In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, the main character, Holden Caulfield, emerges as an adolescent lost in his own private world of pain and suffering, yet he was seemingly able to provide themselves with all the luxuries and splendors of American society. Holden is presented as a failure who struggles to stay in at least one of the four schools from which he was expelled. This may reflect Holden's failure to get by in life. Throughout the book, it is obvious that Holden runs away from so many things such as growing up, reality, and fake people. It seems that Holden is confused and trapped in memories of past moments, dealing with loneliness and isolating himself as a form of protection. Not only that, but he lacks parental attention, so he is desperate for companionship. Holden says, "The best thing, though, about that museum was that everything always stayed exactly where it was. Nobody would move... Nobody would be different. The only thing that would be different would be you." (Salinger 121) This passage in chapter 16 shows that he is confused and afraid that he doesn't know how to deal with change. This may be due to troubling memories or ideas that you choose not to focus on or have difficulty focusing on. Holden exposes the reader to the underlying theme of Sigmund Freud's work regarding the unconscious state. Freud believed that there were three levels of consciousness in the mind: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. "The contents of the unconscious cannot be brought directly into consciousness simply by concentrating on them; they are brought into consciousness only with great difficulty, if at all. With so many contents of the mind mired in the unconscious, we are... .. .. middle of paper ......obe walks away and wants him to join her but he just watches. She puts the red hunting hat on him from his coat and assures him that he won't run away again and that he was to go home. He nodded. It started to rain but he remained on the bench watching her. “My hunting hat really gave me a lot of protection, in a way, but I still got wet” (Salinger 213) He said the alienation he intended to use to protect himself, but he knew that this only made things go wrong and made things harder for himself Works CitedHall, Donald, E. Literary and Cultural Theory Boston: Houghton, Muffin Co. 2001 Salinger,. JD Catcher in the Rye Boston: Little Brown and Company 1951.SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Catcher in the Rye.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Network. November 26. 2013.