The Catcher in the Rye Literary Analysis Essay Sample

Why is the sentence "Catcher in the rye" essential to understanding Holden's life? 

In Catcher in the Rye, nothing better represents Holden's misunderstanding of childhood and adulthood than the title itself. As he strolls through New York, Holden compares his views of the impeccable innocence of children to the hypocrisy of maturity. He considers almost every adult he meets to be a fake, and he is afraid of becoming a fake himself, repeating this pattern. , children show his innocence and a desire to return to the pure state of his childhood. The book's title is taken from the scene in Chapter 16 where Holden sings, "When the body catches the body through the rye" (Salinger, 125) as he sees a young boy, ignored by his parents, walking down the street. Holden interprets this scene as a perfect expression of the innocence of youth. The boy is walking on a non-sidewalk street indicates that he exists in a world parallel but still separate from his parents' world, at least for now. Watching the boy gives Holden a break from the lies of the adult world. The Catcher in the Rye line comes from Robert Burns' poem "Comin' Thro Rye." Holden envisioned the poem as a literal rye field on the edge of a cliff. When Phoebe asks Holden what he wants to be when he grows up, he replies, "The Catcher in the Rye. "Who he believes is responsible for "catching" children in the field before they "start the cliff." (Salinger,186) Holden's realm of fantasy is nothing artificial with adult ideas. The area is reminiscent of Peter Pan's Neverland or the Garden of Eden, protecting innocence from the corrupting effects of experience.

Conversely, falling off a cliff represents "falling" into adulthood: desire, greed, ambition and "false." The language here reflects the biblical fall of Adam and Eve, who were expelled from the Garden after realizing the sin and shame of sexuality. This is a shame that Holden also experiences. 

Holden's fantasies of becoming 'catchers in the rye' to protect innocent children from falls stem from a severe misunderstanding as if they misunderstood the meaning of child and adult. As Phoebe tells him, the poem is asking, "Does the body meet the body passing through the rye?" That is, there are no watchmen in the rye. Also, "acquaintance" means an accidental sexual encounter. The following line asks, "Jin body, kiss body - I need a body cry." In general, the poem raises the question of whether two people should have sex secretly without having a romantic relationship with each other. It's the same question Holden asks Carl Russ. It turns out that Holden's fantasy-encouraging lyrics are the exact opposite of his interpretation. An important implication of Phoebe's correction is that there can be no factual innocence, unlike Holden's fantasies. Innocence may be a fiction of his imagination.  Just as Holden's erroneous interpretation of 

 Burns' poetry creates an erroneous separation of innocence and experience, so does his problematic view to idealize the youth of others. The real protagonists in the novel are neither pure nor innocent. Because Ellie passed away at the age of 11, she will forever remain in Holden's childhood memories. But the fact that Ellie died of her cancer means that he had to fake his death at a very young age. Phoebe has a bruise on her hand. The bruises pushed down the stairs after a classmate inked his jacket indicate the cruelty of children. Likewise, the Holden maid is deaf in one ear due to childhood trauma that her younger brother suffered. Holden deliberately ignores the fact that his childhood is rarely wholly idyllic. However, despite expressing contempt for adults, he spends time in New York doing adult activities such as bars, theatres, taxis, and hiring prostitutes, making several attempts to look older than he is. Similar to Burns' misinterpretation of poetry, Holden confuses the outward adornment of adulthood with the intrinsic traits of maturity, such as empathy, conscience, and morality.