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In the Catcher in the Rye, a troubled teenager named Holden Caulfield struggles with the fact that everyone has to grow up. The book gets its title from Holden's constant concern with the loss of innocence. He did not want children to grow up because he felt that adults are corrupt. This is seen when Holden tries to erase insulting words from the walls of an elementary school where his younger sister Phoebe attended. “Somebody'd written 'fuck you' on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them- all cockeyed, naturally- what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days”(201). Holden believed that children were innocent because they viewed the world and society without any prejudice. When Phoebe asked him to name something that he would like to be when he grew up, the only thing he would have liked to be was a catcher in the rye. He created an illusion for himself of a strange fantasy. He kept “picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around- nobody big, I mean- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be” (173). Holden wants to stop children from falling into losing their innocence and becoming an adult.

In the beginning of Catcher in the Rye, his initial character is in a way sort of “child”. Throughout the book, he takes steps and the forces of change take a toll on his childish ways. In the end, he seems to be changed...