Holden's Passion

Passion is an immensely powerful emotion that can push people to extremes, extremes that they may not always finish at. In most cases, it can help a person or character in a positive way, such as Holden, whose passion, preserving childhood innocence, helped mature and bring closer into adulthood and further from childhood. On the other hand, there is Neil, whose passion, unfortunately, hindered him. His passion for acting was so strong that he felt if he couldn’t continue with it, he couldn’t find happiness within his life Holden, in the novel, Catcher in the Rye, tries to hide his passions throughout the storyline, but a few of the things he cares about shine through.

The most important passion that Holden possesses would have to be his wanting to preserve the innocence of children. Initially, we see Holden’s negative views on the adult world; he constantly refers to adults and the adult world as “phonies”.

With this we get a sense that he strongly dislikes anything related to the adult world due to it being fake and phony.

This helps further the idea that he wants to help children remain in that innocent state, oblivious to the untrustworthy adult world. Throughout the novel, we continue to get more supporting evidence as to why Holden wants to preserve the innocence of young children. One main example of a child he wants to protect would be his younger sister, Phoebe. He wants to protect her in every way possible because in his mind, she is the embodiment of innocence, and she has a sense about her that conveys innocence and that truly cares about Holden.

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Whilst at the museum, the place where Holden finds his own childhood solitude, he sees profanity written on the walls. He was overwhelmingly shocked and extremely angry that someone had decided to write something so foul on a wall where children would obviously see and wonder what it meant.

Seeing his severe reaction to profanity on a wall helps prove the point that he wants to keep children innocent. Towards the end of the novel, Holden realizes that everyone eventually grows up and has to learn things for themselves. He learns this lesson from the carousel and the “free ride system,” which meant “if you fall off whilst reaching for the ring, you fall off and learn your lesson.” Proving to Holden that it is necessary for him to let his sister learn things for herself. Holden finally realized that you can’t keep children innocent forever, and that because children always eventually grow up, he learned that he himself can’t stay in a childlike state forever.

His passion helps him begin to develop into an adult and understand the responsibilities that come with being an adult. Neil on the other hand, is a character that develops his passion quite quickly and doesn’t give it much thought, ultimately leading to a tragic ending. Neil falls immediately in love with acting, without giving any rational thought to his father’s disapproval, He falls into many bad situations that make things difficult for him. When he finds out about a nearby theater putting on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” he immediately takes the opportunity without thinking about the repercussions As he gets more involved in theater, poetry, and the Dead Poets Society, he starts falling more in love with the arts, contrary to what his father wants for him, which is to be a doctor. By completely ignoring his father’s wishes and focusing on nothing but the arts, Neil is setting himself up for failure and with that, it sets him back. Neil makes some very careless mistakes and lies to numerous people about what is really occurring in his life, he does this because he doesn’t want his sole passion, which is acting, to be taken away from him.

Finally, his lies catch up to him and he gets caught by his father at his show. After finding out about his new passion, his father demands he attend military school; something in which Neil couldn‘t bear. He made the decision to end his life if he couldn’t pursue his passions. With Neil ending his life, he ruined any chance of making things better for himself. Neil’s passion for acting hindered him in the fact that he couldn’t see past the fact that he wasn‘t able to pursue that passion in the moment. As opposed to Holden’s passion which ended up helping him, Neil’s strong passion for acting soon became his downfall, Unfortunately his act of rebellion cost him his life. Neil’s need to act was as sudden as his decision to end his life. On the other hand, Holden’s gradual realization that children will all eventually grow up really helped him descent into his own personal maturity.