Innocence In Catcher In The Rye

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In the story The Catcher in The Rye there are a variety of themes that pertain in this novel such as isolation, death, sexuality, and etc. In my opinion the theme of innocence is a key and important piece of the novel. Innocence is an important theme because that’s all Holden wanted to keep and save others child innocence. He would try to keep to the point of thinking of running away just to stay a kid. When he sees child innocence, he would defend it, he would be happy for it at all cost.
An example of Holden of standing up for child innocence is when Holden is at Phoebe's school and sits on the staircase and sees a vulgar word on the wall. He stated that “It drove him damn near crazy.” Holden also adds that “I kept wanting to kill whoever wrote this”(201).Holden thought a perverted dirty mind wrote the word and that if he found him he would smash him to the stone wall but, Holden wouldn’t do it anyways if he tried. Therefore if the kids knew the true meaning of the word the kids would be exposed and lose a little part of their innocence.
Apart from having a violent mindset to defends kids Holden also has a happy side to …show more content…
There is a numerous events where Holden helps kids in the story and treats them with a nice and polite attitude. Examples of Holden helping children is when the girl at the park needed help with a with her skate another is guiding the little boys to the mummy museum. A big piece of Holden helping children is when Phoebe asks Holden what he we would like to be in the future. When Holden is asked this question he has a mental picture of kids playing through a field of rye, and that he would be standing by the a cliff to catch the kids if they fall. Holden dream job wanted to be the catcher in a rye field. In my opinion I think the cliff is a metaphor that shows when kids grow up and when Holden catches them he saves the children’s
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