 The Catcher in the Rye is a bildu

 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