In this excerpt, we see Holden worrying about the "ducks swimming" in the Central Park lagoon. Perhaps JD Salinger intends the ducks, a recurring motif in the novel, to be a symbol of mortality, because when the ducks "fly away on their own", they are no longer there - in the same way that Holden fears that when he dies, he will be forgotten by them. around him in the same way that Allie and James Castle were. While Horwitz and others may find comfort in a romanticized logic—that "mother nature" will take care of itself—Holden does not, viewing death not only as something physical but also as something something mental and emotional. This scene shows the escape from society in a different, more "mature" way than in Huck Finn: one could say that, for Holden, the only way to escape from society is through his own death (as shown in Chapter 14, when Holden says "What I really wanted, though, was to kill myself. I wanted to jump out the window") On the other hand, one could say that ducks are also representative of innocence, which Holden covets and longs to protect and that this in turn represents Holden's desire to understand what happens to those who are forced by society to grow up. Holden's question as to whether "a truck...takes [the ducks] away" or whether "they fly away on their own" could be