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The Blame Game
In Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, a teenage boy is going through the process of growing into an adult. Holden deals with all the struggles of a teenage boy while he deals with the death of his younger brother. Holden is angry at his death and blames his parents and other adults. Therefore, he is petrified at the thought of growing up, because he does not want to be like those adults he considers flawed and phony. As a result, he does not carry out the responsibilities of a boy his age, but watches adults and explores adult behaviors in his struggle to grow up. Because Holden continues to fail in his battle to gain maturity, he looks to his future as an adult and becomes petrified at the thought of becoming one of them.
Consequently, he tries to stay young to avoid the process of becoming an adult.

He is obsessed with childhood and is wedged between a world of the innocence of children and the complex world of adulthood. Holden is stuck at a crossroads where he must choose what he wants to do. But since he is becoming older everyday it becomes evident to Holden that he will soon fall into the same status as adults and be forced to make the same compromises that they do. Holden is told that "life is a game" and that he must suck up to people and listen to authority if he ever plans to be successful in life.
Holden does not want to take responsibility to communicate with others that want to help him. For example, When Dr. Thurmer, tries to help Holden by explaining why he was being put out of school Thurmer tells him that "life is a game" and that, "one must play according to the rules". Holden Believes this is true but does not want to acknowledge it because it would be phony. In hope of finding someone that would agree with him, "that life is no game" he is shocked to find out that Old Spencer agrees with Thurmer. This makes him very upset that no one feels the same way he does and he disregards anything Spencer has to say. Holden does not want to grow up because of his fear of being phony in making the compromises that all adults have to make in order to prosper. He uses the term phony to identify everything in the world of adults that he rejects. The first account of Holden using phony because of an adult making a compromise is Osenburger, who runs discount funeral parlors that take advantage of grieving families. Ossenburger shows up at football games once a year to make it look as though he actually still cares about the school. But Holden believes that the only reason that Ossenburger comes to the game is so that he can "bury more stiffs"(17). He tells the boys to speak to God as though he is one’s best friend, but Holden denies his philosophy because he only sees Ossenburger as just bragging that he talks to God this way, which makes Holden believe that Ossenburger is a phony. The second account of Holden considering adults as phonies is towards Haas, the headmaster of the Elkton School. Holden believes that he is phony because he put on an act to please the parents who showed up to the school. When parents of the students came to the school that he did not like he would make a compromise by "shaking hands with them and spending half hour with somebody else's parents" because he was the headmaster of the school. To Holden, it was blatantly clear that Mr. Haas was just putting on act to please the parents who showed up. The third instance is when Holden is talking to his sister about their father who is a lawyer. He questions if a person had to be phony to be a lawyer because they have to defend someone whether they are guilty or not; therefore lawyers have to compromise their integrity to defend a person that may be guilty, and have to pretend that they are innocent all to be successful. In Holden's eyes being a lawyer means that you must be a phony. Holden believed that everyone should be himself, instead of wearing stupid facades. Holden fails in his battle to gain maturity because he indulges in adult behaviors that do not require acting responsibly. Holden has no problems with drinking alcohol or buying prostitutes, but he does have problems with adults "acting different" in order to become more successful in their line of work. When Holden went to the hotel bar in New York he ordered a Scotch and soda. He saw nothing wrong with acting like an adult, which would make him the phony just like the adults he talks about. When he ordered his drink, Holden expressed the thought, “I said it fast as hell, because if you hem and haw, they think you're under twenty-one and won't sell you any intoxicating liquor”. The thoughts that Holden expressed when he ordered fast just to seem like an adult points that he knew that he was doing something that was wrong. In addition, Holden decided that he could "get some practice with a prostitute in case he ever got married",instead of developing relationships with girls his age to prepare him for adult relationships with women and marriage. Holden fails to complete things that require responsible behaviors. He is constantly kicked out of schools because he feels that applying himself to do his work and being responsible by doing so would make him a phony. He often failed to complete the work that was given to him even though he was capable of doing it. Holden fails at forming relationships and communicating his feelings to girls his age yet he has no problem developing relationships with a more mature women as seen when he talks to Mrs. Morrow on the train asking her to smoke and go for a drink with him. Holden can not even gain enough confidence to go and talk to Jane before her date with stradlater saying that he "just didn't feel like it" but was really because of his lack of maturity and not being able to deal with how much Jane may have matured since he last saw her. Holden is frozen in place, he is unable to move forward in doing the things that teenagers his age should be doing like completing his assignments or having relationships with girls his age. The way that Holden is frozen in his development is illustrated by Holden’s strong interest in ducks in the frozen lagoon. He is constantly concerned about where the ducks will go when the lake freezes: "I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away."Just like the ducks, Holden is wondering where he's going to go in life. He wonders if someone will guide him to the right direction, or if he'll guide himself through it by instinct. In addition, the lake itself is also somewhat symbolic to Holden's life. When Holden visits Central Park to see if there were any ducks still around, he mentions "Then, I finally found it. What it was, it was partly frozen and partly not frozen." The lake is a transition between two different states, frozen and not frozen. This is symbolic of Holden at a crossroads between staying an immature teenager or growing up and becoming an adult, “playing the game”.