The Ending
From the way
that Salinger ended the story, the ending did satisfy me. I believe that the
book was not about Holden going home and seeing his parents reaction, but I
believe it was about Holden’s adventure to release his worries about saving
innocence. Holden spends the whole book in depression and finally at the end of
the book he becomes happy. Throughout the book he is falling off the cliff in
the adult world, and he is trying to protect himself and Phoebe form it. It
isn’t until he sees the “Fuck you” (201) written all over the place, that he
realizes that he cannot change the way the world works because there are too
many Fuck you’s for him to get rid of. When he goes to the carousel and lets
Phoebe ride by herself, while just sits there in the rain, this shows that he
has accepted the fact that he can’t protect anybody from the corrupt adult
world. This happens at the moment where he is sitting on the bench, “for quite
a while. I got pretty soaking wet… I didn’t care, though. I felt so damn happy
all of a sudden,” (212-213) and the rain is cleansing Holden. He doesn’t care
about getting wet because the rain is cleaning him and helping him release his
worries, making him feel happy because he can just continue living his life. It
was a very appropriate way to end the book in my opinion, because he has
resolved the “conflict” of the story (falling off the cliff to the corrupt
adult world) and this is the only time he is happy for a change.
