Red hunting hat
If you have read the novel, you probably have noticed on many occasions that Holden constantly does something rather peculiar. He constantly puts on and takes off a red hunting cap that he bought one day when he lost his teams fencing equipment.
There are many interpretations to Holdens red hunting cap, but personally i think the red hunting hat is Holdens protective shield. It is like a safety blanket to many children.
Holden wears the hat at important moments, for example when writing the composition about Allie's baseball mitt, staring at himself in the mirror and pretending to be tough after Stradlater punches him, yelling "Sleep tight, ya morons" down the corridor, etc. He takes it off when he's on the train, going to a bar, in hotel lobbies, and so on. So while he's all about the hat in private, he's embarrassed or lacking confidence to wear it in public. We can see examples of this at the start of Chapter Thirteen ("I took my red hunting hat […] and put it on – I didn't give a damn how I looked"), the end of Chapter Sixteen ("I took my old hunting hat out […] and put it on. I knew I wouldn't meet anybody that knew me"), and the start of Chapter Twenty-One ("I'd already taken off my hunting hat, so as not to look suspicious").
But despite his embarrassment, the hunting hat becomes an important part of the way Holden sees himself. He admits it's "corny," but he personally "like[s] how it look[s]." When he's wearing it, he can be as ignorant and tough and as unique as he wants. That's why it's a very big deal when Phoebe puts it on his head at the end of the novel because she is demonstrating that she loves him as the individual that he is.
“Then what she did - it damn nearly killed me - she reached in my coat pocket and took out my red hunting hat and put it on my head.
- Dont you want it? I said.
- You can wear it a while.”
(now by itself this quote doesn't transfer to us all the emotions that appear in that last scene of the book. but to those of you that have read it, im sure you remember the love and emotions felt by Holden and Phoebe.)
The Ducks
Another peculiarity that you might have noticed in Holden, is his will to through out the novel bother every taxi driver he meets with the question of where the Ducks fly away in winter?
"You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?"
The question i believe is one for himself, and mirrors a concern of Mr. Antolini's when he talks to Holden about where does a person go when his environment can no longer support him?.
"This fall I think you're riding for - it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started."
The desperation with which Holden wants to know the answer to this question mirrors the desperation he feels to find someplace where he can belong. In the end, Holden realizes that the ducks fly away and he almost decides to himself that he will follow their example. However, Holden finishes the novel with a commitment to changing his environment rather than fleeing it, which i personally think is a rather nobel and brave decision.
The ducks also reveal a sincere, more youthful side of Holden. For most of the book, he sounds like a grumpy old man who is angry at the world, but his search for the ducks represents the curiosity of the youth and a happy willingness to encounter the mysteries of the world. This is an important moment, because Holden clearly lacks such willingness in any other aspects of his life.
Another important note is that Holden is traumatized and made very aware of the fragility of life when his brother Allie dies. And because of this, he is terrified by the idea of change and disappearance. But the ducks prove that some vanishings are only temporary. The ducks vanish every winter, but they return every spring, thus symbolizing change that isn’t permanent, but that goes round in a cycle. The pond itself also becomes a minor metaphor for the world as Holden sees it, because it is “partly frozen and partly not frozen.” The pond is in transition between two states, just as Holden is in transition between childhood and adulthood.
Allie
Allie, Holden's young brother who died several years earlier, is also a major symbol in “The catcher in the rye”. When Holden remembers incidents from his past involving Allie, his attitude changes, such as when he writes the composition about Allie's baseball glove or when Holden broke his hand after punching all of the windows after Allie died.
"I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it". He feels that Allie was one of the few people who were not phony in a world full of phonies. More importantly, Allie represents the innocence and childhood that Holden attempts to find throughout his three-day journey. In Holden's opinion, Allie represents the purity that Holden looks for in the world. Holden admits that he admires Allie more than he admires Jesus, and even prays to Allie at one point, rather than to Jesus. Allie is Holden's role model, whom he judges the rest of the world according to. When Allie dies, it creates confusion and conflict in Holden's life.
The Museum
At one point while walking through New York City, Holden arrives at the Museum of Natural History, and this museum is the next symbol i will talk about. He likes the glass cases that the museum officials place all of their exhibits in. He wishes he could place parts of his life in glass cases because they won't change. In the end, he decides not to go into the museum. He likes the museum because he used to go there in his younger years every Saturday with his teacher, Miss Aigletinger, a time that he remembers with happiness. Since the glass cases inside the museum don't allow anyone to change anything, it would be the one place for Holden to go if he wanted everything to be as it was during his childhood. However, he chooses to remain outside because he is afraid that there is a chance that the museum might have changed (this relates back to when i spoke about the significance of the ducks, and how Holden is terrified of change, remembering his brothers death). Jane Gallagher changed since his childhood and Holden thought that was unbelievable, so if Jane could change, perhaps the museum could change, as well. Holden knows that if the museum does not remain the same, it could hurt him, so he makes a conscious decision not to enter, even if his reasons are subconscious.
The “Fuck-you signs”
Closer the the end of the novel, Holden visits Phoebe´s school to see the principal so that she could give Phoebe a message from him. On his way he encounters and is incredibly bothered by the "fuck you" signs he sees on walls. Before this he also found one in the one-sacred tomb in a museum. These are two places that remind him of his own childhood, that would made him feel secure and comfortable and perhaps even happy. Yet in Holden's world, this isn't possible; everything has been corrupted by vulgarities. Even his own death, he says, couldn't be sacred or peaceful, since someone would probably write a "fuck you" on his tombstone.
I think it's no wonder that he sees sex as dirty and degrading, when all the representers he's seen of sex are in fact dirty and degrading (the man in the lift that offers him a prostitute, the prostitute herself). This is another example; Holden imagines a "perverty bum" as he calls him, sneaking into Phoebe's school at night to write the message on the wall.
I think the most interesting thing, is that it's more likely that a student at the school wrote the “Fuck you” sign on the wall. But Holden, either can't or chooses not to see this; in his world, children are innocent and adults corrupt. While this keeps everything nice and simple in Holden's mind, it also makes it impossible for him to really understand sexuality and the process of growing-up. While he does come to the realization that trying to rub out all the "fuck you"s in the world would be an impossible task (as there are just too many), he doesn't make the important connection, or realization that this would be pointless anyway. Since children will grow up and will experience sex, whether he likes it or not.
Catcher in the Rye is a very powerful and symbolic book. Numerous symbols are
used through its context and most of them, if properly digested, bring us a bit closer and open to us new ways of seeing Holden and his character.
This concludes my oral presentation.
