Who is the narrator and protagonist of 'The Catcher in the Rye'?

The narrator and protagonist of 'The Catcher in the Rye' is Holden Caulfield.

Holden is a 16-year-old student who tells the story in the first person. The novel follows several days of his life after he is expelled from Pencey Prep, a fictional boarding school in Pennsylvania. Rather than immediately returning home, he leaves school early and spends time moving through New York City during the Christmas season.

Holden's narration is conversational, sarcastic, self-conscious, and often unreliable. He repeatedly criticizes the “phoniness” he sees in adults, institutions, and social behavior, while also revealing his own confusion, grief, loneliness, and fear of growing up. His younger sister Phoebe and the memory of his dead brother Allie are especially important to his emotional development.

J. D. Salinger first introduced the character in short fiction during the 1940s before publishing the novel in 1951. Holden is sometimes confused with characters from other famous American novels: Huck Finn narrates Mark Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', Scout Finch narrates much of 'To Kill a Mockingbird', and Jay Gatsby is the central figure of Fitzgerald's novel but not its narrator.