Catcher In The Rye Setting

Zhu1
Katherine Zhu
EAE 1D
Ms. Sivel
December 1st
The Catcher in the Rye: The Pursuit of Endless Childhood
The main setting of The Catcher in the Rye is New York City, Holden Caulfield, the protagonist’s hometown. He decides to wander around the city before heading home, to prevent his parents from noticing that he’s been expelled from his school. Out of all the places he visits in NYC, the two most notable ones are the Museum of Natural History and Central Park. The museum is an illusion of how Holden wishes the world was. In the novel, he says: “Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.” (Salinger 123). This shows that the Museum is a symbol of Holden’s reluctance for change, in himself and in the world. Central Park is the location where Holden goes in order to answer his question of where the ducks go in the winter. This question could represent Holden’s

Salinger used many literary techniques in order to tell his story. The most prominent literary device is the allusion in the title. The title “The Catcher in the Rye” is an allusion to the poem, of the same name by Robert Burns and the first verse which Holden, upon hearing a little boy sing it, thinks is “if a body catch a body coming through the rye” (Salinger 117). This later on points to the theme of the novel and how Holden wants to be the Catcher in the Rye, preventing other children from falling down the cliff and facing adulthood. The second literary technique is the flashback. The Catcher in the Rye is an example of a huge flashback, told by Holden from a mental hospital, one year after the main events of the novel. In Chapter 1, Holden says: “I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy” (Salinger.1). This shows that what Holden later on tells us is a flashback to his journey from around last December and that it has all already