It's a people shooting hat, he declares (we hope not literally). I knew I wouldn't meet anybody that knew me"), and the start of Chapter Twenty-One ("I'd already taken off my hunting hat, so as not to look suspicious").īut despite his embarrassment, the hunting hat becomes an important part of the way Holden sees himself. We even get hints to this at the start of Chapter Thirteen ("I took my red hunting hat and put it on-I didn't give a damn how I looked"), the end of Chapter Sixteen ("I took my old hunting hat out and put it on. (Although, fair enough, it was also just considered polite to take your hat off inside, just like today.) So while he's all about the hat in private, he's embarrassed or lacking confidence to wear it in public. Meanwhile, he takes it off when he's on the train, going to a bar, in hotel lobbies, and so forth.
So we know he's feeling particularly vulnerable at the time, even though Holden would never admit to feeling vulnerable.Īnd that hat shows up over and over again at important moments-writing the composition about Allie's baseball mitt, staring at himself in the mirror and pretending to be tough after Stradlater punches him, yelling "Sleep tight, ya morons" down the corridor. So, what’s going on with this hat? Notice that he buys the hat in New York on the morning after he left all the fencing equipment on the subway and ticked off the entire team. (Need a visual? Check out this selection). The way I wore it, I swung the old peak way around to the back-very corny, I'll admit, but I liked it that way. I saw it in the window of this sports store when we got out of the subway, just after I noticed I'd lost all the goddam foils. It was this red hunting hat, with one of those very, very long peaks. I put on this hat that I’d bought in New York that morning.
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