 Holden is very lonely, and most of the novel shows him attempting to find company or dwelling on the fact that he is lonely- “practically the whole school except me was there”.  He often sabotages his own attempts to end his loneliness. For example: meeting up with Sally and Carl Luce and then ruining it by his bad behaviour/poor social skills.  He has a quest for companionship and it flits from one meaningless encounter to another with different girls.  He doesn’t think anyone is interested in him and is lacking self confidence- “She was just trying to get in good with me so I’d tell old D.B about it”

 Holden often displays poor social skills in his desperate attempts to end his loneliness, whether it be because of his emotional state or not. E.g. Meeting up with Carl Luce, who is unsure and a bit disinterested to begin with, and then is completely uncomfortable with the questions that Holden is asking him, and so leaves.  Holden struggles with interaction and appropriate conversation.  He analyses everyone, and usually either decides he doesn’t like them or they are just plain phony, and so pushes people away for fear of turning into a phony himslef.  Therefore, though Holden doesn’t like his loneliness, he purposely alienates himself and depends on his isolation to maintain a level of self protection from what he most fears he will become- a phony.

 Instead of acknowledging that adulthood scares him, Holden would rather have the mindset that adulthood is superficial and full of phonies. He wants to believe that being an adult would make him a phony, and that is why he still keeps most of his childish ways.  Holden struggles to act like an adult in relationships as he can never commit, and doesn’t even try. Holden has small flings, like Sally and the Prostitute, which never become anything but some company to pass the time.  Holden knows that the only girl that he really wants a relationship with is Jane Gallagher, and yet is the only girl throughout the whole book who he can’t bring himself to call. This, along with the fact that he calls lots of other girls for individual dates, shows that he really can’t have an ‘adult relationship’, even though he wants to, and runs away like a child.  He has some adult morals and ideas, just cannot put them into practise.  Holden wants to keep the innocence of a child’s perspective and doesn’t want others to grow up and then become a phony as well. This is shown when Holden tries to erase swear words off the walls of the elementary school so the children like Holden’s sister phoebe will not see it and thus stay more innocent to the adult world.

 Holden is overwhelmed by change and wants things to stay the same. This is emphasised when Holden visits the museum and explains how he enjoys that nothing in it changes and always stays the same unlike the real world, ‘the best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was.’  Holden often refers to sex. He always has chances, however he always cops out. He says he'd rather do it with someone he loved (adult mindset) but at the same time does not want to for different excuses. “Sexy was about the last thing I was feeling”, but really he just doesn’t want to move into the adult world of phoniness.  Holden has mature morals and values, yet won't completely take them on (accept them), so therefore still has a childish mindset. In this way his mind is “partly frozen and partly not frozen” as an adult.  Holden is half hearted in everything, doesn't commit to school, but does try when he writes about his brother; he takes immature and childish approaches to commitment. He won't commit for fear of getting hurt, the cause of this being hurt Holden still is towards the death of his younger brother Allie.  Holden has these mature ideas and makes these 'rules' then hypocritically breaks them straight away. "I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all". He has the capacity to act maturely yet never can do it in the long run.

 Phoniness is a key factor in the novel and majority of the themes and events revolves around and link to this factor. Holden is profusely against becoming a phony and blames all the problems in his life and the world around him on phoniness although in a sense he isn’t wrong. He believes all adults are phony and thus makes him against growing up and becoming an adult. He uses the fact that he thinks everyone is phony as an excuse to alienate himself and this leaves him suffering from loneliness.  We find at the end of the book that perhaps Holden’s fear of becoming a phony and his habit of making excuses has actually turned him into one. The definition for phony describes him very well –”a person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives”.