The chapter’s other major theme is the mutability of time and its relationship to death. At the park, Holden runs into a schoolmate of Phoebe’s who suggests that Holden’s sister might be at the museum, “the one with the Indians.” That proves to be unlikely, since it is Sunday and Phoebe’s class would not be meeting, but mention of the Museum of Natural History triggers memories for Holden. He attended Phoebe’s school when he was her age and toured the same museum. He likes to think that the museum would be pretty much the same if he visits it now, but it bothers him to think that he has changed. Phoebe, too, will change. Life is change, as most of us learn, but Holden doesn’t want to accept that. He likes the glass cases in the museum that freeze a moment of history in time and space. An Eskimo, for example, might be fishing through a hole in the ice. The same Eskimo was there when Holden visited the museum and will be there for Phoebe when she visits. Holden would like it if our lives, too, could be frozen in time. It is an adolescent view of the world, the motive behind a young person’s saying to a friend, “Don’t ever change.” The wish is impossible, but it is shared by Holden. He’d surely like to freeze certain moments with Allie or Phoebe for all time: “Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.” In Holden’s world, good things would never die.
