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Toward the end of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden takes Phoebe to a carousel so she can try to grab for the gold rings. In both narratives, there is a reoccurring theme of the color blue representing innocence and the color red representing maturity. She denies it again which does not surprise Jim because he knows that grown-ups are unauthentic and will use any reason they can think of to get out of their problems. He calls her out on her actions and says that she is always using any phony excuse she can find to move instead of facing the problem at hand. Jim tries to explain that their can’t just run away from the event because she doesn’t want to deal with it. When trying to open up to his parent’s about his involvement of the death of Buzz, his mother reluctantly claims that they are going to move again. Instead of thinking that all those who have lost innocence are phonies, Jim just simply believes that they make phony excuses for their own behavior. The reason Holden wants to preserve the innocence of others is so that they don’t have to camouflage themselves with a phony identity. He is trying to say that people who don’t “talk in their natural voice” are unauthentic and extremely fake. They sound so phony when they talk” (Salinger 100). While talking about parents and people of high status,such as priests, he says “I don’t see why the hell they can’t talk in their natural voice. Throughout The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is constantly using this term to negatively refer to many adults he encounters.
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Holden and Jim share the belief that almost all grown-ups are phonies because they no longer have the innocence that used to make them comfortable in their own skin. Holden knows what it’s like to fall off the cliff and see what the world is actually like, so he wants to keep them happy and oblivious of the metaphorical cliff they are constantly nearing.
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He wants to “catch” or shield them from “ over” or growing up. The “cliff” Holden is referring to is the seminal moment in which innocence is lost. He explains what that means when he says “what I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff” (Salinger 173). However, in The Catcher in the Rye, Holden talks with his little sister Phoebe about what he really wants to be a catcher in the rye. By acting like a father to to his friend, Jim is allowing him to live the youth Plato is afraid he has already lost. Plato starts off by pretending to be the real estate broker, but quickly switches to portraying their son when Jim starts acting as a parental figure to him. He and Judy pretend to be a couple who are looking at the mansion in hopes of a new home for them and their kids. It is apparent to Jim that his friend is beginning to see the true colors of the world, so he steps in to try to preserve his friend’s innocence as long as he can. When the two friends and Judy go to an abandoned mansion late at night, Plato opens up and shares his belief that his parents have completely cast him aside. In Rebel Without a Cause, Jim befriends a boy named Plato who has trouble fitting in with the other teenagers at their school. Similarly, both highly developed characters take on the role of protecting someone they care for immensely. Protagonists Holden Caulfield and Jim Stark strive to preserve the innocence of others in order to protect them from the turmoil they see every day in the real world. This concept of lost innocence is represented in both the novel The Catcher in the Rye and the film Rebel Without a Cause. Each day, someone loses his or her innocence due to a seminal moment that changes his or her life forever.