If Holden is so obsessed with saving children’s innocence, why doesn’t he worry more about his own? What does “innocence” mean for him? To him? He knows when you grow up ,you lose your innocence and there is nothing you can do about it. That’ s why he dreams of keeping children in the Rye where he can ” catch” them before they fall. This is only a dream, and he is depressed because there is no way he can save himself or Phoebe or anyone else. If he could, he would. Essentially innocence for him is being frozen in time where you stay a child forever and never see the horrors and mundane reality of life.

Holden wanted to save people from the phoniness of this world, as much as he wanted to distract himself and create his own bubble, he also wanted to protect people from the misery that the world keeps pouring onto them, I felt that when he was in the field of Rye, he’s not selfish or immature, he is simply have been traumatized in his life, he dont want it to happen to anybody else! And the way he talks about mediocre stuff and how they are being idolized by people is absolutely true ” People always clap for the wrong things ” …. ” its too bad that a lot of crumby stuff is fun sometimes” … notice the details of how he phrase his words not the plot of the story to know who the real Holden is.