Encyclopedia of Opinion
Question
What are the themes of The Catcher in the Rye?
Position‹3 of 5›
The Catcher in the Rye is about innocence and childhood
Argument‹2 of 2

Jane Gallagher

Holden Caulfield is worried about the innocence of his childhood friend, Jane Gallagher.

The argument

The Jane Gallagher subplot is one of the clearest places where The Catcher in the Rye shows what it is actually about, because Holden's reaction to her is out of all proportion to anything that happens between them. At the beginning of the novel, Holden Caulfield worries about his childhood friend, Jane Gallagher. After discovering his roommate, Stradlater, was taking her on a date, he reflects upon their friendship. He also becomes angry at him for corrupting her innocence — a charge Holden makes before anything has occurred, which indicates that what he is defending is something he has already decided is under threat. What he remembers about her is entirely of a piece with that. When they were kids, Holden and Jane would play chess together, and Jane would keep her kings in the back row, something he still remembers years later. The detail is trivial in itself, which is precisely why it is telling: it is a fragment of a game between children, preserved intact, and it is the form in which Jane exists in his mind. Since they were friends since childhood, Holden associates her with youth — with a version of her that the intervening years have not been allowed to revise. The conflict follows from placing that image next to an adult one. Stradlater has a reputation for dating a lot of girls, a trait Holden knows about. After the date, Holden confronts his roommate about taking Jane into the back of Ed Banky's car. They end up fighting, and Holden loses. He is not defending Jane, who never appears and is never consulted. He is defending childhood itself against the adult world, and the fight he loses is the one he keeps losing throughout the book.

Premises

[P1]Holden associates Jane Gallagher with their shared childhood, remembering details like her keeping her kings in the back row during chess. [P2] Holden becomes upset and fights Stradlater because he fears Stradlater's sexual reputation threatens to corrupt Jane's innocence. [P3] Holden's protective attachment to Jane reflects his broader desire to preserve childhood innocence from adult corruption. [C] Therefore, the Jane Gallagher subplot shows that The Catcher in the Rye is centrally about innocence and childhood.

Counter-arguments

Holden Caulfield is unfairly treating Jane Gallagher like a child despite being the same age. He associates her with childhood only because they knew each other when they were kids themselves. Jane is mature enough to make her own choices, so Hold should not hold her to the expectations of a child.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] Jane Gallagher is only tangentially related to Holden's youth.