Innocence Is Bliss-Catcher In The Rye

Life is a many-splendored thing and people are born everyday and people die everyday and along the course of life people change. People are born innocent but as they grow up their innocence is lost. In J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye Holden Caulfield struggles with the fact that everyone has to grow up. He feels that the adult life is corrupt and wishes to be the "Catcher in the Rye" to "save" them from being corrupted by the adult morals of the world.

A baby is born without a care in the world, it has everything provided for it and it's born with innocence and knowledge about nothing. As the baby grows up the surrounding environment influences the innocence it has. In the poem "The Tyger" by William Blake, the young boy in the poem loses his innocence by realizing that along with the good comes the bad. The child knew about the innocent baby lamb from the poem "Little Lamb" but was then educated about the feral tiger that is the counterpart in the poem "The Tyger." Holden tries to prevent the children in the elementary school from being exposed to the corrupt world by trying to erase the profanity written on the walls, but he's slowly assenting to the idea of children losing their innocence. "If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "F*** you" signs in the world. It's impossible." (Salinger 202)

At the beginning of the book Holden's character was much like a child's, but along the course of the book he's slowly taking steps toward maturity and becoming a man. He was very immature at the beginning of the book because he was always dubbing someone as a "phony" and felt that he was surrounded by them. But as he progresses along his path of life he realizes the corrupt world of adulthood is his destination and he can't prevent it. He finds out that he can't really stop the progression