The Perfect and the Innocent: Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

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Perfection is a house on it’s own, but innocence is the landscape around it. The author of Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, tells an interesting story about a boy who has avoided his home after getting kicked out his fourth school. This boy, Holden Caulfield, loves perfection and innocence. Holden is a strange character, he makes a snowball, but can’t throw it, imagines the museum as a perfect place because things don’t change, daydreams about his childhood sweetheart constantly, and after seeing “F” you written on the walls of the school, Holden tries to erase every one of them. Life for Holden is sad and uplifting at the same time, but he has to face the fact that he is growing up and can’t be the protector of children. Holden tries to imagine that everything is perfect and the children are innocent without realizing the truth.

Early in the book, while Holden is still in Pencey, he takes a snowball and something quite odd and remarkable. Holden picks up snow, makes a snowball, looks at a car, gets ready to throw it, but he doesn’t because “the car looks so nice and white” (Salinger 36). Holden then decided he should throw it at a fire hydrant “but, it looked too nice and white, too” (Salinger 36). Both of these things were too perfect for Holden to destroy. If Holden didn’t want things to stay the same, he would have thrown the snowball maybe not at the car, but at least the fire hydrant. Holden then attempted to get on the bus, but the bus driver said he couldn’t take the snowball on the bus. Holden said, “I wasn’t going to chuck it at anybody, but he wouldn’t believe me” (Salinger 37). Holden seems to have respect for nature according to this story about him and his way of thinking. It could very well be the f...

... middle of paper ...

...ce, the internet was not yet invented, so information and words didn’t travel as fast. So when Holden want to meet people from these reticent places, he wants to get away from the scarring words of the city.

Although Holden has tried to build the house of perfection and landscape the land of innocence, he couldn’t do it because everything is perfect the way it is where he lives right now. When Phoebe rode the carousel, Holden couldn’t help be crying because she was the house and landscape Holden has been trying to create. She may be getting older, as well as him, but she is the last drop of hope for Holden’s dreams. Holden found out that he shouldn’t try to forget about the horrible things in life, but accept it for what it creates as a guideline of growing up.

Works Cited

Salinger, Jerome David. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 1951. Print.

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