Holden Caulfield's Phony In Catcher In The Rye

The never ending insecurities, that build up like a ball and roll down to crush you, is a hard feeling to naturally stop. Many people may worry, get anxiety, or just grow a thin border of fake personality, to protect their real selves from human judgement of their insecurities. Holden, the sixteen year old boy with internal struggles of the human nature, is the main character of The Catcher in the Rye; a novel written by J.D. Salinger. The main character often fights his vexation against fake, shallow, hypocritical, inauthentic, and superficial people, by calling them all in one word, “phony”. Someone phony, can often times show their fake, thin personality, when in a stressful event, or when trying to impress someone. Throughout The Catcher

In J.D. Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye, the most important character Holden Caulfield displays an obsessive dislike for "phonies," or superficial men and women. Holden hates phonies because he thinks phonies are hypocrites who've been corrupted by way of the worldly issues. He sees phonies even among his loved ones participants like his brother who writes for Hollywood which he considers as corrupted due to the fact Hollywood writers tend to magnify or write lies just to seize individuals’ awareness and for money. In his intellect he desires purity and a smooth society without corrupted men and women who are inclined to fall below temptations reminiscent of greed, lust, money, medicines, comfort, etc. Among men and women, he finds

The theme of phoniness, illustrated by J.D. Salinger is the key of a better understanding the story line as a whole. Phony or fake more often than not means not real and is mostly referred to some religions by non believers or sometimes even to people. J.D. Salinger has used the term "phony" in a very common manor. By the interpretation of common manor, many of the people at that time period suited to the style of Holden Caulfield's dialogues through J.D. Salinger. Salinger's view of phoniness may or may not even share a bond with most of the readers' experiences, because this theme is confronted in at least some kind of form or action in the life of all people on a daily bases. The way Salinger has set

In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger captures a teenage boy’s struggle with adolescence. The story is told from the perspective of Holden Caulfield, who embarks on a journey to New York City after being expelled from his boarding school. He meets new people and has experiences that reveal his personality and interactions. In the story, Holden is “fed up” with the world, he feels that everything and almost every person he encounters is “phony,” (a word often used by Holden). Anyone who Holden perceives to have affectations, he deems to be different from him. These people appear to be socially intelligent and are generally accepted into society, unlike Holden. Although Holden is very judgemental, he fails to recognize his own phoniness as well. So,

In JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, the main character Holden associates phoniness with hypocrisy and insincerity with adults the institutions that instill it in the next generation as well.

In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger uses Holden Caufield’s physical appearance and actions to enhance the theme of the loss of childhood innocence and the phoniness of society. During Holden’s visit to Phoebe, he recites a poem by Robert Burns to her and tells her that he wants to be the person who will “catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff… if they don’t look where they’re going… I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all” (Salinger 173). Throughout Holden’s time living alone in the adult world, he consistently identifies ‘phonies’, or people who aren’t genuine and full of themselves. He strongly dislikes this attitude and and wants to ‘catches’ or help children to not grow up and falloff of the cliff of adulthood and become a

tombstone. Holden applies the term “phony” not to people who are insincere but to those who

Teenage angst is an inevitable disease. The Catcher in The Rye conveys these tormented times rather well with the situations Holden Caulfield finds himself in. His self-fulfilling prophecies and everyday contradictions put everything into perspective, relating to most young adults, including myself.

Holden Caulfield loves to call people phonies. In fact, he uses the word phony 35 times throughout the book, The Catcher in the Rye. A phony, by definition, means not genuine, or fraudulent, however, Holden’s version of it is much different. Holden uses the word phony so much in order to help himself understand the world and people around him. He has to put everyone into a category of personalities, and phony is one of those categories.

“There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it” (Salinger 5). Considering the amount of times Holden Caulfield uses the word to describe something or someone, he must hate the whole world. The words phony, pervert, and screwball are recurring concepts, or motifs, in “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger. They are used many times to describe all sorts of people, places, and objects. Although he might sound like he is just being unpleasant, these words describe how he sees the world and why he ends up getting treatment. The way people expresses themselves reflects what they feel on the inside. The words phony, pervert, and screwball all interplay into

Holden Caulfield, a sixteen-year old junior, flunked out of four schools. He views the world through a very judgemental lense and criticizes everything around him. The collapse that put him in this mental institution in the first place was based solely, in my opinion, on the underlying internal conflict that has not been settled. His constant conflict with himself pushed him over the edge and is why he is here today. This conflict has much to do with his inability to come to terms with death, his constant criticism of everything and everyone being phony, and his attitude towards sex. Until he can come to terms with these issues, it is my professional opinion that he should stay in the mental institution.

Allie’s death made Holden a very bitter person who dislikes almost everything just because it doesn’t include Allie. “Phony” things are a key part of his negative personality, namely as ungenuine things that combat Allie’s pureness which Holden misses. His old principal is a good example of Holden’s definition of ‘phony,’ because he only talked to people he thought might help him. The parents he snubbed didn’t matter to him because they couldn’t’ve helped his position and he didn’t care about their feelings, so he only talked to the ones he thought could be beneficial to himself. Allie, unlike the principal, didn’t have any rude parts, so Holden hates when people are mistreated or ignored because he feels it goes against his brother’s memory.

Holden always talks about people being phony, and how he doesn’t like people for a reason. Holden is actually a phony person him self believe it or not. Holden is a liar he lies about most things that he doesn’t like or things he doesn’t feel comfortable talking about. When something goes wrong Holden immediately blames someone else for his mistakes, it’s never his fault. He hasn’t really decided what to do with his life. He wants to find out how things work and why things happen. At the same time he is insecure and also feels like he is never good enough. He thinks the adult world is phony. He wants to be an adult just like a lot of all the other people in the world but when he gets mad or they upset him he treats them as a child and runs away. He really wants to be friends with

He constantly talks down on phonies and says how he hates them and won’t ever be one. To Holden, being a phony is closely associated with being an adult. Holden sees almost everybody as a phony for stuff they do, even if the thing doesn’t necessarily make them a phony, in his eyes they’re a complete and utter phony and nothing else. He also sees guys and girls at bars as phonies because of how extremely self-entitled they are. He complains about how they never want to have an intellectual conversation with anyone. Holden dislikes the bartender at the Wicker Bar because he doesn’t bother with being nice to customers unless they’re rich or famous. He sees him as insincere and fake. In Holden’s eyes there is a bunch of phonies in every last corner of our society. He sees it as one of the most disgusting things about people. One of the main things Holden desires to do is to maintain his and his sister's innocence and protecting her from all the phonies in the world, all while keeping her from conforming to society and its

Phony is defined as a fake or an ingenuine person, this word was used most often by no other than Holden Caulfield, the most recognizable teenager in American literature. To truly understand who Holden Caulfield is, we must take a trip back in time to the 50s. The 1950s was a decade of prosperity and conformity, life in the 50s was simply peaceful. However, in the summer of 1951, J.D Salinger published a book entitled “The Catcher in the Rye”, the main protagonist of the novel, Holden Caulfield, described the 1950s as a disgusting and phony era. Holden himself is depicted as a teenager disillusioned by the adult world. Holden finds the hypocrisy of the adult world to be almost intolerable, with this mindset, he alienates himself from the society and he soon realized that he wants to become a “catcher in the rye”, which is to be a guardian of children, protecting them from the ugliness of adulthood and the process of maturity. The fuel that drove Holden to become who he is today was that of his childhood sibling loss, after the tragedy, Holden became desperate and infuriated. Almost 70 years later, Holden Caulfield still resonates in American culture, this leaves reviews questioning, why was the novel so meaningful and popular? Salinger’s universal idea of alienation and phoniness gave rise to the novel, never has anyone seen such a controversial book, but no one realized that Salinger’s message is pointed toward the faults of the American society.