Hope for salvation sprouts only when we embrace both the light and darkness of life.
Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of *The Catcher in the Rye*, lets go of his obsession with resisting change, loss, and the inevitability of growing up; he abandons the role of a guardian trying to freeze innocence in time. The carousel his younger sister Phoebe rides symbolizes the passage of time, not a space where innocence stands still.
In *The Catcher in the Rye* (1951), J.D. Salinger explores the complex relationship between innocence and sinfulness through the wanderings of the protagonist, Holden Caulfield. After being expelled from school, the 16-year-old protagonist does not return home immediately; instead, he stays at a New York hotel for several days, encountering a variety of people. Caught in the transition from childhood to the adult world, he experiences the growing pains of navigating the space between innocence and a corrupt society.
Caulfield perceives the adult world as "phony." Throughout the story, he uses the word "phony" more than fifty times, alongside other similar terms. He views adult conversations, social interactions, and societal norms as hypocritical, superficial, and lacking in authenticity.
The reason he left Elkton Hills School was because the place was "full of phonies." They "show up wearing masks." In particular, the way the headmaster, Mr. Haas, treats parents starkly reveals the snobbery and hypocrisy of adults; on Sundays, he would personally shake hands with every parent who drove to the school to visit. However, regarding the “old and unsightly parents”—such as a mother who looks fat or dowdy, or a father wearing an old-fashioned, broad-shouldered suit and tacky black-and-white shoes—the headmaster merely shakes their hands, offers a forced smile, and moves right past them. Holden finds this “phony” headmaster unbearable to look at and feels “so depressed it drives [him] crazy.”
When asked what she wants to be, his beloved younger sister Phoebe replies that she wants to be a “catcher in the rye.” She imagines thousands of children playing in a vast rye field while she stands “right by the edge of a steep cliff.” She wants to “catch anyone who’s about to fall over the edge” and do “nothing but that all day long.”
Although the meaning of the children falling off the cliff is not explicitly explained, it implies a descent from innocence into the pretentious world of adults. One critic described this aspiration of the protagonist as a dramatic manifestation of the “constant tension between innocence and corruption,” calling it a “quasi-secularized narrative of the Fall (Original Sin).” In other words, the innocence he seeks is not merely the guilelessness of a child, but an innocence viewed through the lens of a critique of adult hypocrisy; it is linked to the innocence lost at the time of humanity’s Original Sin.
Even though Holden attempts to protect the innocence of children from the inauthentic adult world, his yearning is merely an ideal that fails to account for reality. His problem lies in his refusal to acknowledge and accept the sinful nature of humanity.
His love for children is genuine, yet imperfect. He fails to acknowledge that children, too, exist within the finite human condition and must ultimately grow—both physically and mentally—through the realm of experience.
The museum he loves symbolizes his yearning to shield purity from the transformative flow of time. What he values most about the museum is that "everything stays right where it is. Nothing moves at all." Unlike reality where people grow, age, and become "phony," the things in the museum remain exactly as they are, no matter when one returns.
One reason the protagonist remains trapped in a state of innocence is the death of his younger brother, Allie. On the evening Allie died, overwhelmed by grief and rage, he smashed every window in the garage with his bare hands; he was hospitalized as a result and missed the funeral. Held captive by this deep, unresolved wound, he remains frozen in the pain of that loss.
When Phoebe asks him what he likes, his immediate answer is, "I like Allie." When she retorts, "Allie’s dead... That’s all you ever talk about!" he admits he knows this but insists he cannot stop loving Allie—someone who was "thousands of times better than the people who are alive."
His brother’s death represents a defining experience of loss for the protagonist. At the same time, the death of Allie—the embodiment of absolute innocence—imprinted upon him the realization that innocence is not merely childish naivety; it is something sacred yet fragile, capable of shattering and vanishing from life. Driven by this, he aspires to become the "Catcher in the Rye," protecting children so that their innocence remains unbroken. Fully embracing the duality of life—where good and evil coexist—
Letting go of the obsession to control the world and stepping onto the path of "true growth"
In New York, the protagonist spends days reaching out to people, yet his self—frozen in a state of loss and innocence—fails to form lasting connections, leaving him to wander in isolation. When he finally resolves to leave home and flee the West, his sister Phoebe insists on joining him, showing up with an "enormous bag" packed with her clothes. After some bickering, they end up at the zoo.
Watching Phoebe and the other children on the carousel straining to grab the gold ring so they won't fall off their horses, he reflects:
"I felt worried, but I didn't say a word. You see, with kids, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you just have to let them be. If they fall, they fall. It’s no good to interfere or say anything about it."
Ultimately, the protagonist, Caulfield, relinquishes his obsession with controlling the world—an obsession born of his refusal to accept the inevitability of change, loss, and growing up. The carousel, with its ceaseless motion, represents a place where time flows rather than a space where innocence stands still. Abandoning his role as a guardian trying to freeze innocence in place, he is suddenly overcome by a feeling of profound happiness as he watches Phoebe spinning round and round.
The world is a place where innocence and experience, good and evil, coexist. Likewise, our own inner worlds are composed of a dual layer—much like the wheat and the tares. Since the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, neither the world nor humanity can escape the reality of sin. One becomes an adult of true authenticity—rather than a "fake"—only when capable of contemplating both light and darkness simultaneously.
The protagonist’s problem lay in rejecting this reality and attempting to block the path from innocence to the world of experience. Growing into the adult world does not mean abandoning innocence to live a life of hypocrisy and pretense. The reason the benevolent master allows the wheat and the weeds to grow together is that he waits in the hope that the weeds might be transformed.
Text by a Society of Jesus priest in the Department of English Literature, Sogang University)
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