Catcher In The Rye Adult Analysis

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Do some children struggle with the fact that growing up is imminent? If Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye, spoke for himself, he would, without a doubt, say yes. The author of the novel, J.D. Salinger sculpts this sixteen-year-old kid who hates the adult world and most of the people people in it: adults. Holden has been kicked out of four schools, including the most recent school, Pencey Prep. He sees plenty of events at these schools and meets some “phony” people along the way. One of Holden’s biggest beliefs is that all children are innocent, and most adults are corrupt. J.D. Salinger illustrates Holden struggling between staying a child and becoming an adult because he feels he will becomes “phony” as an adult, …show more content…
At Pencey Prep, he stayed in the Ossenburger Memorial Wing. It is dedicated to a guy who went to Pencey named Ossenburger. After Ossenburger got out of Pencey, "he started these undertaking parlors all over the country that you could get members of your family buried for about five bucks a piece" (Salinger 16). "Then he started telling us how he was never ashamed...to get right down on his knees and pray to God" (16). In this case, Holden sees Ossenburger as a hypocrite because, in Holden's eyes, Ossenburger takes advantage of families with dead loved ones, but yet, prays to God and has full faith in Him. This is not the first time Holden has been faced with a hypocritical adult. Before Holden went to Pencey Prep, he went to Elkton Hills, where he thought the headmaster, Mr. Haas "was the phoniest bastard [Holden] ever met in [his] life" (13). Holden thought he was phony because "old Haas would just shake hands with everybody's parents...Except if some boy had little old funny-looking parents" (14). Once again, Holden points out an adult being a hypocrite, but this time, Mr. Haas just likes to talk to kid's parents who are good looking. As the headmaster at Elkton Hills, that is very unprofessional of Mr. Haas to treat "funny-looking" parents differently. Ossenburger and Mr. Haas both held leadership positions, which makes Holden feel worse about entering …show more content…
Near the end of chapter four, Holden is talking about a girl named Jane, who Stradlater, Holden's friend and roommate, is taking on a date. Jane was Holden's neighbor when they were kids and they used to play checkers a lot. Jane, innocent and kind, would keep her kings in the back row because she liked the way they looked. So, Holden tells Stradlater to "Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row"(34). Holden hopes that one of his childhood best friends, Jane, still is the innocent little girl he remembers her as. If she still keeps her "kings in the back row," it will symbolize that she has retained her innocence and was besmirched by the adult world. Later in the book, Holden finds himself wanting to hitchhike out west, so he wants to say goodbye to his sister, Phoebe. Holden went to her school and "saw something that drove [him] crazy. Somebody'd written 'Fuck you' on the wall...[He] figured it was some perverty bum,"(201). Then Holden walked past another “Fuck you,” but this time “It was written with a red crayon,”(204). The signs most likely symbolize how Holden can’t see that the signs were written by kids. Holden sees all adults as corrupt and sees all children as innocent. It makes it impossible for him to see that kids probably wrote the signs. The sign written with the red crayon screams that a kid wrote it. Through symbols, the author expresses Holden’s love for
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