holden as the protector of children
thank you to google for the photo!
In Chapter 22 of Catcher in the Rye, Holden introduces the title... but more specifically the significance to him and why the book is titled as such. We already see earlier on in the book as a little boy charms Holden by singing "if a body, catch a body. Coming through the rye" on the street. Holden tells Phoebe about these lyrics, when she asks him what he wants to do. Holden cites that he wants to be that Catcher in the Rye, to catch the children who are playing who come too close to the edge of the cliff.
While Holden's fantasy is mildly delusional- and purely based on a misheard lyric- it holds obvious symbolism. Holden wants to protect the little children, those innocently playing and unaware of the dangers that loom just beyond their vision. We see this theme through multiple scenarios- with Jane, Phoebe, and Sunny-- to name a few.
With Jane, he pictures her as the girl he had known. So, several years younger. He never goes down to meet her before his fight with Stradlegter. (Here on Joseph's amongus blog we ignore the pool spelling of names and difficult to spell words). He is horrified with his asumptions that Stradlegger poisoned Jane's innocence by seducing her into having sex with him, something that he finds corrupt in the adult world. We see similar instances of this with Sunny, a young looking girl who is 'forced' (?) to be a prostitute for random men. He finds this adult world cruel in its sexualization of young girls. To reinforce his views, he fights the men "in change" of their tainting of innocence- Maurice for Sunny and Stradletter for Jane.
After the fights, Holden admires himself as some sort of war hero- a matyr if you will. He is sacrificing his safety to protect those he sees as undefendable-- young girls and children. Even though it's not the most practical solution... His fantasy of being the Catcher in the Rye demonstrates this to a T. He is throwing himself at the edge of a cliff to protect little children from falling off while they're recklessly playing, even though they could simply not be playing near the edge of a cliff or they could have a fence built there instead.
Holden wants to be the protection from the outside world for these children, to protect their innocence from the adult world. Holden is rapidly growing up, forced to begin to care about grades for Ivy League Universities and become mature and adult. He is resisting this with everything he can, wanting to do the same for all the other children. And that's why he wants to be the Catcher in the Rye.
I agree with your analysis that it is important for Holden to "protect" the innocence of the women ho he feels are being taken advantage of. I think this also helps explain his behavior towards the end of the novel, where he pushes himself away from Phoebe, as now he is the one who is threatening her innocence. Maybe his decision to not run away signifies a change in his ideals and how he wants to deal with these complex issues.
ReplyDeleteAt first I wanted to suggest removing the qualification from the claim that Holden's aspiration to be a catcher in the rye is only "mildly" delusional--it seems like a fully fledged delusion at first glance, given that it entails a literally impossible scenario in a location that doesn't exist with unspecified "kids" whose parents for some reason are putting them into a cliff-edged field of rye and leaving them there to run around aimlessly (??). But on further reflection, I'm not even sure it's actually delusional--because Holden admits "I know it's impossible." He is expressing his WISH, his IDEAL, "What I'd REALLY like to be" if he could decide for himself. And it's classic Holden that his ideal is something that doesn't and can't ever exist, and is vague and absurd and delusional. BUT it is also, as you explicate, a compelling metaphor, even if it is based on a misreading of the original lyric. He is being brutally honest about what he "wants to be," and that want is all the more poignant because of the fact that he can't EVER "be" an actual catcher in the rye.
ReplyDeleteI've thought before about Holden as a sort of protector of childhood, but I can't believe I never made the connection that he would literally throw himself off a cliff to protect the innocence of youth. When he tries to make a metaphor to Phoebe (or maybe that's really what he wants to do, in which case he's just crazy) about wanting to be a catcher in the rye, I don't think that's what he actually means. I think he just wants to make sure that kids can stay kids, and he wants to be there to save them from falling into the convoluted and messed-up adult world.
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