The second-person “you,” likening the reader to a trusted confidant. The final line of the flashback portion of the novel is “God, I wish you could’ve been there,” suggesting Holden’s loneliness would have been relieved by having a friend like the reader with him during his experiences. The second-person address also draws attention to Holden’s unreliability as a narrator. Throughout the novel, Holden tries to convince the reader to interpret events one way while simultaneously presenting evidence that the opposite interpretation is correct. For example, he frequently insists how well he knows people – “The thing is, you didn’t know Stradlater. I knew him,” or “I know old Jane like a book.” However, his interactions with Stradlater, and his reluctance to contact Jane, suggest he is neither as intimate nor comfortable with them as he’d like the reader to believe. He also makes several references to how much he hates movies, and thinks his brother D.B. is a “prostitute” for writing for them, yet he mentions going to the movies several times. In these ways, Holden’s attempts to control the reader’s impression of him end up revealing who he really is.
