the act of the word “fuck” than the word itself. (Bryan 15)....

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...of that particular image. But the images of himself that have been tested thus far have been phony ones and we have been relieved rather than disappointed that he has failed to act in accordance with them.” (Trowbridge 16) Although Trowbridge makes a great generalization, this does not hold true for another symbol, Luce.
Carl Luce is the son of a psychiatrist, and is seen as a knowlegeable source of information to Holden. Trowbridge here describes this one exception. “In many ways Carl Luce represents the ideal of the man-about-town that Holden still dimly wants to become. He is several years older that Holden and has all the appearances of the suave sophisticate. He has a Chinese mistress and seems to Holden to be cooly in control of his life”(trowbridge 10). As Holden’s and Luce’s conversation progress, Holden loses his respect for Luce

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