“To give a girl the time” is an example of euphemism. What does its use indicate about Holden’s attitudes toward sex? Toward Jane?

Holden’s enemy is the adult world and the cruelty and artificiality that it entails. The people he admires all represent or protect innocence. He thinks of Jane Gallagher, for example, not as a maturing young woman but as the girl with whom he used to play checkers. He goes out of his way to tell us that he and Jane had no sexual relationship. Quite sweetly, they usually just held hands. Holden comforted Jane when she was distressed, and it bothers him that Jane may have been subjected to sexual advances from her drunken stepfather or from her date, Holden’s roommate, Stradlater.

Holden exlpains his posture toward sex as something that he reaaly doesn’t understand, although. he consideres himself the “biggest sex maniac you ever saw.” He also tells us that he tends to imagine cruby stuff that he wouldn’t mid doing if the opportunity came up. Holden says “Sex is something I really don’t understand too hot.” He never knows where he is in a sexy situation. “Sex is something I just don’t understand. I swear to God I don’t.”separates Holden from the other students, for he believes himself to be more honorable and ‘deep’ than the vapid and self-centered Stradlater and more refined than the piggish Ackley. Yet Holden demonstrates qualities similar to those of his peers.