I think Holden is deciding if he is a fish
or a duck. His biggest decision is, as the Clash say, "Should I Stay or
Should I Go?"
Holden's dead brother Allie is
the fish frozen forever, trapped in the ice of death and childhood
innocent. He was lucky, according to Holden. Allie never had to worry about painful
coming-of-age preoccupations: sex, materialism, an uncertain future, homelessness, a
mental breakdown, phonies.
Holden is obsessed
with things stuck, literally and figuratively: the Museum of Art never
changes; the Eskimo is mummified forever; the essay about Egyptians (mummies) written
for Old Spencer; Jane keeps her kings in the back row. Holden's long been a
conservative, a kid who puts on a red hunting hat (an homage to Allie) in order to block
out, to retreat, to stay put, and to never grow up or
old.
So, if Allie is the fish and the ice is
death (or the death of innocence and childhood), then what's above and
who are the ducks?
The ducks are abandoned
teenagers like Holden. Yes, Mother Nature should take care of them, but
is she? Are Holden's parents mentioned more than twice in the whole book? They've sent
him to a series of boarding schools and, at the end, to therapy in California. Mother
(nature) and Father are doing a pretty crummy job. Teenagers were very alienated after
the war. As witnesses to the war, holocaust, the spead of crass commercialism, and the
threat of nuclear annihilation, who wouldn't be?
Should
Holden fly South? Should he go beneath the surface like Allie and James
Castle? This the dilemma Holden faces most in his journey:
suicide.
He hates the world
above the ice: everyone's a phony except James Castle (who suicided), Allie (dead),
Mercutio (dead), Phoebe (a kid), and the nuns. Holden seriously wants to join them: to
be the romantic hero who, like James Castle (initials "J. C."; his Christ-figure), died
for a noble cause.
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