Pete Yemc
9/8/98
Upon preparing for the discussion of the first 105 pages of The Catcher in the Rye, I discovered a piece of symbolism that had a deep affect on me (not that the actual symbolism was that profound, which it wasn't, but that the thought of it just dawned on me for no apparent reason). You see, the night before the presentation, I was finishing some math homework, unconsciously thinking about the daunting task of creating discussion topics (I had only thought of four topics, none of which carried much beef with them), when I started to wonder why J.D. Salinger kept bringing up the quote about "where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen up" [page 13]. So suddenly, from the depths of nowhere, it hits me that this quote is full of symbols. Immediately, I went to the book and derived all the symbols from that quote (which made me sort of proud and destroyed any apprehension of the discussion). Anyway this is the way I see it: The ducks are adolescents and more specifically, adolescents like Holden. The lagoon is the sanctuary of the parents' or of the school. Basically, the lagon is the structure that protects the ducks (the adolescents). The lagoon freezing refers to the cease of that sanctuary for the adolescents. Thus when the adolescents have to become adults, the assistance of their support structure becomes eliminated. Therefore, Holden, in his quest to find himself in the adult world, wants to know, "Where do the ducks go when the lagoon freezes?", or what are adolescents to do when they have to grow up? To build even more on this, the cabbie Horwitz answers Holden's question apathetically [page 82], referring more to what the fish have to do when the lagoon freezes. This refers to the adult world's apathetic outlook on the problems of adolescents and their concern for the fish (the fish are the adults who are responsible for the lagoon, or support structure). So there it is. I thought it was really neat that something like this could just plain dawn on me.
At our little class discussion, my group dawned on something without even realizing it as well, we figured out the theme (it's pretty obvious) by relating all of Holden's actions back to it. The theme is one of maturation, but more specifically, how can one become an adult without losing one's childhood. Holden tries to act old by smoking [page 5], drinking [page 57], renting a hotel in New York City [page 61], and getting a prostitute [page 98]. But he also acts immature and childish by fooling around[pages 21 & 29], talking to anyone he can, and not doing anything with the prostitute[page 98]. Holden is allowing the outside world to view him as an adult while he still tries to be a child. He also allows all the other adolescents to grow up around him. When he asks Stradlater if Jane Gallagher "still keeps her kings in the back row"[page 43] (and is subsequently beaten for it ), he is wondering if Jane has grown up yet or is she still like him.