So, Holden Caulfield is often dismissed by teenagers for being a whiny little Nathaniel Hawthorne who hates his life but never does anything to change it. And frankly, the idea that your third-rate first world problems can be the subject of great literature is a bit difficult to swallow. This is where … it becomes relevant that J. D. Salinger saw more of World War II than almost any other American. The great American war novels of that generation—Catch 22, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Naked and the Dead, were all written by men who saw far less of war’s horror than J. D. Salinger did. He was on Utah Beach on D-Day, at the Battle of the Bulge, and he was one of the first Americans to enter a liberated concentration camp. And yet Salinger returned home and wrote not about war but about Holden Caulfield bumming around New York City. So, you can say that the stakes aren’t high in this novel, but as Salinger well knew, the cruel and phony world of adults doesn’t just treat people like Holden Caulfield poorly, it kills them.