The Catcher In The Rye: Holden

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goes to New York to 'take a vacation' before returning
to his parents' inevitable wrath.
Told as a monologue, the book describes Holden's thoughts and
activities over these few days, during which he describes a developing
nervous breakdown, symptomised by his bouts of unexplained depression,
impulsive spending and generally odd, erratic behaviour, prior to his
eventual nervous collapse.
However, during his psychological battle, life continues on around
Holden as it always had, with the majority of people ignoring the 'madman
stuff' that is happening to him - until it begins to encroach on their well
defined social codes. Progressively through the novel we are challenged to
think about society's attitude to the human condition - does society have
an 'ostrich in the sand' mentality, a deliberate ignorance of the emptiness
that can characterize human existence? And if so, when Caulfield begins to
probe and investigate his own sense of emptiness and isolation, ...

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is, the emphasis is put on polishing theatricality. He says he has never
seen so much 'phony' things like he saw in the theater. Out of these
examples and others we see that for Holden it is very important to be
'real', honest and not 'phony', thus the criticism toward the 'phony'
things in society is the most significant aspect of his personality
Another important aspect in Holden's personality is that rules to
him were meant to serve the strong, whereas he belongs to the weak, thus he
ignores them completely. His attitude toward rules can be demonstrated by
these examples : Ring Lardner's tells Holden a story in which a married
policeman fell in love with a girl who drove faster ...

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