"God, I love it when a kid's nice and polite when you tighten their skate for them or something. Most kids are."
We finally found Holden's weak spot, he loves kids. This really helps me clear up a couple thoughts about Holden. He likes children because they seem untouched by humanity. They've only been around for a short time, not long enough to be poisoned by other people. Stop me if I'm wrong but I think Holden thinks of the world like this...The longer someone lives, the more phony they become because they have had more time to be influenced by the world. Thinking about it like this made me realize that he is afraid of being phony, but he's even more afraid of being influenced by others. I think that he believes that being influenced and changed by others is always a bad thing. He is afraid because he doesn't have the power to keep himself the way he is. Maybe that's why he distances himself from others even though it's a natural desire to want to be close to others. This quote is like a master key, it open's multiple doors...and I'm sure that I will find more to open with it.
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I really like this thinking... I do think that Holden really likes kids because he knows that most of them are not phony and they are just real all the time. They are so honest, which Holden is not. I think that he does wish he could be a kid again and not worry.
ReplyDeleteKids to Holden I think are vulnerable, they haven't been touched by all the phoniness around them, I think he wants to protect them from ever getting the phony-syndrome.
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