J.D. Sallinger’s Catcher in the Rye is based on the bad tempered life of Holden Caulfield, a 16-year-old teenager who is trying to find his sense of direction. Holden, who is still stuck in the years of childhood, cannot accept adulthood and the responsibilities that come with it. After long fighting and keeping the thoughts that he can stay in childhood, he has no other option but to accept the new lifestyle, Adulthood. Holden sees the world as phony, liars and he describes the adulthood as evil.
Holden uses the word phony to identify everything that he turns down or faces in the world. Anything that isn’t what he wants will be seen as phony in his eyes, like when people are too quite. Holden thinks that he is the perfect person although the rest of the world thinks differently and that is why he thinks that he is all around phonies. He for example says that Ossenburger talked to Jesus all the time while he was driving his car, “he talked to Jesus all the time, even when he was driving his car.” This to Holden is anything but perfect and he thinks that Ossenburger’s way of talking to Jesus is bullshit, to say the least. "That killed me. I just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs." (17) Holden faces a man who prays for more dead bodies so that his business would keep going well, basically wishing more dead people.
Realizing what a real phony and liar people bound to be ing up, he decides to avoids the real word.
Being an adult is to have expectations and responsibilities when growing up. When Holden comes to a situation, he cannot deal with it, he always avoids it or makes stupid excuses. His job as an adolescent teenager was to finish school with good grades. Unable to do that, he switches to different schools multiple times, only to fail again. After failing Pency, Mr. Spencer, Holden's old history teacher, talks to him knowing he's beyond Mr. Spencer's help and tells him not to worry....