Holden's Phonies In Catcher In The Rye

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Holden may blame his society and the phonies around him for causing him all of his isolation issues and disadvantages, but in reality, he is an unreliable narrator who is responsible for his own state because he is full of hate and grief over Allie’s death.
Holden seems to have convinced himself that he is at an unfair disadvantage in life, which leads him to not having the motivation to play the game. While talking to old Spencer, Holden recalls what Mr. Thurmer said to him when he got called into the office, “Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules” (11). Holden strongly disagrees with this statement, because he seems to think that different people living different lives seem to get advantages that help …show more content…

Holden complains about his classmates to Sally Hayes that, “It’s full of phonies, [...] everybody sticks together in these dirty little g***** cliques” (147). Holden thinks of himself as the one in a million person who can see past the phoniness of people and knows the true soul of people. He thinks that people are too blinded by their cliques to notice anything that he refers to as phony. Because Holden has convinced himself that he is the only one who can see through the people he calls “phonies”, he feels that he is superior to everyone else. Furthermore, Holden complains about distractions that the phonies talk about, such as girls and liquor. Instead of admitting that he gets so distracted easily with these things, he pretends not to care about the addictive distractions his classmates speak about. This leads to Holden looking at his school life as if he is of a higher status than everyone else and that everyone should be exactly like him. The constant thought of superiority over his classmates leads him to the alienation of his classmates, because he feels that there is no one else in his world who can see through the “phonies”. It is because of his lack of real relationships that he concludes the phonies are what alienate him from society, not his personal

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