In The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger enforces that the change from child to adult can be challenging both mentally and emotionally.
One example of this is in Page 18 in the book. On this page, Holden is making up an excuse to his teacher about why he was doing badly in school, but whilst doing this, his mind is simultaneously going on a tangent about the ducks in Central Park. He says “ I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away” (18). What seems like a question about what ducks do to change locations, however, is actually a question about how Holden himself undergoes the transition into adulthood.
Because Holden feels such a dependence on detaching himself from his own situation that he must apply it to ducks, this signifies his fear of change.