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THE MICHIGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW
nately, Holden is not a fish. Mother Nature has not fulfilled
his need. Being warm-blooded, he shares the plight of the ducks;
his getting "frozen right in one position for the whole winter"
is no solution to his dilemma. On the contrary, when Holden,
with wet hair, begins to feel ice forming on the back of his
head, he realizes that he could catch pneumonia, a disease of
the lungs.
Holden also tries to escape the influences of this world by
forming a fantasy: he attempts to create a "make believe"
substitute for the actual world, one in which, even though he
has become "big," he is capable of preserving the state of
childhood. Thus, he mentally fashions for himself the role of
the catcher in the rye:
I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big
field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's aroundnobody big, I mean-except me. And I'm standing on the edge of
some crazy cliff. What I have to do, 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.
The peculiar setting of this fantasy is recollective of two actual
settings Holden would like to avoid, since they are not as
beneficial to the preservation of childhood. The first setting,
analogous to the cliff, is any street-curb from which, as noted
earlier, a child may step and fall down in the street, possibly
ending his childhood. Holden removes this danger in his fantasy
by giving himself the role of the catcher. The second setting,
analogous to the big field, is the park. In contrast with the city,
with its concentrated gathering of corrupted adults, its hotels
"full of perverts and morons. Screwballs all over the place,"
the park is a setting more often associated, in the context of
Holden's experiences, with children. However, unlike the big
field in Holden's "make believe" world, in which children can
play without falling from childhood, the park too clearly reflects
those corrupting influences of the actual world from which
Holden wishes to escape: "It was lousy in the park.... there
