museum, a single moment is unaffected by time. Time stands still inside the walls of the museum. Year after year he can go back to the museum and he only thing that has changed is him. When Frost says that a “leaf subsides to leaf”, he’s describing how time passes and the leaves fall. He says “The early leaf’s a flower, but only so an hour”. He is suggesting that a beautiful flower is only as such for a short amount of time, only if we could stop the mutability, or passage, of time then everything would stay beautiful. Unfortunately we can’t, and that leaf still subsides to another leaf. No matter what, you can’t stop that leaf from changing. Similarly, as soon as you step outside the museum walls, time starts up again; it stops standing still and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.Holding on to innocence is another common factor shared by Caulfield and Frost. Holden wants to preserve innocence. He doesn’t want anyone to make that transition from childhood to adulthood. Holden believes that when you become an adult you become phony. In addition to becoming phony, you lose everything that signifies your innocence. All in all, everything just changes. Holden finds innocence to be a beautiful thing and he wants beautiful things to last forever; he wants innocence to last forever. When Pheobe asks Holden what he wants to be, he replied that he’d like to be the catcher in the rye. He thus explains, "What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff— I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all." (Salinger, 173) He wants to keep these children from falling over the cliff into adulthood. This fall signifies the fall or transition from childhood to adulthood. The sacr...
