Archetypes In Catcher In The Rye

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Throughout the novel of the Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield’s abortive attempt to conserve his feeble and incompetent sense of individuality leads to his loneliness which is the primary source of a concrete manifestation of his self-division from the gross demographic of diverse groups of people. The archetypal characters in Catcher in the Rye demonstrate Holden’s struggle to preserve his own innocence and that of those around him. However, through his experiences with these archetypal characters, he realizes that innocence is fragile and that the loss to the adult world is unavoidable and inevitable. Essentially, J.D Salinger utilizes the motifs of protecting innocence, preserving change, and sexuality in order to emphasize on Holden’s tendency to obsessively connect simplicity with authenticity and inaccurately associate complexity with all that is false in his world. This has been done by exhibiting Holden’s struggles of maintaining positive relationships with not only those that surround him, but himself.…show more content…
His predominant objective in life is to conserve his authenticity and to avoid the loss of integrity when enduring distinct arduous situations: “I was surrounded by jerks. I'm not kidding”. An example would be the symbolic motif of the museum of natural history, where the appeal of frozen an unchanging things satisfy him: “the best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move”. The museum represents Holden’s desire to preserve time in order to “catch” himself from falling from his childhood and thus
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