According to Holden, adults greatly lack innocence, authenticity and integrity compared to the pure and innocent children. Holden, a 17-year-old narrator of Catcher In The Rye is entering into the adult world. He knows that it's time to change; but his mind despises the characteristics of the grown-up world. He hates the fact that he has to deal with reality and that he has to let the innocent children become sophisticated and mature into a "phony" adult. He just doesn't want to become a "phony" adult he contemns and wants to hold on to his youth of innocence.
There are only a few things that Holden likes, because he is always pessimistic about a lot of things. One of the things he really likes and values is the unusual red hunting hat. Holden puts on his hunting hat with "the peak around to the back, the way I (Holden) like it" (52) when he is reading, thinking and even when he just feels like wearing it. The hat gives Holden "quite a lot of protection"(212-213) from the weather as well. Because the hat is a hunting hat, Holden is probably hunting for something. The thing he's hunting for is probably the meaning of his life. As Holden struggles to become an adult, he slowly matures from being a teenager.
Another thing he likes and wants to be is from the title, Catcher In The Rye. The catcher in the rye is whom Holden desperately wants to be when "all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye"(173), and he would be "standing on the edge of some crazy cliff"(173) and "catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff"(173). Holden just wants to be the protector of children or innocence from the cruel adult world, a place everyone has to face. Holden believes that the innocent children will plunge into the evil of adulthood unless someone stops them. .
However, Holden's attitude toward guarding the children shifts near the last scenes of the novel. Holden just "sat down on this bench" (211) and watches his sister, Phoebe "go around and around" (211) on the carrousel.
