hool three days
             before the winter holiday, Holden returns to Manhattan, but rather than
             return home, he spends the three days in the Edmont Hotel, gradually
             descending from moroseness to madness as his short life already seems to
             disintegrate before his eyes. His meaningless encounters with people from
             his past pervade the book, and help signify the equal meaningless of his
             life. Holden interacts with former girlfriends, strangers, former
             teachers, and his sister, and each of them treats him roughly or with
             disdain, except his sister. The title of the book comes from a dreamlike
             passage where Holden sees himself saving small children about to fall off a
             cliff. Holden sees himself as a savior, but in fact, his life is empty and
             meaningless, and his quest for meaning leads him not to love or salvation,
             but into madness and a total mental breakdown. The opening of the book
             shows Holden recuperating in a mental facility, and the end says he hopes
             to be "better" soon. Poor Holden is a true rebel without a cause, and his
             meaningless life illustrates his total lack of motivation and interest in
             "The Catcher in the Rye" could be called a coming of age novel, with
             17-year old protagonist Holden Caulfield setting off on his own in the
             novel. However, most critics find Caulfield's search throughout the novel
             a quest like search for himself, and for meaning in his life. This novel
             characterizes the three stages of Narrative Intention quite graphically,
             from Holden's self-realization that he has failed again at school, to his
             apocalypse in the Edmont, and his communality at the end, where he
             discovers he fits in a mad, mad, world. It is clear Salinger's Narrative
             Intention was to parallel his own life, whil
             ...