Journal Entery

Date: October 6, 2007

Entery Number: 28

Page/Quote reflecting on: Pg. 173

It is kind of hard to interpret the meaning, the very indepth meaning, to what Holden wants to be. He imagines a bunch of little kids, no adults/older people except him, playing a game in a field of rye and he would be standing on the cliff's edge ready to catch them. "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...I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all." Holden got this idea from the song that says "If a body meet a body coming through the rye" but Holden always puts catch where meet is. The fact that he would be the only older person in the field shows that he is still just a kid. When I think of him catching all the kids not looking where they are going, about to fall off the cliff, I think of him trying to keep the kids from growing up and becoming adults. He would be keeping them from falling off/ becoming adults and returning them to the field of youth. Holden doesn't know how he is going to fit in with society and I don't think he really wants to grow up or knows how. May be he is trying to save them from the problems they will have to face with growing up and he doesn't want them to have to go through that like he is. When you are a little kid, you don't have many problems,worries, or concerns and may be that is what he wants to keep them from gaining and becoming corrupt or fake. That is also another trait of little kids. They say it exactly as it is. They are not phony like so many other people are who Holden hates. It is hard to understand what Holden means and I doubt he fully understand either. But it is quite interesting.