Holden’s loneliness, a more concrete manifestation of his alienation problem, is a driving force throughout the book. Most of the novel describes his almost manic quest for companionship as he flits from one meaningless encounter to another. Yet, while his behavior indicates his loneliness, Holden consistently shies away from introspection and thus doesn’t really know why he keeps behaving as he does. Because Holden depends on his isolation to preserve his detachment from the world and to maintain a level of self-protection, he often sabotages his own attempts to end his loneliness. For example, his conversation with Carl Luce and his date with Sally Hayes are made unbearable by his rude behavior. His calls to Jane Gallagher are aborted for a similar reason: to protect his precious and fragile sense of individuality. Loneliness is the emotional manifestation of the alienation Holden experiences; it is both a source of great pain and a source of his security.
Because Holden feels ‘trapped’, he might use the alienation as a form of self protection. One of the ways he protects and alienates himself is by using the word ‘phony’. A lot of the time, this is used to describe characters in the adult world that are successful or popular, things that he isn’t. This is a way that he covers up his jealousy for the people that have managed to achieve in life. One of the examples of this is again towards the beginning of the book where he talks about how actors and films are phony. Actors are possibly the most popular and influential in the world and films, one of the biggest sources of entertainment in modern life. For Holden to say that they are ‘phony’ sets him apart from a very large proportion of Western society and therefore he becomes the minority and the individual. Lying and deception are the most obvious and hurtful elements of phoniness. But lying to others is also a kind of phoniness, a type of deception that indicates insensitivity, callousness, or even cruelty. Of course, Holden himself is guilty of both these crimes. His random and repeated lying highlights his own self-deception—he refuses to acknowledge his own shortcomings and is unwilling to consider how his behavior affects those around him. Through his lying and deception, Holden proves that he is just as guilty of phoniness as the people he criticises.
Aside from Holden’s ideologies setting him apart from many, relationships, intimacy, and sexuality are also recurring ideas relating to the larger theme of alienation. Both physical and emotional relationships offer Holden opportunity to break out of his ‘trapped’ state that he describes early in the book. They also represent the things about the adult world that he most fears: complexity, unpredictability, and potential for conflict and change. As he demonstrates at the Museum of Natural History, Holden likes the world to be silent and frozen, predictable and unchanging. As he watches Phoebe sleep, Holden projects his own ideas of childhood onto her. But in real-world relationships, people talk back, and Phoebe reveals how different her childhood is from Holden’s romanticized version. Because people are unpredictable, they challenge Holden and force him to question his sense of self-confidence and self-worth. For a few unspoken and detailed reasons, possibly stemming from Allie’s death, Holden has trouble dealing with this kind of complexity. As a result, he has isolated himself and fears intimacy. Although he encounters opportunities for both physical and emotional intimacy, he bungles them all, wrapping himself in a layer of protection made from cynicism and bitterness. Even so, Holden desperately continues searching for new relationships, always undoing himself only at the last moment.
The red hunting hat is one of the most recognisable symbols from twentieth-century American literature. It is indispensable from our image of Holden, with good reason: it is a symbol of his uniqueness and individuality. The hat is outlandish, and it shows that Holden desires to be different from everyone around him. At the same time, he is very self-conscious about the hat—he always mentions when he is wearing it, and he often doesn’t wear it if he is going to be around people he knows. The presence of the hat, therefore, mirrors the central conflict in the book: Holden’s need for isolation versus his need for companionship. Incidentally, the hat’s color, red, is actually the same as that of Allie’s and Phoebe’s hair. Perhaps Holden associates it with the innocence and purity he believes these characters represent and wears it as a way to connect to them. He never explicitly comments on the hat’s significance other than to mention its unusual appearance. This example is different to all the others as this is an example of Holden trying to be different and achieving whereas the rest are examples of him alienating ostracising himself from society.