“Do you happen to know where the ducks go in the winter-time, by any chance?”

During the course of Salinger’s novel, Catcher in the Rye, this is the recurring question Holden Caulfield needs an answer to. From the beginning of the journey in the school, Holden’s only answer to the question is to run away. He criticizes and philosophizes about people who are boring, people who are insecure, and, above all, people who are "phony." But towards the climax, Holden, a young, confused, judgmental, cynical, intellectual and analytical member of the phony world finally understands fighting against the human condition is not a battle worth fighting for.

Holden is a sixteen year old kid that hates the world and almost everybody in it as his sister, Phoebe, points out to him when she says "You don't like anything that's happening. . . . You don't like any schools. You don't like a million things. You don't”.

Holden’s self–discovery voyage starts at Pency. Holden, like almost everyone and everything, thinks that the school and the people in it are all phonies. “They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hot-shot guy on a horse ju

Unfortunately, Holden is extremely exhausted and can not pay full attention to Mr Antolini’s enlightening and life-changing advice.

Holden thinks everybody is a phony, everybody except for Allie (his brother), Phoebe (his sister), Jane Gallagher (his old next-door neighbour) and some nuns he meets.

Allie is Holden’s brother that recently died. Allie was a brilliant, friendly, red-headed boy—according to Holden, he was “the smartest of the Caulfield’s.” Holden is tormented by Allie's death and carries around a baseball glove on which Allie used to write poems in green ink.

Holden is still blind to this fact and doesn’t put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Some topics in this essay:
Catcher Rye, Unfortunately Holden, Phoebe Holden’s, Vermont” Holden, Holden Caulfield, Pency Holden, Phoebe Holden, Ackley Holden’s, Allie Jane, Holden Holden, ‘fuck you’, answer question, immature die, holden notices, mature live, immature die nobly, adult world, cause mark, mark mature, collecting money, notices ‘fuck, notices ‘fuck you’, die nobly cause, nobly cause mark, cause mark mature,