Holden Caulfield Teenager

J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye utilizes the psychological and emotional aspects of a teenager to tell a meaningful story. At first glance, the main character Holden Caulfield is a judgmental and impassive teenager with a lack of ambition to achieve anything in his life. A deeper look into his thoughts and actions will prove that there is a reason behind his strange, depressing personality. Holden is partial to children—or rather, the innocence of children—because adulthood has taken away his own innocence, subjecting him to the reality of life that is loneliness, hardships, and death.
To begin with, Holden is often wandering on his own and speaking only to himself in his head. He is constantly criticizing others, including his

friends, usually by labeling them with the term “phonies.” Evidently, he does not have many people he can consider close to him. In fact, the only character that seems to draw out Holden’s true self is his younger sister Phoebe. The story begins with Holden thinking to himself alone, and it continues to be this way for a majority of the story. While it may seem normal for a teenager to enjoy walking around unaccompanied, a few instances will prove otherwise in this case. Holden finds himself calling out to others, all but one resulting in not-so-fortunate endings. Some of the people he reaches out to include Sally, Sunny, the three ladies from the Lavender Room, Antolini, and his old schoolmate Carl Luce. Lastly, he comes into contact with Phoebe despite fearing his parents will find him. Phoebe is the only one who stops Holden from severing their connection and leaving her life as shown, “‘Did you mean it what you said? You really aren’t going away anywhere? Are you really going home afterwards?’ she asked me” where Holden replies with “‘Yeah,’ I said. I meant it, too’” (212). Once again, the innocence of a child is what brings Holden to his decision to stay.
From the start, Holden faces hardships such as failing all of his classes, letting down his school’s fencing team, and being lectured by his teacher.

On the surface, he may simply appear to be a carefree boy with no motivation for anything. However, as the story progresses, it is clear that Holden is fully aware of his lack of spirit and scorns himself for it, even though it is not explicitly stated. For example, “I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I’m seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen,” shows his recognition to his attitude but utter inability to do bring himself to fix it (9). In addition, throughout the entirety of the novel Holden keeps his problems to himself, and often runs away from said problems rather than addressing them. There are rare occasions when he chooses to confide in others, such as Mr. Antolini and Phoebe. The combination of his loneliness and hardships is a heavy weight on his shoulders, as he refuses to allow himself to rely on anyone. As seen in the situation involving Mr. Antolini, Holden escapes Antolini’s house when the teacher acts in a familiar manner, sabotaging the relationship between them. He is unable to accept the fact that Antolini truly wishes to help him. It is true that Holden is afraid that his teacher may be homosexual, but the unhesitating rejection toward physical contact also goes to show how lonely Holden is. He has lacked proper

care, dismissing those who offer it to him due to his suspicions and paranoia. This is seen again with Phoebe near the end of the story, as he plans to leave his sister for her own good, though ultimately he is persuaded not to do so.
As a matter of fact, the cause of his strange behavior is linked to the death of one of his younger siblings, Allie. Grief-stricken from not being able to save his brother, Holden feels responsible for the lives of other children. Death is something that is never forgotten from the beginning of the book to the end, even though it is not recurring. This is because Holden never stops thinking about Allie, never stops mourning him, and never stops regretting the past. He may belittle his feelings about Allie’s death, “‘I know [Allie’s] dead! Don’t you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can’t I? Just because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop liking them, for God’s sake—especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that’re alive and all,” but his repeated lingering thoughts on Allie’s death is evidence of Holden’s inability to move on (171). In fact, what he received from that incident was not only regret, but trauma. The innocence that children have is lost to him, like mentioned earlier. Now, he aims to preserve the innocence of children like Phoebe, by protecting her in the way that he could not protect Allie. This line from the provided quotation, “Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around—nobody big, I mean—except me,” is taken directly from Holden’s imagination (173). He dreams of being surrounded by only children that have yet to shoulder the burden of adulthood. Later in the story, he meets a child, “She thanked me and all when I had it tightened for her. She was a very nice, polite little kid. God, I love it when a kid’s nice and polite when you tighten their skate for them or something. Most kids are. They really are,” and the child’s purity visibly brings him happiness (119).
All in all, adulthood brings Holden nothing but negativity.

All of these obstacles in his life connect to the given quote in that his loneliness, hardships, and experiences of death have led him to treasure children and their purity, to the point where all he wants to be is the “catcher in the rye” for their sake. Without any ambitions, this is the single time Holden expresses something he truly wants to do—protect Phoebe and other little kids. Holden, deprived of it himself, craves the untainted virtue that these children all hold. He wishes to keep them from being exposed to the adulthood which has brought him endless hardships and painful memories. By surrounding himself with them and becoming their protector, he fools himself into shutting his eyes from his depression. This is ineffective because he is just continuously running away from his problems—problems emerging from adulthood. The previously mentioned setbacks weighing him down are only lightened by the presence of his younger sister, an innocent child, full of faith in her brother. Avoiding his parents and indifferent to D.B., the only one Holden openly shows concern for and thinks of in his family is Phoebe and her happiness. Likewise, Phoebe is the only one who manages to make Holden open up. Holden is looking for an escape from adulthood through

childhood.