The Catcher In The Rye: Unreachable Dreams Essay, Research Paper

The Catcher in The Rye: Unreachable Dreams

Many people find that their dreams are unreachable. Holden Caulfield

realizes this in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. As Holden tells his

story, he recounts the events since leaving the Pencey School to his

psychiatrist. At first, Holden sounds like a typical, misguided teenager,

rebellious towards his parents, angry with his teachers, and flunking out of

school. However, as his story progresses, it becomes clear that Holden is

indeed motivated, just not academically. He has a purpose: to protect the young

and innocent minds of young children from the ?horrors? of adult society. He

hopes to freeze the children in time, as wax figures are frozen in a museum.

After interacting with Phoebe, his younger sister, Holden realizes that this

goal is quite unachievable. Holden wants to be the Catcher in the Rye, then

realizes it is an unreachable ideal.

Holden begins his story misguided and without direction. After flunking

out of the Pencey School, Holden decides to leave early. Before he leaves,

though, he visits his teacher, Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer and Holden talk about

his direction in life: ??Do you feel absolutely no concern for your future,

boy?’ ?Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure. Sure, I do.’ I

thought about it for a minute. ?But not too much, I guess,’? (14). After

leaving Pencey, he checks into a hotel where he invites a prostitute up to his

room. He gets cold feet and decides not to have intercourse with her, though.

Later, Holden decides to take his old girlfriend, Sally Hayes, to the theater.

After taking her to the theater, Holden formulates a crazy plan which entails

running away with Sally, getting married, and growing old together. Sally

thinks that he is crazy, and she decides to go home. During his stay away from

home, Holden drinks and smokes, showing even more misdirection. However, when

Holden returns home and talks to his sister, Phoebe, his direction becomes clear.

Holden wants to be the Catcher in the Rye to protect children from the

world in which he is forced to live. While talking with Phoebe, she asks Holden

what he would like to be. He responds saying:

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big

field 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 to go over the cliff–I mean

if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out

from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the

catcher in the rye and all.’” (173)

Holden wants to protect the innocence of his sister and every other innocent

child in the world. Before Holden meets Sally for their date, he stops in

front of the Museum of Natural History and begins to reminisce. He thinks about

the way he visited the museum when he was younger. He also tells that every

time one visits the museum, he is changed in some way, but the figures in the

exhibits always stay the same. He wants to be able to preserve some things in

the glass: ?Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be

able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone,?

(122). Holden wants the innocence of children to be frozen behind that glass.

When he visits Phoebe’s school to give her a note, Holden notices two instances

of graffiti on the walls. He succeeds in rubbing one of them off cannot rub off

the other. It depresses Holden to think that someday this kind of graffiti will

spoil his sister Phoebe and all of her companions. Up to this point, keeping

young children from his plight is Holden’s sole motive. He soon realizes that

this is impossible.

Holden sees that becoming the Catcher in the Rye is an unattainable

ideal. When he meets Phoebe during her lunch break at school, he has made up

his mind to leave and hitchhike out west. Phoebe knows this and asks if she can

come along. This overwhelms Holden, and he decides not to leave. Instead, he

decides to take her to the zoo and to the carousel. Phoebe gets on the carousel

and finds her favorite horse. When the carousel starts Holden notices Phoebe

trying to grab for the golden ring. He knows this is dangerous but must let

Phoebe do it: ?All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was

old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she’d fall off the goddam horse, but I

didn’t say anything or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to

grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If

they fall off, they fall off, but it’s bad if you say anything to them,? (211).

He understands that sometimes children must learn things the hard way. As he

sees Phoebe riding the carousel he begins to cry. He sees perfection in that

moment, and he knows that she will soon change as the world influences her.

Holden finally realizes that he will not be able to protect his sister or anyone

from falling into the adult world.

Holden transforms from a dreamy idealist into a down-to-earth

existentialist. When he understands that his dream is far from possible, he has

to start over. Throughout his story he talks about people being phonies, which

suggests that he has some ideal to which he compares people. He tells his

psychiatrist that he does not know what will happen in the future: ?A lot of

people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if

I’m going to apply myself when I go back to school next September. It’s such a

stupid question, in my opinion. I mean how do you know what you’re going to do

till you do it?? (213). Holden now knows that he must live life by the moment

and not with quixotic ideals.