The Catcher in the Rye.

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The Catcher in the Rye.

In J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, the cause of Holden Caulfield's depression is his confusion about the societal roles of children and adults. He idolizes children, but wants to be mature; he wants to be mature, yet he thinks adults are "phonies". As evidenced by the "Catcher in the Rye" image, he feels himself to be between childhood and adulthood without belonging anywhere.?

Children symbolize perfection in Holden's eyes. He idolizes the dead Allie, almost like the God that is absent from his worldview. From the time the reader is first introduced to Allie, when Holden is thinking about Allie's baseball mitt for Stradlater's composition, Holden is praising him: "He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent . . . But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody," (38). Later in the book, Holden prays to Allie to keep him safe or sane or to cheer him up. After Sunny, the prostitute Holden had sent to his room but sent away, leaves his hotel room, he says, "Boy, I felt miserable. I felt so depressed, you can't imagine. What I did, I started talking, sort of out loud, to Allie. I do that sometimes when I get very depressed," (98). Later still, as he's walking and before he decides to run away to pretend to be a deaf-mute, he began to feel as if he was going to disappear when he crossed the street and he says, "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.' And then when I'd reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I'd thank him," (198). He admires Phoebe as well. He constantly praises her in different small ways. When he visits her in his apartment and she is sleeping, he says, "It's funny. You take adults, they look lousy? ?when they're asleep and they have their mouths way open, but kids don't. Kids look all right," (159). That is just one example of how he admires the innocence and purity of children.?
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Conversely, Holden sees adults and other adolescents as immoral and "phony". Even when he seems to like an adult, he will find a reason not to. He rarely mentions his parents; when he does, he says of lawyers, of which his father is one, "All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot," (172). His first experience with adults, his parents, was not a positive one; he sees them as pretending to be what they are not, with no purpose or ...

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