The symbolic content of Salinger's work has been hinted at, wildly and
arbitrarily interpreted, overlooked, and even denied. In view of the fact that
Salinger is the most self-conscious and deliberate of artists (it always
surprises the undergraduate to learn that The Catcher in the Rye took ten years
to write and was originally twice as long), as well as one whose interest in
symbolism proclaims itself in the very title of his novel, it seems surprising
that Salinger's use of symbolism has never been closely studied. In fiction, as
in poetry, a symbol cannot be fully understood without discussing it in
relation to the entire work. Yet it is just this that those critics who deal with
Salinger's use of symbolism have failed to do. This lack has tended to make
their remarks either tantalizing, absurd, or simply obtuse. For instance, the
great significance that the Central Park ducks have for Holden Caulfield is
hardly more than suggested in the following passage: "Like the Central Park
ducks in winter, Holden is essentially homeless, frozen out." An example of
the absurdities into which the arbitrary symbolmonger can be led is revealed
in the following passage from Leslie Fiedler. Referring to The Catcher in the
Rye, he writes: "It is the Orestes-Iphigenia story, we see there, that Salinger
all along had been trying to rewrite, the account of a Fury-haunted brother
redeemed by his priestess-sister; though Salinger demotes that sister in age,
thus downgrading the tone of the legend from tragic to merely pathetic."