of youth who felt the same. The 1950s would span the counter-hero in films, rebels like James Dean and Marlon Brando who often acted in a juvenile manner while seething contempt and cynicism at the adult world and material society around them. Salinger’s books would inspire a generation of youth to reject the superficial and material values of an adult culture where you could not win unless the deck was stacked in your favor. As John Romano argues in the essay Salinger Was Playing Our Song: “As a class, those who were young and literate in the Eisenhower and Kennedy years can be said to have receives such images with utter credulity and in a state of mind resembling awe. Some of us founded not only our literary taste but also a portion of our identity on Holden Caulfield: we were smart kids in a dumb world or sensitive kids in a phony one, and Salinger was playing our song” (1).
We see the contrast between the innocence of childhood and the maturity of adulthood early in the novel. Holden complains about how adults always keep up appearances. Holden doesn’t care about his appearance. He wears his red hunting cap backwards if he feels like it, he cuts his hair in a crew cut which is considered a child’s hair cut, and his acquaintances like Ackley are not only unkempt in appearance but exhibit poor personal hygiene as well. Ackley’s teeth are mossy green from lack of oral care, “I never even once saw him brush his teeth. They always looked mossy and awful, and he damn near made you sick if you saw him in the dining room with his mouth full of mashed potatoes and peas or something. Besides that, he had a lot of pimples” (Salinger 19). Yet Holden argues that adults try to keep up their appearances at all costs, even though in secret most of them are slobs. Ackley, like Holden, is the only one in the dorm who is not “down at the game” (Salinger 19). To Holden this means that Ackley does not give a damn ab...