Throughout the book, Holden feared any sexual activities. He was also physically repelled by anything homosexual. This was an area he could not cope with. Thus it was not surprising that Holden ran in shock and fear when Mr Antolini was caressing his head that night.
“When something perverty like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard. That kind of stuff’s happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid. I can’t stand
it” (Chapter 24).
The importance of the incident in that night lay in Holden’s interpretation of Mr Antolini’s caressing his head rather than in giving rise to homosexual emotions. The scene was left deliberately ambiguous. Mr Antolini was half drunken and could have attempted homosexuality but, innocently could have also patted Holden’s head as a sign of paternal love.
Holden was also holding onto the thoughts of Jane Gallagher. Jane was Holden’s childhood friend and whom he had strong feelings for. Their relationship was not physical but he loved her. Holden was shocked when he found out that Stradlater was dating Jane. He still thought of her and himself as two years younger; elaborating on the idea of her having a date with the adult experienced Stradlater made Holden apprehensive.
“Every time I got to the part about her out with Stradlater in that damn Ed Bank’ys car, it almost drove me crazy” (Chapter 11).
Holden was at this point that the conflict in Holden’s mind began. He was distressed by memories of Jane Gallagher, who remained an ideal of innocent, unapproachable girlhood throughout the book. Holden was strongly concerned about her safety and wanted to prevent her from entering into the world of adulthood and corruption too. In his opinion Jane was a symbol of youthful innocence, envisaged as a prey for men to capture and fulfil their sexual requirements. One clear remembrance about Jane was that she use to keep her kings in the back row. This could be viewed as showing her fear of
sex (Chapter 11).
Holden refused to realise that Jane was now older, a free agent, and that Stradlater was a pleasant young man.
Holden also projected hatred on to Stradlater in relation to this issue of Jane, as a victim of lust. Perhaps he feared that in few years time, he would become like him and develop the same sexual appetite. This fear also influenced him to consider becoming a
monk (chapter 7).
Holden had a frozen image of Jane. He wanted her to remain exactly how she was like before and hope that nothing had changed. However in reality, time cannot be held back.
Holden was also holding onto the thoughts of Allie. Allie was Holden’s intelligent younger brother who died of leukemia aged eleven, three years previously. Allie’s tragic death explained Holden’s depression and loneliness. Allie also enacted as a substitute for religion. Holden talked to him at times of severe stress; after Maurice had beaten him up and at the end of the book when he felt he was disappearing.
“Every time I’d get to the end of a block…. I’d say to him, ‘Allie, don’t let me disappear’….When I’d reach the other side…. I’d thank him.” (Chapter 25)
Also the Image of Allie, lying alone in the cemetery in the rain while everyone else rushed for cover, illustrated clearly that Holden did not consider his brother dead at
all (Chapter 20).
Holden’s deep love for Allie was due to the fact that the dead by would always be eleven years old in his memory and therefore can never be corrupted by the world. The same applied to James Castle; a boy who used to get bullied at school, and for this reason he committed suicide in desperation rather than give in to social pressures.
It was the innocence of children that Holden loved to preserve. When a child becomes an adult he looses the purity of youth and is corrupted by the world of grown-ups. Holden’s deep fear of coming to terms with the adult world was revealed in his love of children and in his idealization of the state of childhood. Children and particularly his sister, Phoebe, were the only people with whom he could make any genuine contact. Holden was evidently very attached to Phoebe. She was very like a companion to him in spite of the difference of six years in their age. It was his love for her which made him go back home. Phoebe played an important role in Holden’s life. At times she was like a remedy to his problems and also a gateway into childhood.
Phoebe was a link with Holden’s own childhood in many ways. She roller-skated in the park, preferring the same areas he did, attended the same primary school, wrote notes to her friends in her books and visited the Natural History Museum.
Holden was attracted to the museum because it contained examples of life, which had been frozen at a moment of time and, consequently, will never change. Holden liked the carousels in the park too because they never varied the music that they played.
“It played that same song about fifty years ago when I was a little kid. That’s one nice thing about carousels” (Chapter 25). These were he things that never altered to adapt the changing reality. Just like Allie.
Phoebe’s colour of the hair reminded Holden of Allie. They both had red hair. Holden often thought of the Sundays in the park when he, Allie and Phoebe used to sail Allie’s
boat (Chapter 10). All these childlike activities and children on the whole made Holden desperate to hold onto his childhood and innocence. He even admired greatly the child who was humming “coming through the rye” (Chapter16), as he walked on, unconscious of the world around him. This was for Holden a reminder of innocence; the quality he held most precious. The little boy made Holden feel happier, though all the adults he had come into contact with had made him depressed and reluctant to join their world of phoniness.
Holden began to come to terms with the fact that it was human behavior and the society, which he was in conflict with. This adult world revolved around corruption and phoniness which Holden did not want to enter; but he also realized that he was now excluded from the world of childhood because of his age.
Chapter sixteen conveyed Holden’s confrontation as an adult. Holden did not view the park as he use to before. He considered it as dirty and unpleasant this time. He was now regarded as non-member of the children group, in the park.
Holden realized that he was an adult when he found he had no desire to re-enter the Natural History Museum. He was aware that the frozen monument in the museum contrasted the changing nature of life.
“When I got to the museum, all of a sudden I wouldn’t have gone inside for a million bucks. It just didn’t appeal to me” (Chapter 16).
Holden was caught between the childhood which he had turned from, and the adulthood which he despised, but towards which he was heading. He was seeking an escape route from corruption. This was Holden’s instinctive reaction to problems he could not solve. He announced the idea of retreating from life to a cabin; because all the times he had tried to communicate with others had proved failures. He had even been getting rid of his worldly possession in preparation for abandoning the life he was rejected, alienated and isolated from.
Holden had the idea of living as a deaf-mute, and communicating by note writing.
“I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn’t have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with any body” (Chapter 25).
The cabin would be a place where significantly, no one was allowed to behave phonily.
As time went by, Holden eventually lost grip of his childhood innocence and failed to escape the entrance into the adult world. However he now had the concept of the ‘catcher in the rye’ to hold onto. He envisaged himself as the protector of youth and innocence, guarding thoughtless children from falling over the cliff edge.
Early in the novel in chapter two, Holden was constantly worried about what happened to the ducks in Central Park in the winter. This childish concern was a fantasy and an escape. He liked to imagine the presence of a kindly man taking the ducks away to safety and warmth.
Towards the end of the novel, Holden revisited the school in search for Phoebe. He was outraged to see the graffiti on the wall, particularly because he had identified himself with the catcher in the rye, protector of innocence. He felt that in school of all places, children should be free from taint. He tried to rub it out, but when he saw another obscenity on a wall in the museum he began to realise that one person was incapable of preventing corruption.
“If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the ‘fuck you’ signs in the world. It’s impossible” (Chapter 25).
He was also aware, in the tomb in the museum, where he had hoped to find peace, that no place was free from the taint of the vulgar; not even his own gravestone. He was therefore now subconsciously aware that there was no escape from the world.
Holden challenged reality at his best attempt to escape corruption through means of childhood and innocence, but he had failed. Holden as implying in his name, ‘Hold-on,’ attempted to hold onto children and their thoughts such as phoebe, Allie, James castle, Jane Gallagher and also his virginity which were symbolic to him of his childhood and innocence. However time made him come out of fantasy and confront the true world which he could not deny or delay. Everyone Holden met and all his contemporaries such as Ackley, Stradlater, Sally, Sunny, Luce and even Mr Antolini were according to him, corrupted and insincere. He was in deep fear that he was magnetically being pulled into that society which he disliked. On the whole, his eventual nervous breakdown was a result of his inability to adapt himself to the aspirations and expectations of American Society.