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The Catcher in the Rye
houses in Maine. Her name is Jane Gallagher. In the novel she is not known as one of the most important characters, but she is extremely important to Holden since she is one of the only girls whom he respects and finds exceptionally attractive. Although Holden thinks of Jane as his great love, they never started a relationship.
Holden does describe Sally Hayes as being a key individual in his life. Even though she is his ex-girlfriend, he describes her as his first adult relationship. She is certainly more conventional than he is. The climax of the book happens at the end of his date with Sally, when he tries to get her to run away with him, he soon realizes he is unable to handle a sexual encounter.
The novel is framed by the first and last chapters, which take place somewhere in California in a psychiatric rest home. The main action of the novel takes place first at a boarding school in Agerstown, Pennsylvania and then mainly in New York City. The narrative is evocative of Manhattan in the 1950’s, taking place at and around the various landmarks of New York City, such as Grand Central Station, Greenwich Village, Radio City Music Hall, and the famous Central Park.
The first theme and important, is isolation as a form of self-protection and not wanting people to know the real you. I can tell that Holden’s alienation is the cause of most of his pain. He never seems to address his own emotions, nor does he attempt to discover the reasons for his own troubles. He greatly needs contact and love with other humans, but his protective wall of bitterness keeps from seeking that. For example, his loneliness propels him to date Sally Hayes, but his want for isolation causes him to drive her away.
Another theme is the painfulness of growing up. He is so stuck on being a kid and having to grow up. From what I can tell in this novel, he wants everything to be easily understandable and easy to fix, or he just gives up. The main problem he is guilty of is the sin that he has commits in which he criticizes other people for. “Sex is something I just don’t understand. I swear to God, I don’t. Instead of acknowledging that adulthood scares him, he invents a fantasy that being an adult is a world of superficiality. (Salinger, p.174)
The last theme in this novel was the phoniness of the adult world. “Phoniness” is probably the most famous phrase from The Catcher in the Rye. In Chapter 22, Holden explains that adults are inevitable phonies, and what’s worse, they can’t even see their own phoniness. Holden is extremely guilty of this himself, which give him an excuse to withdraw and isolate himself from the world around him. Holden spends so much time and energy searching for phoniness in others, he never directly observes his own phoniness towards other [next page]