>>12067442It's worth noting that it's mostly a very raw and personal depiction of the typical struggle a teenager has when shifting from the "innocence" stage of life and the "reality" stage of life. Things that are normal for us, Holden considers phony, and by extension, evil. His ultimate conclusion is that adulthood is unavoidable, and not all evil, and he's accepting it slowly, but he still wants to be an adult that can protect the innocence of children, particularly his sister, in part due to his trauma over losing his younger brother at an early age. That's what the title is about, after all: if childhood innocence is depicted as children playing freely in the rye field, and adulthood is depicted as the world at large, he wants to be the catcher, someone who can play interference and keep the kids from having to deal with things (like said death of a loved one) before they become adults.