In these latter chapters of the book Holden carries himself further and further towards his impending breakdown, but I think begins to realize what he is doing to those around him. I found these chapters really quite sad and depressing. Holden's breakdown reaches its climax in Chapter 25. As the chapter begins, Holden feels surrounded on all sides by ugliness and phoniness?the profanity on the walls, the vulgar Christmas-tree delivery men, the empty pomp of …showed first 75 words of 729 total…

…showed last 75 words of 729 total…has begun to shed the impenetrable skin of cynicism that he had grown around himself. He has begun to value, rather than dismiss, the people around him. His nostalgia"missing everybody" reveals that he is not as bitter and repressed as he was earlier in the book. Although some people may be unsatisfied by the ending of the novel, I was. I think it's better to be left wondering at the end of a story.