holden thinks highly of jane gallagher because he knew her throughout childhood and has not been in contact with her since. therefore, he still carries that specific mental image of her innocence. he still views her as the perfect girl she once was, and does not want that picture to change. he is repulsed by the idea of stradlater and her together, due to the fact that he strongly dislikes the guy, and fears his potential to rip the innocence out of jane. when stradlater comes home from their outing, we get the first sign of holden haulfield’s instability. he is terribly upset with all of this and violently lunges towards his roommate out of anger as he mentally blames him for changing his idealistic view of jane. later on, holden has many different opportunities to contact jane but all result in failed attempts. he, not admitting to it, is having doubts on whether or not she has changed for the worst. he is scared to face her, as her reaction is unknown and the possibility to discover her fallen off the cliff.

holden finds the moment with sunny to be highly depressing rather than erotic. when he discovers that Sunny is almost just as young as he is, he gets even more depressed, as prostitution is no way for a child to live. he finds himself subconsciously relating to her; they are both trapped in a world in which they do not want to live in. he notices her nervosity and feels the need to help her and wishes to just talk with her, avoiding sexual intercourse. not only does he solely want to talk because he is uncomfortable, but the interest shown toward sunny reveals how lonely he is at this point. it saddens him to think of her buying the green dress she has put on for him, and is left depressed by these emerging thoughts. another indication of holden’s mental fragility.

the one place that holden loves and almost finds peace in, has been disrupted. holden is troubled by the F word graphitized all over the school play ground. he sees this as a threat towards children innocence and imagines his kid sister along with other children, playing around and discovering this ugliness. he nervously tries to erase all of it away, but doesn’t realize that not only is this an impossible task, but even if successful, children are going to pick up on other flaws that will disrupt their innocence one way or the other. it occurs to him that even the one place that represented innocence for him has been corrupted and if this place is contaminated, there really can be no safe haven. he is troubled by this and doesn’t know where to head for.

holden feels surrounded by ugliness and phoniness and his recent overnight stay at the deserted train station has left him feeling completely depressed and alienated. as he wanders alone down the street, he reaches out to allie, praying him to save him from disappearing – as allie and the ducks have. ahat seems to bother holden about death is that he associates death with disappearing. it isn’t just that allie is dead but that allie has disappeared in the ground with ‘all the other dead guys’. he is extremely miserable with the memory of allie’s disappearance and has not yet found solace. while others may deal with death through religion (like the two nuns) or romanticized logic (like horwitz who insisted that, obviously mother nature would take care of the fish), holden does not. he is left with unexplained disappearances and is anxious to know where the ducks have gone. this is why holden is fascinated by the mummies – they stay as they are. the mummies do die, but they do not disappear.

at the end of the novel, holden is sitting in the rain filled up in emotion ‘damn near bawling’ watching phoebe ride the carousel around and around. he concludes that growing up is in fact not avoidable and that it has to be done without any outside help. it depresses holden to realize that he will never have his childhood again and soon all the little children will lose theirs as well. it depresses him even more to know that he cannot warn them of the upcoming events as this would destroy their innocence anyhow. his dream of being the catcher has now been erased and holden has fallen even deeper.

holden fell more and more into loneliness and had nowhere/body to turn to. he was terribly troubled that there was no place in the world for him free from all phoniness. he was even more concerned by the fact that not only could he not avoid this himself, but he could not help children escape it either. he found no explanation to allie’s disappearance and was terrified of his own. holden was trapped in a cul-de-sac.