Themes

Throughout the entire story, Holden is always worried about losing his own and others' sense of innocence as they grow older. He is starting to realize that everything in the adult world is "phony," and he can not stand anything that is phony. Holden knows that once your no longer a child, you start to see the bad in everything. Whereas while your a child you tend to see the good in everything, you never see anything bad in the world. Whenever Holden does things that a kid should not do, such as drink and go out to bars, he gets very depressed, because he knows whats happening. Whenever he starts to get depressed about the whole thing he begins talking about Phoebe, who is the one person in the world that he's really worried about. Instead of embracing the benefits of the adult world, Holden decides that he will just act like nothing matters and everything is fake. This is modeled by the part in the book where Holden is the catcher on the edge of the cliff, who will catch the children when they run out of the rye and toward the cliff. The cliff represents their innocence, and if they fall off of it they will lose their innocence.
 * __The Loss of Innocence__**

Holden pretends throughout the story that as he grows up, everything in this world is fake, or phony and none of it is real. He knows that children see good in everything, such as his sister Phoebe, who more than anyone he wants her to keep her innocence. Holden likes to pretend that everything that is either bad or wrong with the world must be phony, and all the bad people are phony. He spends so much time pointing out phonies that he doesn't realize that he in fact is a phony himself. He goes through so much trouble, when he was in Phoebe's school he erased a bad word off the wall, just so the children wont see it.
 * __Phoniness of the Adult World__**

It is very obvious throughout the story that Holden feels as though he does not belong anywhere, and feels uncomfortable where ever he is. This is shown when he calls everyone he can think of and tries to make plans, all over the course of one weekend. Holden spends the majority of his time alone because he feels so alone and depressed, and although he never said this, he doesn't have many friends. He is basically isolated from the rest of the world, he does make small talk with several people in the book, but usually he thinks they are so phony that he can't stand them and has to leave. When he gets very lonely and feels alienated, Holden will often make up elaborate stories and lie to someone just to continue to talk to them. That just shows how lonely he really is. Whenever he feels the need to have some sort of social interaction, before it ever happens, he ends up sabotaging the whole thing before he can get hurt. So he really causes his own feelings of alienation and loneliness.
 * __Alienation__**