"If a body catch a body, coming through the rye," sings a little boy skipping on the street. Upon hearing this Holden is immediately comforted and notices that some of his depression is lifted. To Holden, the song conjures images of children playing happily in a huge field of rye near a crazy cliff. When one of the children, in his merriment, draws close to the cliffs edge, someone has to catch him before he falls. When Phoebe, Holden's little sister, asks Holden what he wants to be, he responds "I'd just be the catcher in the rye..." Children are the few people in the world that are not phony in Holden's eyes. Their purity of spirit is what Holden holds most precious in a world of hypocrisy and distrust. They hold the same treasure that Allie held within himself, and it is this that Holden seeks to protect. By catching the children before they fall, he hopes to save them from the fall into dark abyss of disillusionment or death.
Salinger shows that Holden is afraid of losing his innocence. With his emerging sexuality Holden constantly feels the fear of losing the piece of himself that he knows he can never replace. This fear is revealed to us through his reoccurring anxiety of disappearing. It is experienced during Holden's trip to Mr. Spencer's house. After crossing a road, he felt like "[he] was sort of disappearing." It is this sensation that drives him to begin sprinting to his destination, to save himself. He again experiences this perturbation while walking the streets of New York. "Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I'd never get to the other side of the street." Holden panics at this possibility and looks to his dead brother for protection. "Allie, dont let me disappear. Allie don't let me disappear. Please, Allie." Though Holden does not realize what fuels his terror, Salinger uses this phobia to show the reader Holdens anxiety when he feels his mortality or innocence threatened.
His fear and fascination of disappearance is also seen in his curiosity in the winter habits of the ducks in the lagoon. Where do the ducks go? is an ongoing symbol in the story. Holden sees their disappearance as similar to the absence and loss of a person after death, as in Allie's case. By seeking the answer, Holden searches for a way in which he can find and preserve innocence. Through his searching he finds that the only correct response to disappearance is acceptance. It is during the turning point of the book that Salinger presents Holden's new-found acceptance.
While watching Phoebe on the merry-go-round, Holden has a revelation. He watches as the children lean off their porcelain steeds to reach for the golden ring on the carousel. At first Holden experiences fear and anxiety as he sees their precarious position. His instincts urge him to save the children before they fall, to catch them before they fall off the cliff. But despite these strong emotions he resists. This restraint comes from the realization that though he wants to protect the childrens' innocence, he must let the children take the risks of life. Salinger shows the transformation of Holden's perception of the loss of innocence, by introducing Holden's new metaphor for the event. At the start of his journey he saw the loss of innocence as a horrible plummet from a cliff into death. After his journey his image has morphed into a scene where the child, instead of falling, leans off his horse and reaches for the golden ring.
Holden begins his journey as a crusader for the innocent, and though he still has not given up his fight all together he has come to terms with it. The death of his brother proved to be one of the most traumatizing events in Holden's life and is the catalyst for his resistance to inevitable disillusionment. Fighting both the phoniness of the world and even his own budding sexuality, Holden attempts to prevent the inevitable. It is only through his relationship with young Phoebe and the epiphany at the carousel that Holden finally comprehends that he cannot save the innocent, they must be allowed to take life's risks and reach for the gold ring. In this same way Holden must approach his own changes. Holden's journey comes to a close as he continues to watch the children on the merry-go-round. In that moment in the rain, he experiences inexplicable joy because he is allowed to partake in a moment so pure that it is completely untouched or contaminated by the ugliness of the world. Salinger ends Holden's story on a hopeful note, showing how Holden's odyssey has altered his view on life. Where previously there was scorn for the phoniness of the world
