Holden is a person who is childish but all grown up already. The entire book is about his transition from childhood to adulthood.

When Holden’s dearest sibling Allie, dies of leukemia cancer. This destroys Holden’s childhood as he is thrust into the real world. A world full of loss and unfairness. He loses that ability to be open to people and attach on to people, almost like he has detachment disorder. He thinks inside himself that if he attaches to someone and gets to know them like he knew Allie, the results would be the same. It is like he has been abused and abused until he just can’t recover. 

A scene in the book that demonstrates this claim well is when he asks Sally to marry him and run off with him. At first, to me it sounded like he did care about here and he wants to attach to her. But once I re-read it over again, I realized that he didn’t really want to attach on to her, he just wanted to leave his old life and start anew. Sally didn’t really mean the world to him or anything like that, but he was trying to use her to forget the pain that Allie’s death had caused and forget Jane. It was almost as if he thought that if he married her, that instantly meant that he would fall in love with her and forget his old life. There is where my statement about him acting like a child comes in. That is such a childish way to think, and I believe that he really knows that, running off with Sally isn’t going to do anything. He knows deep down inside that he is trying to use Sally to cleanse the bad memories from his mind. “You can treat the symptoms, but not the disease” – This old saying helps depict what Holden is doing. His symptoms are being depressed and the memories coming back to haunt him. So, as if he has a common cold, he uses Sally as Benadryl, which may stop is nose from running, but he will still have the cold and Benadryl can’t cure that. Holden may be happy for the first months with Sally because they could have children and have a nice little house and he may be sexually interested in her, but eventually that is all going to stop. He can’t use Sally to erase what has happened, or forget about it. What Holden really needs is a doctor. The Doctor shouldn’t “Look cute in blue butt-skirts” or “Have a nice butt”. The Doctor can really help Holden and make living more enjoyable then it is now. Sure hooking up with Sally is a quick-fix. But what will happen in the long run. What happens when Sally and him have settled down and there is not spontaneity between them that Holden would have found great. Holden would just fall into the same vicious cycle and get depressed, look for a quick-fix, then he gets depressed and so on.

Holden is all about growing up in this book, yet he refuses to accept the fact that he needs help. That sounds pretty childish I say. If only Holden could step back from his life and look at it for a moment and think, “Wow I REALLY screwed up.” Holden should start to listen to those around him. Everybody is trying to tell him that he needs to listen to himself talk and realize he is not always right. Phoebe really kind of slaps him in the face when she flat out tells him, “HOLDEN YOU ARE A SCREW UP!”. Of course I am paraphrasing but she still tells him that he has screwed up and he is too damn childish to think of what he is doing to his life for once.