Catcher In The Rye Innocence Essay

A lonely teenager walks in the empty streets of New York City, and countless thoughts run through his confused mind. His features include grey hair, a long jacket, and a tall presence, making him appear much older than he really is. But do these mature features really resemble this teenager’s inner heart or is he longing for the innocent past, a past he so desperately wants to maintain? In the book Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the theme of innocence becomes an important aspect of this teenager’s identity. This particular teenager’s name is Holden Caulfield, and he is a desperate, depressed youth with purely innocent intentions, figuratively and literally. He holds on to the image of innocence and the maintenance of that trait, but his depression causes him to seek for innocence at an extreme level, to where it affects his everyday “adult” interactions. Holden is not a “normal” teen, and this makes his life a very hopeless experience for him, to where he has no actual goals for his future self. With all of
He has said goodbye to his own youth, but not youth itself since he still longs for any trace of it in every person he interacts with. The reasons why he lost his youth is not 100% clear, but it’s assumed that he has been sexually-harassed in his younger years, resulting in the depressed teen he is. Although he is quite the troublemaker and quite the smoker, he only wants what’s best for the youthful young people. In Holden’s eyes, innocence is a sense of good still left in the world, while adulthood is a sense of losing the good and growing into phoniness. Holden only wants to maintain that innocence therefore, “R.I.P 2 My Youth” would be a good example of what would be seen in Holden’s playlist; As the meaning of the song describes in-depth situations that Holden has similarly gone