Symbolic Notes Notes

“Up home we wear a hat like that to shoot deer in, for Chrissake,” he • The “people shooting hat”
said. “That's a deer shooting hat.” is an escape for Holden. When he
“Like hell it is.” I took it off and looked at it. I sort of closed one is lonely, angry, or trying to
eye, like I was taking aim at it. “This is a people shooting hat,” I isolate himself into his own world
said. “I shoot people in this hat.” he wears the hat. The hat is an
escape from dealing with his
fears, relationships, and painful
past. He can wear his hat in a
world where he can criticize
others and his judgmental
behavior is protected.

• This represents Holden's

pity for the outsider and the man
“If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next who cuts himself with stones may
to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept symbolize James Castle.
cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the
Disciples, that poor bastard” (99). • The museum represents
Holden's inability to accept
changes in life. Despite his
experience with two deaths
already, he is unable to accept
The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always death. The same way he wants the
stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. . . . Nobody'd be museum to not move or change he
different. The only thing that would be different would be you. does not want children to grow up
and experience the pains and
disappointments that life has
given him. The museum is
comforting to him because he can
depend on it not leaving him, and
know matter what he does it will
always be there unable to
disappoint him.

“'Anyway, I keep picturing all these

little kids playing some game in
this big field of rye and all.
Thousands of little kids, and
nobody's around - nobody big, I
mean - except me. And I'm standing
on the edge of some crazy cliff.
What I have to do, I have to catch
everybody if they start to go over
the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're
going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd
do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but
that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy'” (172).

• Holden's obsession with

where the ducks go in the winter
shows an optimistic side of him. This
shows curiosity about life and nature,
which is healthy. A part of the
fascination is due to the ducks
leaving and then returning. This
“Hey Horwitz,” I said. “You ever pass by the lagoon in Central Park? cycle is not apparent in the people he
Down by Central Park South?” knows that have died. Therefore,
“The what?” Holden appreciates the ducks leaving
“The lagoon. That little lake, like, there. Where the ducks are. You in the wintertime and always
know.” returning in the springtime. It
“Yeah, what about it?” intrigues him and gives him a sense
“Well you know the ducks that swim around in it? In the springtime and of hope.
all? Do you happen to know where they go in the wintertime, by any
chance?”

• Holden is trapped in the time that his brother died and wants to
save other children from the stress and problems that he has dealt with
after he reached that point in his life. Since he was 13, it was a time when
he had to start maturing and wants to save others from the most depressing
time for him.