The adolescent crisis of the young catcher in the rye Salinger's young catcher in the rye is a valid and realistic representation of the adolescent world. The book talks about the adolescent crisis. The main character, Holden, runs away from his expensive school because he is an academic failure and finds the company of so many impostors intolerable. Holden is a slender sixteen-year-old who has grown up too fast. The girls are on his mind. Every time girls do something nice, even if they're ugly or stupid, you half fall for it. "Sex is something I really don't understand. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these rules about sex, and then I break them right away. Last year I made up a rule that was I'm going to stop messing around with girls who, in deep, they gave me a pain in the ass, however, the same week I had it Sex is something that I just don't understand the contradictions, suffering and exaltations of adolescence derive from the central fact: "that the adolescent has. recently acquired the physical potential for sexual experience, but has not learned to integrate them either in himself or in any relationship consistent with the needs of society". 3 From here it all comes: the confused idealism of his attitude towards Jane Gallagher ; the naively unscrupulous calculation of his adventures; the desire to experiment and the corresponding fear and revulsion; a general fascination and disgust with physical appearance: Ackley's pimples, Stradlater's toenails; a new horrified awareness of the physical process. Holden's distressing confusion about sex gives us a measure of both the depth and complexity of his conflict. Sexual awareness is evident... center 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. JD Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (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.