Catcher in the Rye is a fabulous book, but to truly understand it, you think, you would have had to grown up in the era in which Holden is writing, which is 1950's if I am not mistaken. The morality and mindset of those days if very much needed in order to understand Holden's angst, to my mind. The same is true to some extent, I think, of Salinger's other terrific novel, Franny and Zooey.
Holden's problem is his inability to grow up, don't you think? He is reluctant to face adulthood, and while he is onthe verge of it -- isn't he a jr or sr in high school? He will continually cling to the things he sees as reminiscent of the purity or "un-phoniness" of childhood. He has equated childhod with guilelessness, which isn't necessarily so to begin with, and so he clings to it -- his brother Ally who died as a child remains his hero, because Ally never grew old enough to turn phony ... but what would Holden have felt about him if he had grown up? Once Ally got old enough to lie or act artificial, would the golden dream in which Holden wrapped him have been ruptured? What will he feel toward his beloved little sister when she grows up?
holden has problems ...