An Analysis of Holden Caulfield's Maturity

David Gigrich

Melanie Cameron

AP Lang

13 March 2017

An Analysis of Holden Caulfield's Maturity

Maturity, something we all hope to gain during our adolescence, while also being the most elusive attribute for some of us to obtain.  Throughout The Catcher in the Rye Holden either displays or lacks maturity depending on the situation.  This reciprocation helps to show the readers how he is still developing and becoming an adult.  This quest for adulthood and maturity is really what Holden, the protagonist, hopes to gain from his adventures in New York City, not really feeling like he fits in with the phonies at Pencey Prep.  Along his journey Holden encountered several older women who he hopes to stop and talk with as a emotional comfort, however he never really seems to do the right thing in order to make them stay.  Also while still at Pencey and on the run Holden calls out those around him for being phony even though he himself displays some of the attributes he calls out.  Both of these problems help to show his childish maturity, an important struggle for Holden.  As readers we first begin to see this attitude at Pencey with Holden recollecting on how he left the foils on the subway.  The attitude around this part of the book along with the instance give us the feeling that Holden is not the adult he hypes himself up to be.  In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger uses Holden’s inability to develop a relationship with newly met women, and hypocritical nature to illustrate his childish maturity, a source of conflict in the novel.

As we progress through The Catcher in the Rye Holden meets many women, the elevator prostitute, the three girls at the bar, the mother on the train.  These various encounters all end roughly the same, with either Holden going to get a drink, leaving the place, or going off to find another girl.  Some readers however may be asking themselves why Holden just can not connect with such “simple” girls.  The reason, his maturity, or lack thereof.  Holden just has not gotten to the place in his head where he can simply hang out with a girl, have some fun, and leave it at that, “[He] has certainly not yet found a stable, desirable place for himself” (Eik).  Holden needs a deeps emotional connection, like the one he develops with Jane or Sally, “We horsed around a little bit...I was being seductive as hell and she didn't have any alternative” (Salinger 67).  Holden is able to instantly connect with Sally even after only a few minutes of being around her while it can take him hours to do anything with the random girls he meets all around town.  This relationship with Sally has obviously involved a lot of work and we can see that he is happy with its futility.  All the other girls he meets just do not have the same vibe that Sally has.  Salinger does this on purpose in order to illustrate the level of maturity at which Holden stands.  We as a society do not see many young children trying to hang out with older women, and if they do they are normally unsuccessful in soliciting any sort of romantic favors.  The same can be said for Holden.  Salinger uses this fact to help make this childish maturity more known without explicitly stating it.  In the bar with the three girls from Seattle Holden attempts to make a connection with the “pretty” one, first dancing, then buying her drinks.  However at the end of the evening “all three of them stood up...I tried to get them to stick around for a while, but they wouldn't. So we said good-bye and all” (41).  Once again Holden just can not get them to stay, or gather enough of an emotional connection to make it worth his time.  Holden however claims to the reader that he is amazing with women even though we see otherwise.

Holden often shows his hypocritical nature whenever he is making claims or pointing out someone else's faults.  For example when he claims to Sally that he is so adult-like that he could move away with her to a cabin in the woods even though we all know that he would never be able to do that.  Salinger has turned Holden into a hypocrite in order to once again highlight his immaturity and child-like behavior.  Without the element of immaturity in Holden's character, The Catcher in the Rye would be a completely different novel.  This trait completes Holden by making him more relatable to younger and adolescent audiences.  It also helps to solidify the central plot and conflict of the book.  Holden is trying to find himself and without his hypocrisy and immaturity there is nothing for him to realize about himself and correct.  Near the end of the book while Holden is waiting for his sister Phoebe, he thinks about D.B. and her visiting him during the school holiday.  But he has one condition.  “ I'd have this rule that nobody could
do anything phony when they visited me” (110).  This statement just happens to be one of the most ironic and hypocritical things he says in the whole book.  Holden claims that he can not stand phonies and the fact of having one to stay over holiday disgusts him even though he happens to be one of the biggest “house” phonies ever.  First Holden visits his sister while she's sleeping, luckily missing his parents when he enters.  However, when his parents do come home he hides in the closet until they leave her room.  His unwillingness to tell him that he is home is probably the most phony thing he could have done in their home second only to stealing their money or cigarettes.  But wait, he does that too.  Holden takes his parents cigarettes during his “smoke break” at home while he talks with Phobe.  Both these actions, stealing cigarettes and sneaking in, are the first two major “homely” examples of phoniness that Holden displays.  Next he travels to Mr. Antolini’s house where he stays the night.  Mr. Antolini is one of Holden's school teachers who understood him and who he had a close connection too.  When Holden arrives at his home the evening begins as usual with drinking and smoking.  However once Holden goes to sleep he awakes to Mr. Antolini, obviously drunk, patting his head.  Holden freaks out over this small event and suddenly leaves the house to supposedly get his bags from the train station.  Holden with his apparent supremacy over the “lower class”phonies, acts in utter haste not considering the situation, imagine the state Mr. Antolini was in with Holden gone when he comes to.  Holden basically skipped town on a man who was kind enough to open his house up to him all because of an alcohol influenced misunderstanding.  These three episodes all, once again, demonstrate Holden's hypocrisy which further contributes to his lack of maturity.