How Is Holden Insane

Throughout the entirety of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the reader meets many strange and confusing characters. The strangest, and most important, character the reader will meet is a young boy named Holden Caulfield. Holden, being the protagonist of the novel, is followed through his adventure into New York City. These adventures ultimately take a toll on Holden’s sanity. As the plot advances Holden learns more about life and adulthood, transforming him from a cocky teen into a more caring and respectable individual. From the start of the text, Holden is very cocky and self absorbed. He acts as if all of the people around him living normal lives are fake, or in his words, phony. Holden is also obsessed with sex, drinking, and the

His depression has worsened, causing him to want to return home and see his sister, Phoebe. He now shows how much he cares for others on the surface, rather than hiding it. “Somebody'd written "Fuck you" on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant [...] I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it” (Salinger 108). Here Holden shows how much he wants to protect the wellbeing of children, especially his sister. He wants to keep them innocence and make suren they don’t have to see the truth about the world they live in. This shows how Holden’s mindset has changed to one that shows more care than his olds self. “About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. Even old Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice. It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody” (Salinger 115). After Holden’s journey in New York has ended, he speaks to the reader from the asylum or sanitarium in which he is staying. Holden has realized that he does really care about all the people who he once called phony. He has learned to respect other people than himself, showing how much he has truly changed. It would seem that Salinger intended on using this idea to enforce the moral of this work, that all people