An Essay on the symbolism of the Carousel in The Catcher in the Rye

Human life is strange and wonderful for the most part; as one grows from child to an adult they start to see more, a child sees things as they are, they take thing literally the beauty and the existence of thing, but an adult also sees the same thing like a child, a grown person also sees the impermanent nature of things, the fragility of things and uncaringness of things. They see much more in life than a child ever can grasp; the suffering and momentary solemn beauty unlike a child who only sees the ideal world that is presented to them by the grownups who raise them; Who shelter them from everything that is absurd and cover the children in comfortable shelter. But this is not permanent, so the sudden transition is hard for every child from their innocent childhood to adulthood. In the book The Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist Holden is a child who needs to grow up, but he is unwilling to leave his comfortable shell in order to face the real world. He doesn’t like change and he is afraid of the uncertainty that is caused by change, but this unchanging nature of his makes his life go around again and again in a circle. In the book The Catcher in the Rye the carousel symbolizes the repetitive mistakes of Holden’s life.

Holden’s indecisive nature keeps him from breaking the circle. As stated by Holden, “I’m not going away anywhere. I changed my mind” (Salinger 111). Holden often sets his mind to doing something new or changing something about himself, but he doesn’t follow through with almost any of those goals. He is always dubious about everything; he thinks considering every possibility is important but for every decision if someone consider every possible possibilities then they will never be able to make up their mind this exactly what Holden does; he thinks that it makes him wise if he consider everything but it doesn’t; human don’t have infinite time so they have to get best out of their time, they have narrow down their possibilities with educational guess and when the opportunity arrives take it without over thinking too much about it. Humans cannot be indecisive when the opportunity arises, they can do two things about the opportunity either not take it or take it, not matter which one they chose it will be their own choice; they made their own choice, and both them just choices no matter which one they picked there will be some bad things and some good things and this mix of good and bad will be present in both choices equally in one form or another and sometime it is hard to made make choice not because there is right one but there isn’t one. If someone doesn’t make their own choice, the situation or someone else will make the choice for them which is regrettable because they will not be able to break free of the circle if they don’t choose for themselves. As Holden states, “All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she’d fall off the goddam horse” (Salinger 113). At heart Holden is a kid, he was born with exceptional curiosity, love for learning, empathy for others, and a desire to better himself; in his life there have been many opportunities for him to grow up and change himself and also be the person he dreams of becoming but his indecisive influenced him to not make any choices of his own, he left it to the fate to choose for him. It is ironic that he himself always complains about people not making up their mind but he himself is the most indecisive person among all of them. There might be a chance that he realizes that he also can’t make up his mind that’s why he puts off his frustration about not being able to make his mind onto others. He hates people who are similar to him and also the people who are better than him; instead of taking the good thing from all the food people he meets he finds mistakes in them and comforts himself with that nobody is completely perfect so there is no point in bettering himself up. He has many golden rigs in his life but he push them far away from himself which is caused his indecisiveness he cannot stay in one track, he is afraid to overtime the difficulties that comes when he chase the golden ring, in his life his golden rings are his people and whenever things get hard between them he just push them away and becomes alone and makes even more mistakes.

Holden’s fear of change keeps him from becoming an adult. As Holden says, “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was” (Salinger 65). A museum is a place where everything is preserved from changing; everything in the museum is stationary which is contradictory to a human life where everything is constantly changing, evolving from one form into another. But Holden likes the museum because it doesn’t change, he wishes deep inside his mind that his whole life could be like the things in the museum. Change makes Holden uncomfortable because the changes he goes through are difficult, whenever Holden changes nothing good comes with it for him so he is convinced that change is bad. Unbenounced to him even in a stationary place like museum things do change. Time is the catalyst for every change; as time moves on it brings change on everything around it and the same is true for the relics in the museum; the relics are redecorated, parts are changed when needed, and if it doesn’t bring any value then it is replaced. Holden’s attitude towards the change process keeps him from becoming an adult like figure. Holden at the end of the novel emphasizes this in the carrousel, as he states, “That’s one nice thing about carrousels, they always play the same songs’’ (Salinger 113). The carrousel is consistent, they play the same song from fifteen years ago, the animals kids ride on goes up and down in a consistent manner. In the carousel only kids play, no adult plays with the carousel; Holden appreciates the stationary nature of the carousel; in Holden’s mind it doesn’t change no matter how many years passed unlike his own life which he wished was like that too. A consistent life where every day is no different another day; although Holden says he wants to live a life where everything stays the same but in truth he will get bored of that life just after some time and stop wanting to live the same life like again and again. This is also symbolized in the carousel because he grew up, he stopped going to the carousel because things are the same every time, but he fails to realize that he doesn’t like repetitive things but still he doesn’t want to think about it out of fear. Like the museum, carousels also change; Holden ignores the change and just tries to see the thing that stayed the same which brings him comfort and a sense of familiarity and that is symbolized in the carousel; Holden fear of growing up into a functioning adult.

Holden’s overprotectiveness of children keeps him away from saving himself. As stated by Holden, “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” (Salinger 93). Holden is an empathetic person; to him children are the purest human form, children don’t pretend what they are not, they are playful, they haven’t lost their naive innocent outlook on life and most importantly they are not phony. There characteristics Holden consider sacred and more human than the grownups way of like. The children say what they mean, they never fake themselves so Holden wants to protect the innocence of kids by making sacrifices his entire life, but he doesn’t realize he can do both, sacrificing himself will not stop kids from growing. Kids have innocence that Holden needs to let go off now; he needs to see things as they are without sugar coating it. He doesn’t want to let go of his child-like behavior and he wants to be treated like an adult but in reality he acts like a kid which he considers to be true human nature. Even after growing up if someone acts like a kid they can’t function in a productive society, it is simply not possible to be an adult and not lose one’s innocence; to be a member of society one will encounter things that will take their childhood innocence away. Holden is concerned about other kids, but he is careless about himself, he doesn’t want to realize that he alone cannot protect the innocence of all kids, Holden sacrificing himself means nothing, because the kids will also grow up at a certain age like everyone does. Rather Holden should confront his fear of letting go of his idea of glorifying childhood and just growing up because if he doesn’t he fall into abyss from which he will never recover that he still has some time to change the course of his life he should focus on himself without worrying about thing that is not possible to do. When Holden was watching Phoebe going around and around on the carousel he states, “it began to rain like a bastard. In buckets…. but I stuck around on the bench for quite a while” (Salinger 114). Holden is soaked in rain, but all the kids are saved from the rain because they are under the roof of the carousel. He stands alone and nobody but him is standing there almost like he is protecting all the kids from the harshness of the world while he is taking all the pain for himself. Holden tries to be the catcher who saves kids’ innocence falling in the cliff and catches them before but in the process Holden hurts himself. The rain metaphorically represents the chaos he is fighting in order for Phoebe and all the other kids who he thinks is the cause that he should dedicate his life to but Holden could have easily avoided those things and kids still would have been fine, nobody needs his protection. Holden is the only person who thinks it is his duty to save kids because nobody else has the perspective like he does. Most things Holden does are unreasonable although he has good intentions, but they have no meaning behind them at all, all those things that he thinks needs to be protected can be protected without him. But Holden let everyone else take shelter under the roof of the carousel but he himself stood out there waiting for phoebe so he could keep an eye on the kids. Holden tries to do everything alone so when things go wrong he only blames himself which he reflects when he accuses the world for everything although it is his unnecessary protectiveness that causes him to suffer and makes him lonely because nobody could understand Holden’s action.

Holden’s wish to hold onto his innocence, keeps him from coming growing up. As Holden states, “then old Hans would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile…. I can’t stand that stuff” (Salinger 93). A child sees the world differently than a grown adult. A child sees a perfect world outside, mostly loving people in the name of parents, nice friends and even if there is a mean friend among them he/she can be forgiven and who the child thinks can change, a child sees a harmonious world where everything makes total sense. As child is growing up from a child into an adult they start to see the absurdities in the world, the inconsistencies, the lies and the horror, they ask people who have been longer than they have in the world about these thing but because the growing child is clever he soon realizes that the grownups are just pretending to know the answer to these question, they also have no idea either, they are as lost as the kids. But when the children grows up into fully grown adult they discover although grownup don’t have answers to many questions but they are really good at getting used to not knowing answer to many questions, for the most part they don’t get mad why certain things doesn’t make any sense and the grownups are quite mature about it, they know they have a life that they were given so they try to live their life the way it makes them happy. Holden thinks this is phony, the person is fake for accepting his limitation, an adult makes the best out of his/her shortcomings unlike a child who thinks they can do everything in the world if they want to, that’s why Holden wants to stay as an innocent child who sees the world as it ideally should be but not is. Holden embodies the nostalgic innocent of a child in the place where the carousel is placed, as Holden recalls, “When she was a tiny little kid, and Allie and D.B. and I used to go to the park with her, she was mad about the carrousel”(Salinger 113). Holden recalls the nostalgic childhood he had as a child; even the simple mundane things used to make him happy, he didn’t need much he only needed food, his brother and sister, his family and in those times even a simple thing as a carousel could make him happy. He treasures the simplicity of life he had when he was a kid. As times went on, he started to see more; the life that is beyond what is apparent in the present, he realizes that even though everything seems perfect and there is no need of change, change is still taking place and as everyone including himself is growing, things are changing. Holden deep down probably wants to ride in the carousel like phoebe again to go back to his childhood; when everything used to be so nice and beautiful. His fear of losing his innocence of a child forever keeps him from becoming an adult, his fears don’t let him grow up. Since he is resisting the growth he can’t see that growing up is not completely bad and not impossible, millions of other people doing it and they also had to leave their own childhood behind to grow up and they are just fine, they misses them just too but they accepted that they can no longer be kids anymore, they have to move forward and this is the reality. The carousel nicely symbolizes Holden’s life till his early adulthood.

Holden life’s repeating mistake nature symbolized in the carousel. Holden throughout the novel suffers from the limbo between childhood and adulthood. He is indecisive, he doesn’t take care of himself, weirdly empathetic to the people who don’t even treat him well, a person who needs to grow up but there is still a child within him, who doesn’t want to disappear. Holden doesn’t realize that becoming an adult doesn’t mean becoming a cold heartless fake animal, in some part it is true you need to see beyond what is apparent, but you can still carry the innocent child in you. The carousel symbolizes these by metaphorically showing Holden habits of making the same mistake again and again like how a carousel rotates around and around and never changing its course. At the end of the novel when Holden accepts his adulthood by not going with Phoebe in the carousel, he see he can still get happy from just seeing Phoebe riding the carousel, he at last realizes that even after growing into adult the kid inside him hadn’t died and finally he is an adult with a heart of little kid.