Holden Caulfield Maturity

The novel ‘Catcher in the Rye,’ written by J.D. Salinger portrays the struggle with maturity, and is perceived through the main character, Holden Caulfield. J.D. Salinger's fictional novel, published in 1951, is a coming-of-age story read by many adolescents but has been originally intended for an adult audience who would be able to relate to Holden’s idea that the adult world contains a certain insincerity attached to it. ‘Catcher in the Rye’ presents the distressing idea that despite the amount of action taken to evade or ignore it, maturity is inevitable.

The book is told through the perspective of Holden Caulfield, a young man the age of seventeen, who expresses his opinions on every subject that can come to mind and when he describes a story of someone he ends up generally calling them a phony, or believing that they are fake in some way. He is not considered as an adult nor a child, and associates phoniness with adulthood. Holden even

claims that he does not understand many things relating to the adult world, including sex and relationships. When he winds up getting kicked out of his prep school, however, he ventures off by himself into the bustling New York City for three days and he acquires much knowledge and wisdom from the real world through the experiences that transpired. He later on lets us know that he was actually telling this story from the past, since he states that he has a psychoanalyst person to assist him in figuring out on where he is supposed to apply himself, which suggests that Holden had to seek a form of mental help.
“I’ve had quite a few opportunities to lose my virginity and all, but I’ve never got around to it yet. Something always happens” ( Salinger 103). Holden Caulfield believes that he encounters situations where he is not able to go through with the opportunities, yet it is actually his own will that tells him to stop since he is not ready. Even though he speaks about sex, he is inexperienced and had never reached the opportunity since he is unsure on what to do and afraid, despite that he does not admit it. Even when he was with a woman who was a working girl, he was unable to go through with his own decision and instead asks her questions about her, which is abnormal since he wants to get to know her on a personal level despite that she is a call girl. Holden was constantly depressed with the idea of who she was and saw her through a personal scale. The fact that she seems around his own age scares him since he became depressed when he found out that she does her job each day. Eventually, he was unable to come through with doing anything although he payed for her to come in the first place and makes up an excuse to spare her feelings and preserve his own. He had seemed as if he were ready, yet at the last moment he must have contemplated the idea of what he was doing, then chose to
His beliefs were that the adult world had consisted of many complexities and Holden is afraid of change.

When thinking about Jane Gallagher, he views her as a childhood friend that used to play checkers with him and not as the maturing lady she is becoming. “Every time I got to the part about her out with Stradlater in that damn Ed Banky’s car, it almost drove me crazy” (89). The thought of her doing anything with his roommate Stradlater had frightened him, which reveals that he is afraid of other people maturing, possibly since he had not been doing so himself. He had flunked many subjects at his prep school Pencey and they had decided to kick him out. He is afraid to reveal this to his parents since he had claimed that he had been kicked out of many other schools before as well, possibly because he had not been doing the work to maintain his grades. He has a small amount of responsibility and is more charismatic, for he wandered around the city of New York on his own after fleeing Pencey since he had gotten kicked

out.
He wishes to remain a child at heart rather than set out his future goals, and has the mindset of a child although he attempts actions that adults would take. Holden possesses a sense of youth that held him captive from doing many different things and his mind acts younger, despite that he is older than a kid would be, but attempts actions that would make him seem older than he is. Because Holden resembles the looks of an older person, he smokes and also tries to get away with drinking at nightclubs and bars. Most of the time, however, they normally hand him what they should; a regular Coke. Holden is uncomfortable with the idea of change when he grew up and has the traits that a child would; a lack of responsibility and thought before making actions.
For example, in the book there is a description of what Holden had dreamed of doing, which is being the catcher in the rye. The objective of being the catcher in the rye is to watch children play in the rye and if they would ever come too dangerously close to the cliff he would be there for them to prevent them from falling off. “That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be” (191). Metaphorically, this means that Holden desires to assist in saving children from adulthood, as if it were dangerous and worth the protection from.
Holden appreciates kids greatly for their innocence and their spirit, like he does to his younger sister Phoebe, although she is not as young as she used to be. “She’s ten now, and not such a tiny little kid any more, but she still kills everybody-everybody with any sense, anyway” (77). He admires how pure she is as a child and she is a person that he respects the most for her attitude, and how she utilizes her smartness and wisdom when encountering a situation, but is remorseful since he realizes that she is no longer such a little kid any more.
Towards the end of the novel, when Holden witnesses Phoebe on a carousel in the park, he makes observations of how she acts on it, and notices that she reaches towards a gold ring, as well as the other kids had, but were at risk of falling. “The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything” (232). He claims that if they fall you must allow them to, for they would only get back up again. Symbolically, this indicates that Holden has come to the understanding that he must allow children to make their own mistakes like he has for them to become mature and gain their own knowledge based on their life experiences. He begins to realize that they do not have to rely other people all the time, and that being able to discover the world for yourself like he had done was a more memorable and
Ultimately, Holden Caulfield’s prevention of adulthood is genuine for his own sake yet he had not enabled himself to experience it in the first place. His intentions are to avoid it initially since he chooses to preserve his own innocence as well as for other children, yet he mocks other adults for their adultery and labels them as phonies. Although in the novel Holden has to undergo therapeutics eventually for his insanity, in reality many people feel the same as he does, but do not take as drastic actions as he does to seek the truth. Many people are afraid of the real outside world since they are unsure on what to expect, yet they are not as daring as to journey off and found out for themselves in the way he does.