“Don't tell people what you're thinking, or you'll miss them terribly when you're away” (Salinger 214) says Holden Caulfeild as he warns the world. Salinger's novel identifies the many fears and phobias of growing up from an immature, pessimistic, "everyone is damn fake" perspective that makes it relatable to young adolescents in transition. Salinger's Caulfeild is afraid of growing up and the unknown prospects of entering the adult world after experiencing a life-changing event. Holden, clinging to his innocence, learns above all how the fake adult world not only treats people like HC badly, but kills them. Salinger's novel is told in first-person perspective by a seventeen-year-old Holden Coufeild who longs for attention and care. of those around him unconsciously. This HC makes everyone empathize with him over the terrible 16 year old who this is happening to and who can't get anyone to listen to him. Immediately, at the beginning of the story, HC ignores his "crappy childhood" and "his whole damn autobiography" to explain how he got to this "seedy place" (Salinger 1). HC immediately had a terrible attitude towards the world. Perhaps Salinger is trying to express his feelings through his character and implies that his feelings of emptiness also stem from his parents. Very rarely are his parents involved in his life. As a teenager he had already been sent to four different boarding schools which may have made him feel neglected. HC indirectly reports our parents' indiscretions. Salinger describes all the evils of growing up, which are almost all the things he would change if he could go back in time. As a World War II fighter and writer, Salinger lost his innocence in a way we will never experience. Damn... middle of paper... Tolini turned out to be fake. The only adult who paid attention to him had another motive. Only at the end, when "Phoebe kept going back and forth," does the boy who never wanted anything to change stops thinking of time as an approach to corrupt adulthood, and begins to think of it as a circle around and around , to and from lifelong innocence. Throughout the novel HC is a boy at war with social expectations of adolescent behavior. Sallinger's time during World War II caused destruction and destroyed him mentally, he had to fight to survive. HC himself is simply a soldier trying to survive in a generation he doesn't fit into. Cather in Rye is a war novel in itself and Salinger is simply portraying his view of war in a different way. Works Cited Salinger, JD The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 1951. Print