Holden's Character Analysis and reasons for his emotional breakdown in the book,"Catcher in the rye" by J.D. Salinger.

In Salinger's novel "The Catcher in the Rye", Holden, the novel's protagonist, is a character that is growing from youth to maturity. Throughout the novel, Holden resists the process of maturity itself by admiring children and criticizing the adults' way of thinking and behaving. Holden creates his own theory that adulthood is a world of superficiality and phoniness, while childhood is a world of honesty and innocence. In fact, "phoniness," which is probably the most …

…his problems. Holden's statement "Don't tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody" (Salinger 214) further reveals that he has begun to shed the skin of cynicism that he had grown around himself all throughout the novel. His final statement, " I sort of miss everybody I told you about. Even old Stradlater and Ackley", gives us the final impression that he is not as bitter and repressed as he was earlier in the book.