I am currently reading a book called “The Catcher in The Rye” , and it is quite interesting. It is about a kid named Holden Caulfield, who got expelled from prep school because he failed most of his classes. The story recounts the two days after the expulsion and dissolves us in the mind of the 16 year old. He is confused and disoriented, he becomes exhausted and mentally unstable. Holden describes his fiction of being “the catcher in the rye”, that was inspired by a song he heard a little boy singing: “If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye.”
“Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.”
“This is a people shooting hat,” I said. “I shoot people in this hat.”
The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. . . . Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.
In the first quote, his teacher teaches him about the importance of playing by the rules.
in the second quote, Holden uses the hat as a mark of individuality and independence.
in the last quote, the museum gives him this vision of life that he is able to understand: it is frozen, silent, and always the same.