Holden Caulfield Transition From Childhood To Adulthood

The transition from childhood to adulthood is inevitable. It is an experience that tests teenagers to their breaking points. Most adults cherish childhood innocence, as they have experience with an onerous adulthood. At a young age, parents teach their children that the world is a perfect, Utopian society. As children mature, they realize that the once ‘perfect world’ was nothing but a false, sugar-coated take on the harsh realities of life. The protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, suffers with the transition from childhood to adulthood. His teenage years are his most challenging moments in his life so far. In J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger uses symbols and details to convey the importance in protecting …show more content…
One of the main reasons Holden behaves the way he does is because he lost his younger brother, Allie at the age of eleven. Holden coped with the situation alone, which led to his ruination. He never received the closure he needed or the opportunity to an efficient solution on how to deal with the loss of his brother. Holden longs to protect children, and when Allie died, he could no longer protect him. The day after Allie’s death, he spent the night in the garage smashing windows, which is an indication on how hard the incident was on him. Allie’s short life stripped him from his innocence. Holden's parents did not help him in the coping process and he was also unable to attend Allie’s funeral to say his final goodbyes to him. These factors relate to his breakdown, as he feels that he got no closure and has to live with the consequences. This shattered him and even affected his relationships with other people. Holden had no close relationships with anyone but his sister, Phoebe and his dead brother, Allie. He often pushed people away and rejected their help because he did not want to associate himself with “phonies”, which included everyone minus himself, Allie and