The Catcher in the Rye's Adolescent Crisis Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is a valid and realistic depiction of the adolescent world. The book is about the crisis of adolescence. The main character, Holden, runs away from his expensive school because he is failing academically and finds the company of so many fakes intolerable. Holden is a sixteen year old who grew up too quickly. Girls are on his mind. Every time girls do something pretty, even if they're ugly or stupid, we fall half in love with them. "Sex is something I really don't understand. You never know where you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away. Last year, I made up a rule that I was going to stop messing around with girls that deep down were a pain in my ass But I broke it that same week Sex is something I don't quite understand. simply not the contradictions, the anxieties and the exaltations of adolescence come from the central fact: “that the adolescent has newly acquired the physical potentialities necessary for sexual experience but has not learned to integrate them or within himself. even nor in a coherent relationship with the demands of society.” From this follows everything: the confused idealism of his attitude towards Jane Gallagher; the naive and unscrupulous calculation of his adventures; corresponding repulsion; a fascination and general disgust with the physical – Ackley's pimples, Stradlater's nails; a new, horrified awareness of the physical process. Holden's anguished confusion about sex gives us a measure of both the depth and complexity of his conflict. Sexual awareness is visibly...... middle of paper ......m Marsden If you really want to know: A Catcher Casebook (Chicago: Scott, Foresman & Co, 1963) p.762. Norman Fruman and Marvin Laser Studies in J D. Salinger (New York: The Odyssey Press, 1963) p. 196.3. Laser, Opcit., p.74.4. Ibid., p.153.5. Ibid., p.121.6. J.D. Salinger The Rye Catcher (Boston: Little Brown, & Co. 1945) pp. 224-225.7. Henry Grunwald ed. Salinger (New York: Harper & Row 1962) p. 15.8. Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities (New York: New Amsterdam Library, 1960) p.1.9. Grunwald, Opcit., p. 202.10. Laser, Opcit., p. 71.11. Ann Elwood and Carol Madigan Brainstorms & Thunderbolts (New York: Macmillan Co. 1983) p. 101.12. Ibid., p.101.13. Laser, Opcit. , p. 77.14. Salinger, Opcit., p. 242.15. Ibid., p... 264.