Red Hunting Hat
The red hunting hat is a very prominent symbol in the book “The Catcher in the Rye”. It appears often throughout the book. The red hunting hat is a symbol of Holden’s individuality and uniqueness. It is Holden’s individuality that restrains Holden from joining the real world. It is his individuality that is constraining in his isolation and alienation of the world. He doesn’t want to be like everyone else so that he can preserve himself from the world and its superficiality.
"Up home we wear a hat like that to shoot deer in, for Chrissake," he said. "That's a deer shooting hat."
"Like hell it is." I took it off and looked at it. I sort of closed one eye, like I was taking aim at it. "This is a people shooting hat," I said. "I shoot people in this hat."
The shooting that Holden does in the book is not to literally shoot people with a gun, but instead to shoot them down using his words. He constantly criticizes and judges people for being phony, but does not take the time to judge himself.
Catcher in the Rye
This is a very important symbol in the book, as we can tell from the book’s title. Holden hears a song when he walks down the street. It’s Robert Burns song “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye.” When Holden mishears the lyrics as being “if a body catch a body comin’ through the rye” when the actual lyric is “if a body meet a body comin’ through the rye”.
When asked by Phoebe what he wants to do with his life, Holden replies with an image of a field of rye. He is perched on the cliff and catches children who are on the verge of going over the cliff. He wants to catch the children before they fall of the ‘cliff’ of their innocence and into the phoniness, hypocrisy and superficiality that is in the adult world.
This shows his belief in the world that children are uncorrupted and innocent, while adults are all pretentious. It shows his desire to freeze time and make things stay the same. It also represents his desire to protect the spirit of youth that children lose when they enter the adult world.
The Museum
The museum is how Holden would like the world to be - frozen in time to the beautiful moments of life. The reason he enjoys the museum so much is that everything in there is always the same when you go in, nothing has changed. It is his escape from the reality that as time goes on, things change. He wants to save his precious childhood innocence and doesn’t want to grow up and mature into an adult, whom he sees many of them as phony.
Holden is afraid of change, and what life ultimately will bring him. He despises unpredictability and doesn’t wish to face the reality and ruthlessness in the world that he sees every day. He wishes for the world to be simple and unchanged, just as he sees the world in his ‘catcher in the rye’ fantasy.
The Ducks and The Lake
The question that Holden always asks throughout the book is a less obvious but important symbol. For most of the book, Holden sounds like an old man who has seen so much harshness in the world that he no longer trusts it, but the question he repeatedly asks of the ducks and the lake shows his youthful curiosity about the mysteries of the world. This is a significant moment because he rarely shows this kind of willingness in other aspects of the world.
The way the birds can survive while the environment in which they live in is so inhospitable is reflected with Holden’s own situation. Holden has been traumatized by his little brother Allie’s death and because of it is terrified of change. The pond itself also reflects where Holden is in his life.
What it was, it was partly frozen and partly not frozen.
The pond is between being frozen and not frozen. It reflects the transition between being a child and becoming an adult. Otherwise known as adolescence, which Holden is going through, which is also giving him trouble.
Virgilia Peterson says that perhaps Holden’s questioning of the ducks is “a question that is really for himself, where does a person go to when his environment can no longer support him?” This is pointing at Holden who has been kicked out of many prep schools, and who believes that he doesn’t have a place in the world. It can be suggested that Holden’s question of where the ducks go is like his desire to find out where he belongs in the world.
Pencey Prep and Elkton Hills
These two schools are symbols representing the phony world that Holden despises. The people who run these schools, the headmasters, are also phony to him.
For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life.
The advertisements for Pencey Prep are also false. Holden describes them:
They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hotshot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place.
Holden sees them as being phony, and also continues to say:
"Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men." Strictly for the birds.
Holden sees many acts of cruelty in the prep schools. He tells his sister, Phoebe:
You never saw so many mean guys in your life.
Holden dislikes how the school is very exclusive and there is a great deal of prejudice against those who are not attractive or cool. He believes the school system to be corrupt, and designed by adults who want the younger generation of boys to join their rank or being extremely privileged. Anybody who is different is not able to fit in. Holden’s problem is fighting against a system which he was born to be in.
Then I heard everybody running through the corridor and down the stairs, so I put on my bathrobe and I ran downstairs too, and there was old James Castle laying right on the stone steps and all. He was dead, and his teeth, and blood, were all over the place, and nobody would even go near him.
The Carousel’s Gold Ring
The carousel’s gold ring is a great symbol. It shows Holden’s journey of maturing and being able to understand what life is about.
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 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.
The gold ring symbolizes a hope, a dream, a chance. Kids have to be able to try and take the chance. Even though they may get hurt, the adults must step aside and let them try. If they fail, they fail, but you have to let them grow up. Growing up is a part of life, and is necessary for all kids to do.
Allie
Allie is Holden’s younger brother who died several years earlier. He is a key symbol throughout the story. Whenever Holden reminisces about Allie, his personality changes. We get to see the sensitive side of Holden. We can see this happening when Holden is writing a composition about Allie’s baseball mitt for Stradlater. Holden thinks that Allie was a great, intelligent kid. Allie was to him, a symbol of what all children were like - innocent, pure and not tainted by adulthood. Allie represents the childhood innocence that Holden desperately wants to find. Allie is the role model by which Holden judges the whole world by. Allie’s death creates an extreme change in Holden’s personality and view of the world. It changes to be more bitter, cynical and judgmental.
Phoebe
Allie’s death leaves Holden a broken, empty shell of a person. It leaves a major impact on him. Holden still cannot come to terms with Allie’s death and still feels as though Allie is there with him. Allie was the one person who understood Holden.
Every time I'd get to the end of a block I'd make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I'd say to him, "Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Please, Allie."
After Allie’s death, Holden can only turn to his kid sister, Phoebe, who also understood him.
One of the reasons Holden is so close to his sister is because he wants to protect her from the harshness of reality. He wants to protect her from growing up and losing her innocence and uncorrupted youth. This is also reflected in his ‘catcher in the rye’ dream. Another reason is that Phoebe is the only one who didn’t ‘turn their back away’ from Holden. D.B., his older brother, went off to Hollywood, his little brother Allie died and his parents keep sending him away to boarding schools. The only person he feels he can rely on is Phoebe, who has never turned her back away. Even when Holden decides he is going to leave, Phoebe begs to be able to go with him.
“...Can't I go with you? Holden? Can't I? Please."
"No. Shut up."