The Museum
of Natural History symbolizes 's desire for stasis. A part of him deeply longs for everything to
stay the same as it was in his childhood. At that point, his brotherwas still alive and Holden
himself wasn't faced with all the struggles of adolescent life.
The dioramas
in the museum, scenes of Native American life behind glass, never change. As Holden walks
through the museum as a teenager, they look exactly the same as they did when he was an innocent
child. As he says:
You could go there a hundred thousand
times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would
still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with
their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would
still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be
different would be you.
As Holden goes on to state, even
the differences in a person's life, when a...
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