Catching Children

The title comes from Holden's fantasy of standing at the edge of a cliff in a field of rye, catching children before they fall over the edge — preserving their innocence from the corruption of adulthood. It is a beautiful, impossible dream that reveals his deepest wish: to stop time.

His fierce love for his little sister Phoebe reveals the grief buried beneath all his anger and sarcasm. His brother Allie died of leukemia at age eleven, and Holden has never been allowed to properly grieve. His alienation is fundamentally a grief response with no outlet — a wound that never had the chance to heal.