this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2026
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I read it as a young adult after hearing several others online say it was their favorite book or strongly impacted them. I thought Holden was a whiny kid who did need help, but also really lacked personal accountability for someone who dedicated so much time to calling others phonies. That's ok, of course. Protagonists should be at least somewhat flawed, and it's especially reasonable if they are in the process of growing up.
But I mainly hated the narrative structure. I'm just going off of what I remember for all this, but it seemed like Holden just wandered between a series of significant encounters for the entire story without anything going anywhere. Other than >!the sister and a second encounter with the nuns,!< the characters were just discarded shortly after being introduced. Any scene could have been a good foundation for the rest of the story's development, but he just wanders somewhere else before all but the barest of conflict resolution happens. IIRC the furthest we got was at the end where >!he gets the idea to leave society behind, but his sister says she would miss him and asks him not to, so he just says "ok"!<. It felt like the entire story was the author just pranking the audience about potential character development before yoinking it away with a laugh.
This is exactly why I hated it. The "story" is ultimately static - Holden never develops, or faces notable consequences or even conflict with other characters for any of his actions.
Discussing the book irl or online is usually exhausting, because when I mention that I despise the protagonist, people usually defend him, and thus, the book, on the basis of him being a traumatised teenager.
Static stories where nothing happens can work, but only in a sort of meta way. I enjoy Philip K Dick's novels despite nothing really happening in most of them because of the existential themes they explore.
The most charitable "meta" interpretation I can give Catcher in the Rye is that it is a sort of commentary on how the lack of support for teenagers can cause them to self destruct and spiral. Even then, I feel that the book fails at achieving this, because Holden actively pushes away support at basically every opportunity, and has zero self awareness.