Red Hunting Hat Symbolism

Holden loves little kids because of their innocence and when Pheobe takes out his hat and puts it on him she knows that he does want to leave the feeling of innocence. “Then what she did-it damn near killed me-she reached in my coat pocket and took out my red hunting hat and put it on my head. “ Don’t you want it?” I said. “You can wear it a while.”(pg.212) The last sentence when Phoebe tells Holden that he can keep his hat for a while is saying that she is allowing him to not grow up for now. And that is what kills him because she just granted him or welcomed him back in safe haven. And Holden does have the option to leave and grow up he just doesn’t want just like the boy from the museum. “Can’t he talk?” I looked at the one that wasn’t doing any talking. “ Can’t you talk at all?” I asked him. “ Yeah,” he said. “ I don’t feel like it,”(pg.203) The boy doesn’t feel like talking and Holden doesn’t feel like growing up his childish actions prevent from growing

Salinger takes one of Holden's most apparent qualities, his desire for uniqueness, and expresses it through his red hunting hat. Aside from being different through its garish red color, Salinger adds another layer of character through the way he shows Holden wearing it. "...I swung the old peak round to the back -very corny I'll admit, but I liked it that way."

Giving himself alternative names prevents the potential threat of society, keeping his red hunting hat with him protects him from society, and describing society as a bunch of phonies gives him a reason to separate himself from society. All these reasons represent Holden and the different ways that he finds to distance himself. Holden pays attention to the smallest details, which makes him critique society and the details about it. It all adds up to Holden being a misanthrope, while only liking the company of his siblings, who give him what society does

Holden puts on his red hunting hat on when he is feeling vulnerable because the hat makes him feel as if he has security and confidence. The red hunting hat makes him feel as if he has the power and ability to be unique. He compulsively buys the red hunting hat after the fencing team verbally abuses him because he “lost all the goddam foils,” (Salinger 17).

Salinger does a phenomenal job developing the red hunting hat into a symbol by emphasizing how important it was to Holden throughout the novel. When Holden is leaving the hotel, whilst walking out the door he grabs his coat from the hat check girl. He then proceeds to show her his hat. “I showed her my goddamn hunting hat and she liked it”(169). Salinger is demonstrating in this phrase the fact that Holden admires his

Holden is nervous and uses his hat as safety. “I pulled the peak of my hunting hat around to the front all of a sudden,for a change. I was getting sort of nervous,” (44). He was scared of what was going to happen next so he pulled his hat on correctly with the peak above his face to shelter himself. He puts on his hunting hat when he is afraid and needs protection. The red hunting hat is a precious item to him. His little sister Phoebe is also very precious to him.“Then I took my hunting hat out of my coat pocket and gave it to her… She didn’t want to take it, but I made her,” (233). Holden gives his hat to his sister Phoebe because it is his source of protection and he loves her and wants to protect her. Phoebe is young and he wants to protect her from physical danger and from growing up and losing her innocence. Holden’s red hunting hat is a symbol of protection and Holden uses his a hat to protect Phoebe’s innocence.

Holden hangs on to the red hunter hat. The red hunter hat represents innocence, which is a way of Holden bonding with Allie and Phoebe and maintaining innocence. Holden asked about the pond and the ducks that lived in New York twice. He was bothered by their absence, Holden is in some way obsessed with mortality. Also, the idea of the museum changing bothers him. Evolving is a part of life. Yet, Holden doesn't want to accept that. He refers to an Eskimo that fishes through a hole in the ice. The same Eskimo was there when Holden was a child and will continue to be there for Phoebe when she visits. Holden would like for our lives to be like that too. "Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone." He wish we could be frozen in time. He would love to have spent more time with Allie and continue to make more memories with Phoebe.

Holden tries to prevent the inevitable, but one must move on with their life, and that is, contributed to the loss of innocence. His hat keeps him safe from the societal horrors that steal one's innocence. So when he has finally comes to grips with the fact that he must become older, and make grown up decisions, he gives his hat to Phoebe when, she takes it out of his pocket and offers it to him, since it was raining, but he says “You can wear it awhile” (Salinger 233), he does this because he wants to protect her now and stop running away from his

He sees himself as the useless member of the family, and states that he’s “the only dumb one in the family” (67). The most heartbreaking cause of Holden’s loneliness is the death of his young brother, Allie, to leukemia. The brothers’ connection is shown through the symbol of Allie’s red hair, which Holden could have a “hunch” for even if Allie was sitting “a hundred and fifty yards” away (38). The cut of a bond this deep devastates Holden. Unfortunately, because of his inactive parents, he deals with it through anger and isolation that is symbolized by the red hunting hat he wears. When the hat is pulled to the front, he cannot “see a goddam thing” and says he’s “going blind” (21). The pain from Allie’s death pushes Holden to seclude himself from a world he sees as cold and ominous. More importantly, it prevents him from looking at his own mind and realizing Allie is the reason he is lonely. As if losing own brother wasn’t enough, Holden also loses the presence of his older brother D.B.. The conflict begins when he leaves Holden by moving to Hollywood, and Holden says D.B. will only “maybe” drive him home after his therapy ends (1). Besides his physical absence, D.B. lost Holden’s respect by leaving

Adulthood is when we mature into a person that continues to live life in reality as we let our childhood and adolescence become a faint memory. The memories, however, taught us lessons of acceptance as we cannot always shape the future. Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye takes a journey through the rite of passage by experiencing the innocence of youth and the phoniness of adulthood.

Aside from being a liar, Holden is depressed. After Allie, his younger brother passed away, Holden hasn’t been too healthy himself. There is this baseball glove that was Allies, and it is a comfort to him. Along with that, another thing that Holden finds comfort in is a hat. This hate in particular is a red hunting hat. We realize that throughout the novel he is obsessed with the past and finds comfort in certain things. From the past, he finds comfort in Allie’s baseball glove, and a red hunting hat. To add onto these, as he gets older, he starts to smoke, drink, and go to his sister Phoebe to find comfort. Holden is only sixteen years of age, but he looks much older than that which is why he can slip through bars and drink, faking

Throughout the novel The Catcher in the Rye, there are many themes, motifs and symbols that emerge and develop along with Holden, the protagonist, and the plot. Though the most significant theme is alienation as means for self-protection. In many instances, Holden isolates and alienates himself from his peers and the world in order to protect his morals and his self-imposed superiority. The first evidence of this alienation occurs when Holden speaks to his history teacher, Mr. Spencer. While talking about Mr. Thurmer’s lecture, Holden begins to ponder the “right side”, stating “if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s the game about?” (Salinger 12).

The baseball mitt represented the past. Before, it wasn’t linked to a tragic event, and would have had no meaning to anyone except for Allie, who used and wrote in it all the time. But after Allie died, Holden used the mitt to hold on to his past. When his brother died, Holden was devastated. So devastated, that he smashed all the windows in the garage and ended

In this excerpt from the beginning of the novel called The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the main character, Holden Caulfield speaks to his psychologist about his deceased younger brother. Salinger includes this quote from Holden in order to offer the reader some understanding of his actions and attitude throughout the book, and it also enforces the thought that Holden is a character struggling with teen grief, misunderstood by his parents and the peers around him. In this quote, he seems to be lost in thought of the detail of his younger brother's baseball mitt, even remembering the "green ink" (Salinger) that was used on it. Because of this, readers can infer that Holden has spent much time with this mitt and that such an object has a great amount of sentimental value to him because it was a possession of a person that he cared greatly about. However, despite his pain, Holden does not allow himself to process his grief properly; he instead puts up a sort of facade of passiveness towards the death of younger brother. For example, Holden does this when he nonchalantly says, "He's dead now... You'd have liked him" (Salinger). This passage shows a side of

When Ackley took longer than expected to get ready for the movies, Holden opened a window and, "started to throw