McDermott Storge in Preserving Innocence

 In Borderlands, the mother preserved her child’s image of his father to protect him and keep him away from the harsh realities of the world. She hid that he was a violent alcoholic and throughout the movie accepted her son’s hatred to barring him from the man without complaint because she loved him just that much and wanted him to grow up happy and innocent. I believe that this is an example of storge (familial affection) as used in Lewis’ Four Loves.

I remember reading Catcher in the Rye way back in high school. I really really loved the book, and if you can’t tell from my other blog posts, I’m really fascinated by storge,so I think it may be why I like Catcher in the Rye so much – it’s another perfect example of storge.


Holden’s desperation to preserve the childhood innocence of his sister, Phoebe, is the main premise of the book. At the end of the book, he dreams of catching children in the rye field (childhood innocence) to stop them from falling over the cliff into the harsh realities and corruption of adulthood below, a metaphor for this.


This is storge is the same storge in the way that the mother behaved in Borderlands performed. Both Holden and the mother wanted what as best for those younger and to preserve their innocence at all costs, and both of them ended up sacrificing something in order to do that: the mother, her child’s love for her, and Holden, his own innocence.

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