Innocence In Catcher In The Rye

Innocence in The Catcher in the Rye Not too many people in this world can be labeled as truly innocent. Nowadays, there is always something wrong with people. Some try to keep their innocence; however, innocence cannot be kept. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield does not want to realize that everyone has to grow up. J.D. Salinger writes a beautiful novel by using several literary and rhetorical devices to convey the theme of innocence.
For example, Holden wants to stay young and never grow up. He knows that the adult life is full pain and sorrow. Although Holden may physically seem like an adult, he knows that he still acts like a child. He employs the use of a metaphor when he states that all he wants to be is a “catcher in the rye”(Salinger 173) Holden wants to be the only elder figure in this field of rye and be there to catch kids if they fall. He wants to protect these children from becoming adults. Adulthood is when a person loses their innocence, Holden wants to be there to keep the innocence within the children because he knows how awful it is to be an adult.
In addition, everywhere Holden went, there was always something that ruined it and removed the innocence from it. Too often it seemed as if Holden was in “a futile battle against the encroaching concerns—and corruptions—of the adult world” (Everson 8). There
He wears the hat to be different from everyone. Whenever he wears the hat he has benevolent childhood memories and it is not something an adult would wear. It keeps him calm and gives him a sense that he is innocent when he wears it. The hat “can be seen as a badge of Holden's deliberate non-conformity”. He wears the hat to stand out as an individual and he is seen as innocent. In addition, Holden wears the hat in a backwards manner, the same way a catcher wears their hat in baseball. This foreshadows that Holden desires to be “the catcher” in the rye (Alsen