I think one of the primary issues Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye has with growing up is that he can't do anything about it. There is a sense that what Holden wants to preserve--life, childhood, innocence, and happiness--will someday disappear, and it appears to Holden that he is the only one who wants to reverse the deterioration he sees around him.
Holden analyzes things very closely, which can make a lot of his views of things negative. Even being a lawyer (which Holden thinks could be rewarding by freeing innocent people) begins to seem fake as he imagines lawyers who have the job just for the social status and wealth. By visualizing how situations could turn sour or impure, Holden is completely turned away from much of what the future has to offer.
What adds to Holden's feelings that it is impossible for the future to get better is that he doesn't come up with any solutions to such problems. He finds issues in every area in life because he thinks anything could be made worse by people's phoniness or malicious intentions, yet doesn't propose change explicitly and doesn't exactly say what he would rather have. I think that is because Holden doesn't know how things could be completely improved; since even an apparently good, helpful job in law could be sullied by a person's greed, Holden sees that he has little control over if the world becomes a better place or not.
Holden's uneasiness with the fragility of life contributes to how he feels many problems are inevitable or impossible to fix. He understandably thinks his brother Allie's death is unfair, and that feeling is rooted in the fact that Allie's death was out of his control. According to Holden, growing up is not only a loss of the happy, carefree attitude many children have in exchange for a greedy, phony lifestyle many adults have. He also sees it as a symbol of not being able to avoid death, and I think that is why he has such a problem with adulthood throughout The Catcher in the Rye.
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