Alienation as a Form of Self-Protection
Holden’s alienation is his way of protecting himself
Uses his isolation as proof that he is better than everyone else around him and therefore above interacting with
them
Alienation is both the source of Holden’s strength and the source of his problems
The Painfulness of Growing Up
The Catcher in the Rye is a bildungsroman, a novel about a young character’s growth into maturity
Holden Caulfield is an unusual protagonist for a bildungsroman because his central goal is to resist the process
of maturity itself
Holden imagines childhood as an idyllic field of rye in which children romp and play; adulthood, for the children
of this world, is equivalent to death—a fatal fall over the edge of a cliff
The Phoniness of the Adult World
“Phoniness,” which is probably the most famous phrase from The Catcher in the Rye, is one of Holden’s favorite
concepts
Describes the superficiality, hypocrisy, pretension, and shallowness that he encounters in the world around him
However, the world is not as simple as he’d like—and needs—it to be; even he cannot adhere to the same blackand-white standards with which he judges other people