Summary of friday essay

I have been meaning to write this blog for a while now along with many others so anyway here it goes. After reading J.D Salinger’s novel Catcher in The Rye and some modern interpretations on this particular book I have decided to talk about Holden Caulfield’s metamorphoses through the symbolic structure of the book. I am going to write my final paper on this so this is more of just a quick blog to get my thoughts down.
Holden Caulfield’s character to me is one of the most brilliant depictions of what humanity is. He is nihilistic, existentialist, idealistic, and even in a sense completely false. At the same time he holds his idealistic sense of humanity higher than the rest of his traits; we see this represented through his sister phoebe. His character is so complete that it causes a metamorphosis from beginning to the end. One of the main symbolic images of this novel is Holden’s desire to literally be the catcher in the rye. Which essentially means saving childhood from the evil adult world. Holden comes up with this concept through a poem that Phoebe and him have enjoyed over the years. The lyric that is the essence of Holden’s philosophy is “if a body catch a body”.
Now here is the ironic part about this concept of being the catcher in the rye; that lyric that Holden held so high up is actually wrong. The correct lyric turns out to be “If a body meet a body”. And through his failed attempts at his concept of an ideal life he starts to recognize this irony. He does not get upset though, he looks to his sister to understand this “if a body meet a body” concept. What he realizes through all his struggling in out of ideal states of being is that you have to love the world and man for what it is. There is no point in trying to save it form evil just let the individual find out what it is for themselves. The pitfall through adolescence and into adulthood is what defines a human being so let man meet man but with love. This is the essential metaphor of the book and it is realized through Holden’s Metamorphoses through the brute underworld of New York City.