Holden Caulfield is a peculiar teenager. He is hypocritical, cynical, dishonest and above all... confused. All of these traits add up to an unreliable narrator, to say the least. You can never take what Holden says literally: you have to read between the lines. Between the lines lies the fact that he is extremely alone and his fear of abandonment drives him to isolate himself against it. He often tries to hide this from himself and strangers, hence the deceitful and contradictory nature of his thoughts. The problem is he doesn't know why he feels alone. He feels cut off from the rest of society; he has the impression of being all alone in this world of so-called impostors. Throughout The Catcher in the Rye, Holden's loneliness shines through in the way he frequently contacts complete strangers for companionship (strangers he usually doesn't like as well, showing how much he is desperate for company). Faithful to his contradictory nature, he also seeks to isolate himself at the same time, because he fears abandonment. Abandonment, in fact, is at the very root of his ability to bond: he reaches out to people and then immediately starts pushing them away, because he's afraid of being hurt by them. During the 48 hours that Holden spent alone in New York, pity for him can be expected to grow quickly. He is so desperate to communicate with someone – anyone – that he reaches out to complete strangers, often even considerably older than him. When Holden was still at Pencey, he felt so depressed after fighting with Stradlater that he actually contacted someone he had described as a poor hygienist and a social outcast, because surely... middle of paper ......d to mean the world to him. The death of his brother and the abandonment of his parents clearly had a profound impact on him. Holden lied to himself pretty well, claiming he had no place in society, all to give him plausible reasons to isolate himself. By calling people fake, which he frequently did, he was actually pushing them away before even giving himself the opportunity to debate to get to know them. The “fake people” were like his own private excuse to avoid making friends. Holden's only hope of achieving happiness is to open up to others. If he refuses, he will forever view the world as full of evil, corruption and phony people. His cynicism, dishonesty, and judgmental habits are like a cape he wears to ward off the elusive threat of abandonment. Works Cited Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 1951. Print.