Poised Between Two Worlds

Poised Between Two Worlds James Brian notes that Holden “is poised between two worlds, one he cannot return to and one he fears to enter”; Holden is embodying the limbo between childhood and adulthood. Holden in part of the book “Catcher in the Rye”, orders a prostitute to his room and thinks, “Anyway, while I was putting on another clean shirt, I sort of figured this was my big chance, in a way. I figured if she was a prostitute and all, I could get in some practice on her, in case I ever get married or anything. (Pg. 102-103)” This displays that Holden is thinking about his future when he talks about getting married, but he shouldn’t be having sex when he is seventeen years old. This is because he likes doing thing that are usually only for adulthood, like drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. Holden was having an alcoholic drink with Luce even though he is only seventeen years old, “I kept sitting there getting drunk and waiting for old Tina and Janine to come out and do their stuff, but they weren’t there. (Pg. 165)” This demonstrations how Holden loves the part of adulthood where you can drink, smoke, and hit on girls. This is because Holden wants to forget about his depression, so he does these things that are unhealthy for his body so he can just forget. Although Holden is trying to find out where he belongs, he tries to protect kids from loosing innocent too fast, “But while I was sitting down, I saw somebody’d written ‘Fuck you’ on the wall. It drove me near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they’d wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them-all cockeyed, naturally-what it meant, and how they’d all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever’d written it. (Pg. 221)” This shows that Holden want to protect the innocents of little kids, and how he doesn’t want them to grow up like adults. This is because he sees what the