Holden Caulfield Symbolism Essay

J.D Salinger has a written a novel called catcher in the rye, about a teenage boy named Holden Caulfield who lives in New York City. Holden is not an ordinary teenage boy. His way of viewing life is different its extraordinary Holden is confused, lost, and depressed. His character is very complex to understand through the book Holden tries to reach out to a lot of people and he tries to build a relation but something is not letting Holden to do so, the fact that Holden wants to remain a child is keeping him away from growing up and becoming more understandable to himself and the people around him. He has no stable relation with his parents which has affected him to do poorly academically. Through the book J.D Salinger have used symbolism that shows Holden’s mental anguish. The symbolism explains everything that’s is going on with Holden
Holden was very close to his brother Allie who died, the red hair symbol reminds Holden of his brother. For example when Holden is talking about phoebe his little sister “you never saw a little kid so pretty in your whole life. She’s really smart. I mean she had all A’s ever since she started school. As a matter of fact I’m the only dumb one
He wants to protect his sister phoebe as he says what he like to be to phoebe “I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big filed of rye and all. Thousands of little kids and nobody’s around nobody big, I mean except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them I’d just be catcher in the rye and all.” This show that Holden doesn’t want the kids to fall of the cliff. The rye is life and falling off the cliff can mean dead. He doesn’t want all the kids to become like Allie he wants to help them. And he doesn’t realize that it’s okay, to fall that’s how life