Michael Jordan, a professional basketball player, once said, “In reality, I never want to grow up”. In the world, there are many people who agree with this statement because becoming an adult is something feared. To continue, Holden Caulfield is someone who fears growing up. He is a sixteen year boy who was expelled from Pencey Prep, an expensive boarding school, for failing too many classes. Upon leaving Pencey Prep, he travels to New York, where tries to find himself and encounters many difficult things that lead him to becoming more anxious about growing up. In Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye, he develops the theme of the difficulties of growing up demonstrated through the use of the red hunting hat as shown in the scene when Holden was alone in his room during the football game, went to the museum, and got back his hat from his sister Phoebe. …show more content…
The red hunting has was first used during a football game when Holden was alone in his bedroom. Holden first changes out of his clothes and “puts on [the] hat that [he’d] bought in New York that morning” (Salinger 17). At this moment, Holden was thinking about the conversation he had with Mr. Spencer at his house. The topic that Mr. Spencer and Holden both communicated about was something that he felt was important, but lied about not caring to get away from talking about the topic. Holden then uses this hat as a calming mechanism when he was alone to help him cope about the terrible things he did at Pencey. What Holden really liked about the red hunting hat was that he didn’t care how he looked with it on when he was by himself, but he just felt good when he was wearing it (Salinger 18). In other words, it helped him cope with his actions of running away too