The insensitivity/cruelty of the modern world.

Can one person change the corrupted world? It seems impossible for one person to shoulder all the evil out there. In J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" the protagonist struggles to live in this world. It takes most the novel before Holden begins to realize that he is helpless to stop this corruption. Holden feels that he is just a teenager in the large world, and everyone else besides him is a phoney. …

…is unable to follow rules and take responsibility. To be like the rest, Holden would have to pretend to be somebody he wasn't. Holden could be as pretentious as the people around him and then the world would probably accept him. But, Holden wasn't ready for that. This leads to his alienation from the world. It appears that in "The Catcher in the Rye", Salinger tries to show the perils of society through Holden's eye.