Phoniness In Catcher In The Rye

Holden Caulfield faces a dilemma throughout “The Catcher in the Rye”. Holden wants to protect his innocence as a child. As he leaves Pencey Prep; venturing off into the vast city of new york, he tries to get somebody to listen to him and meaningfully respond to his fears about becoming an adult. Holden has grown six inches in the past year and one side of his head is full of grey hair, both symbols of the inevitability of the progression of time towards adulthood and its disappearance of innocence. He is so obsessed with protecting his innocence he can't even through a snowball at a car because, “it looks so nice and white.

Literature has always relied on techniques to catch the reader’s attention and format the story, and “the Catcher in the Rye” is no exception. Salinger brought many different writing styles into his novel to make it a bestseller. With his knowledge, Salinger was able to depict the persona of Holden to the reader without directly stating his characteristics. Salinger proves Holden is a lonesome figure who wanted to fit in but struggles to be accepted. The Catcher in the Rye depicts Holden as one who struggles with his sexuality and adulthood and wants to save children from adulthood because of the difficulties that it has brought himself. Salinger greatly expresses Holden through the use of metaphor, imagery, symbolism,

Throughout the novel The Catcher in the Rye Holden sees the world as an evil and corrupt place, however it is clear that he gradually comes to the conclusion he cannot change it. The first instance demonstrating Holden’s progression is when he sees the profanity written all over Phoebe’s school. In this moment he finally understands that it is inevitable to enter adulthood and realizes the impossibility to try to rid even half of the profanity within the world if given a million years. The first majority of the novel displays Holden’s pessimistic view on everything in life and his desire to contain the innocence he has left. Holden’s evolution as a

Holden has numerous distinct attributes pertaining to both childhood and adulthood. His transition from growing and relational life, to an uncontrolled spiritual realm, this stresses him. He has instances of introspection that helps him encompass a realization for his own livelihood. When he shares with his sister Phoebe what he would sincerely like to do with his life he says “I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.” (Salinger 173) That quote reveals the reasoning for the title of the book because Holden wants nothing more than to protect the innocence of children.

The Catcher in the Rye is one of J. D. Salinger's world-famous books about the disgruntled youth. Holden Caulfield is the main character and he is a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Navigating his way through the challenges of growing up, Holden separates the “phony” aspects of society, and the “phonies” themselves. Some of these “phony” people in his life are the headmaster whose friendliness depends on the wealth of the parents, and his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection. This book deals with the complex issues of identity, belonging, connection, and alienation. Holden senses these feelings most of the time and is guilty about many things in

In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger tells a story of a young boy, Holden, who never quite understood his stance on life. Throughout the novel, Holden struggles to adapt to the inevitable transition into adulthood, often worrying more about others than himself. In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger uses connotative diction, repetition, and specific diction to convey Holden’s struggle of accepting life changes that led him to becoming mentally unstable.            To start off, Salinger illustrates Holden’s nature by using connotative diction.

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,

Between the bars, prostitutes, and perversities that Holden encounters during his time in New York City, it swiftly becomes clear that the adult world that Holden is forced to live in is a dark, uncaring, vile place. However, the one example of all the horrors of the adult world that stands out the most is the obscene graffiti scrawled on a wall of Phoebe’s school. Continuing the theme of wanting to protect the innocence of children, Holden feels absolutely disgusted with whoever wrote it, describing the person as “some perverty bum” (Salinger, 108). Holden’s fury with the hypothetical offender even grows to the point that he wishes to murder the man. While Holden’s intentions are noble (albeit extreme), they can also be interpreted as misguided. His assumption that a homeless man with perverted intentions broke into the school is unlikely, to say the least. In fact, it’s infinitely more likely that the graffiti was left by a rude child at Phoebe’s school who has unfortunately been exposed to the adult world Holden so despises. However, Holden is completely unable to come to this conclusion. “In his world, children are innocent and adults corrupt. While this keeps everything nice and simple in Holden's mind, it also makes it impossible for him to really understand the process of growing-up” (Shmoop Editorial Team). Holden is so desperate to keep his worldview that all children are innocent that his mind completely shuts out the possibility of children who have learned of the monstrosity of the adult world, not wanting to believe that kids have snuck past him in his role as a proverbial Catcher in the Rye. Furthermore, the appearance of the salacious vandalism occurs near the end of the novel, when Holden is on the verge of a breakdown. The precise moment in the story where

despises phoniness, people who exhibit hypocrisy, superficiality, and shallowness, because it complicates his ideological world where everything is "black and white;" ironically, believing himself to be the one virtuous man alive, Holden overlooks the vast amount of phoniness within himself. Holden shows his hatred for phonies when he goes to see a play with Sally Hayes. After the first act, Holden takes Sally out to get cigarettes with the other attendants and thinks to himself, "You never saw so many phonies in all your life, everybody smoking their ears off and talking about the play so that everybody could hear and know how sharp they were. Some dopey movie star ... was with some gorgeous blonde, and the two of them

Holden isolates himself from anyone who might hurt him by calling them phony. Salinger states, "One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies" (17). This shows that Holden did not want to be near anyone phony and left Elkton Hills for that very reason. Salinger also writes, “It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to buy a goddam Cadillac some day” (145). It is evident that Holden is pushing people away at his school by

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 life there comes a time when everyone thinks that they are surrounded by phoniness. This often happens during the teen years when the person is trying to find a sense of direction. Holden Caulfield, a 16-year-old teen-ager is trying to find his sense of direction in J.D. Salinger's, "The Catcher In The Rye." Holden has recently been expelled from Pency Prep for failing four out of his five classes. He decides to start his Christmas recess early and head out to New York. While in New York Holden faces new experiences, tough times and a world of "phony." Holden is surrounded by phoniness because that is the word he uses to identify everything in the world that

As strongly as society wants to deny it, Holden was right; everyone is a phony in one way or another. Throughout The Catcher in the Rye Holden uses the word phony to describe the society around him and as a mechanism for his own isolation, but he fails to realize that he is the biggest phony of them all. Holden clearly perceives the insincerity of everyone around him and is nauseated by it; but despite his revulsion he still ends up being a phony himself. He reveals to the reader that even if someone does not want to be a fraud, and has attempted not to be, they cannot help it; everyone is a phony in the end.

Holden Caulfield plays a timeless character in the sense that his way of life is common for the American teenager, in his time as well as now. Today parents dread the terrible and confusing adolescent years of their child's life. In J.D. Salinger's book, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is in this terrible and confusing point of his life. At this point in his life, as well as in modern teenager's lives, a transition occurs, from child to adult. Holden takes this change particularly rough and develops a typical mentality that prevents him from allowing himself to see or understand his purpose in life.

Phoniness is what makes people and the society in the real world more complex through doing actions such as pretending and lying. The real worlds society makes unspeakable rules and laws that shape people to do things, including things they would prefer not to do. In Catcher in the rye, Salinger reveals that phoniness exists in society and the adult world because it saves people from conflicts and they need and/or want to fit in with society and its needs. Through the novel above, phoniness is shown to exist in human society because it saves people from trouble and avoids conflict such as sparing feelings. In Chapter 8, Holden travels on a train and meets Ernie's Mother.