Cliffs and Glass Cases: Holden Caulfield's Resistance to Change in Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye
When Holden Caulfield of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye visits his sister’s elementary school, he’s shocked to notice that someone has written “fuck you” on the wall near a staircase. He becomes enraged and wants to kill the “perverty bum” who’d written it (201). He then rubs it off the wall . . . only to find another “fuck you” on a different wall, this time scratched in with a knife. Hopeless, Holden observes that, “if you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the ‘Fuck you’ signs in the world” (202).
This one incident is a perfect analogy for Holden’s life. He wants to keep himself and other children sheltered from the troubles of adulthood. But his efforts are futile. He and the other children can’t stay sheltered forever—there will always be another “fuck you” on the wall. This, ultimately, is the tragic part of Holden’s character: he desperately wants to stop his life from changing, but he is powerless to do so.
At age thirteen, Holden was forced to grow up quickly when his brother Allie died of leukemia. Holden describes Allie as “about a thousand times nicer than the people [he] knows that’re alive” (171). When Holden loses Allie, he loses one of the few good people he knew. This shows him early on how harsh life can be. In his next three years at prep school, his negative opinion of the world—as phony, uncaring, and insincere—is only reinforced.
It’s no surprise, then, that Holden wants to protect other children from the pain of the adult world. He tells his sister, Phoebe, that he dreams of being “the catcher in the rye”—standing at the edge of a rye field, catching children before they fall over a cliff (173). The cliff is analogous to adulthood and its myriad perils. Holden fell over that cliff too soon, so he wants to protect other children from the same fate. He wishes they could stay children forever.
This ties into an overarching theme of The Catcher in the Rye: change. Holden has experienced many changes in his life: Allie’s death, D.B.’s move to Hollywood, Holden’s constant switches in prep schools. These changes all coincided with his entrance into adulthood. Because of this, Holden associates adulthood with chaotic change and childhood with peaceful stasis. To stay a child is to stay in a perfect, unchanging world.
This antipathy toward change is illustrated when Holden thinks about the natural history museum. He recalls the dioramas in glass cases, observing that they have never once changed—the Eskimo is always fishing, and the birds are always flying south (121). This causes Holden to remark that “certain things should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone” (122).
But the world is not a natural history museum. Life cannot be stuck inside a glass case and frozen in time—Holden himself admits that it’s impossible (122). Yet he still desperately clings to this idea. If, at the age of twelve, he could have stuck his family inside a glass case, Allie would still be alive—and Holden would still be in the sincere and innocent world of childhood.
But ultimately, Holden is just a disaffected prep-school dropout. He has no ability to change the world—or in this case, stop it from changing. He could not stop Allie from dying, and he cannot be the catcher in the rye. He can only watch as the world becomes more harsh and insincere—knowing the whole time that he is powerless to stop it.
This one incident is a perfect analogy for Holden’s life. He wants to keep himself and other children sheltered from the troubles of adulthood. But his efforts are futile. He and the other children can’t stay sheltered forever—there will always be another “fuck you” on the wall. This, ultimately, is the tragic part of Holden’s character: he desperately wants to stop his life from changing, but he is powerless to do so.
At age thirteen, Holden was forced to grow up quickly when his brother Allie died of leukemia. Holden describes Allie as “about a thousand times nicer than the people [he] knows that’re alive” (171). When Holden loses Allie, he loses one of the few good people he knew. This shows him early on how harsh life can be. In his next three years at prep school, his negative opinion of the world—as phony, uncaring, and insincere—is only reinforced.
It’s no surprise, then, that Holden wants to protect other children from the pain of the adult world. He tells his sister, Phoebe, that he dreams of being “the catcher in the rye”—standing at the edge of a rye field, catching children before they fall over a cliff (173). The cliff is analogous to adulthood and its myriad perils. Holden fell over that cliff too soon, so he wants to protect other children from the same fate. He wishes they could stay children forever.
This ties into an overarching theme of The Catcher in the Rye: change. Holden has experienced many changes in his life: Allie’s death, D.B.’s move to Hollywood, Holden’s constant switches in prep schools. These changes all coincided with his entrance into adulthood. Because of this, Holden associates adulthood with chaotic change and childhood with peaceful stasis. To stay a child is to stay in a perfect, unchanging world.
This antipathy toward change is illustrated when Holden thinks about the natural history museum. He recalls the dioramas in glass cases, observing that they have never once changed—the Eskimo is always fishing, and the birds are always flying south (121). This causes Holden to remark that “certain things should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone” (122).
But the world is not a natural history museum. Life cannot be stuck inside a glass case and frozen in time—Holden himself admits that it’s impossible (122). Yet he still desperately clings to this idea. If, at the age of twelve, he could have stuck his family inside a glass case, Allie would still be alive—and Holden would still be in the sincere and innocent world of childhood.
But ultimately, Holden is just a disaffected prep-school dropout. He has no ability to change the world—or in this case, stop it from changing. He could not stop Allie from dying, and he cannot be the catcher in the rye. He can only watch as the world becomes more harsh and insincere—knowing the whole time that he is powerless to stop it.