The theme of alienation is very prominent throughout the entire novel. Holden’s disconnection from the people around him results in him not being able to form genuine connections, which is an extremely big part of his feelings of isolation. I also believe the word ‘phony” is a way of Holden expressing how he sees the adult world as something that’s devious and fraudulent. Therefore, Holden is yearning for legitimacy and the feeling of belonging; he believes the inauthenticity of the adult world is why everything and everyone seem so fake to him. Ever since the beginning of the novel, Holden has shown that he’s just not a people person and always seems to drive people off instead of drawing them in. This is because of his constant use of criticism and sarcasm. …show more content…
Holden struggles greatly with maintaining good relationships. Holden often refers to something or someone as phony when he doesn't see them as genuine or honest. There’s an example of this in Chapter 2 (Salinger 13). while Holden explained to Mr. Spencer why he left Elkton Hills. The text states, “One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That’s all.” He even goes as far as calling the headmaster, Mr. Haas, “the phoniest bastard” he has ever met in his life. Holden’s frustration stems from Mr. Haas’s insincere behavior, such as flashing a smile and giving a brief handshake to a student's parents, which he found unappealing, whereas spending plenty of time with everyone else’s
Since Holden was isolated from his family, in order to not get hurt again he tries to find hypocrisy in people to stop himself from trusting others. Holden feels isolated after being sent to a boarding school that “was full of phonies” by his parents (Salinger 90). Salinger’s message to the audience with this quote is that when
Holden's idealism is first brought forth when he describes his life at Pency Prep. It is full of phonies, morons and bastards. His roommate, Stradlater, " was at least a pretty friendly guy, It was partly a phony kind of friendly..." (26) and his other roommate, Ackley is "a very nosy bastard" (33). Holden can't stand to be around either one of them for a very long time. Later, he gets into a fight with Stradlater over his date with Jane. Holden is upset because he thinks that Stradlater "gave her the time" and that he doesn't care about her; 'the reason he didn't care was because he was a goddam stupid moron. All morons hate it when you call them a moron' (44). Holden not only sees his roommates as phonies and bastards, but he also sees his headmaster at Pency Prep as a "phony slob" (3). This type of person is exactly what Holden doesn't want to be. He strives to be a mature adult; caring, compassionate, and sensitive.
Holden alienates himself by believing he is better than everybody else. Every time Holden meets or talks about someone he is judgemental. Even when he is talking about someone he spends time with, he cannot help but ridicule them, “I never even once saw him [Ackley] brush his teeth....he had a lot of pimples. Not just on his forehead or his chin, like most guys, but all over his whole face. And not only that, he had a terrible personality. He was also sort of a nasty guy. I wasn't too crazy about him, to tell you the truth.”(Salinger,14 ). Ackley is probably the closest thing to a friend Holden has. Yet he criticizes him is a very nitpicky way, convincing himself he does not like
Holden, unlike the usual fictional teenager, doesn’t express normal rebellion. He distrusts his teachers and parents not because he wants to separate himself from them, but because he can’t understand them. In fact there is little in the world that he does understand. The only people he trusts and respects are Allie, his deceased brother, and Phoebe, his younger sister. Everyone else is a phony of some sort. Holden uses the word phony to identify everything in the world which he rejects. He rejects his roommate Stradlater because Stradlater doesn’t value the memories so dear to Holden (Allie’s baseball glove and Jane’s kings in the back row). Even Ernie, the piano player, is phony because he’s too skillful. Holden automatically associates skill with arrogance (from past experiences no doubt) and thus can’t separate the two. Even Holden’s most trusted teacher, Mr. Antolini, proves to be a phony when he attempts to fondle Holden. Thus the poor boy is left with a cluster of memories, some good but most bad.
Holden, the main character, in the book Catcher in the Rye has friends but really does not know how to understand how they act towards him. Holden judges a person before he really gets to know what they are trying to do; he calls the people that are not his close friends/ teachers, Phonies. “I didn’t feel like going into the whole thing with him. He wouldn’t have understood it anyway. It wasn’t up his alley at all. One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies.
In doing so, he tried to gain friends as well as social status within his peers. Even then the whole team ostracized" (pg. 3) He is a sham. Like most teens at that age, Holden was having trouble gaining acceptance and making friends. I'm the most terrific liar you've ever seen in your life.
Holden often talked about how phony people in his life were, however, he was also a phony, which made him a hypocrite. Holden would often mention things he hated that someone did, but sooner or later Holden was guilty of doing the exact same thing. In chapter one Holden is hypocritical towards his older brother, D.B. He says “Now he’s out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute.”(Salinger
“‘I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful’” (Salinger 9). The main character already calls himself a liar, so is he guilty of being a phony.The book The Catcher in the Rye is a classic in American literature. The main character Holden Caulfield is kicked out of school and then adventure ensues. When Holden refers to things he doesn’t like he uses the word phony. Holden is somewhat consistent enough with the word to more or less understand what he means. The following essay will help analyze Holden’s use of the word phony. Holden does not give an alternative to the word because he seemingly throws it around at everyone he does not like. Holden himself is guilty of being a phony. J.D. Salinger uses Holden’s ideas about phoniness to show the reader not to be hypocritical when judging someone else.
Holden makes reference to the word "phony" forty-four separate times throughout the novel (Corbett 68-73). Each time he seems to be referring to the subject of this metaphor as -- someone who discriminates against others, is a hypocrite about something, or has manifestations of conformity (Corbett 71). Throughout The Catcher in the Rye, Holden describes and interacts with various members of his family. The way he talks about or to each gives you some idea of whether he thinks they are "phony" or normal. A few of his accounts make it more obvious than others to discover how he classifies each family member.
...is biased. The people he does not recognize as phonies are people he loves and has gotten to know, whereas many people he declares fake, he has never even spoken to. Holden will hear someone say one sentence and immediately judge that person based off of that, rather than taking his time to understand that person. Either way, Holden frequently complains about the world he lives in, and the reader begins to not take seriously what he is saying. The more Holden calls someone a phony, the easier it is for the reader to tell that Holden uses it to point out that someone is flawed, and rather than specifying on the flaw, the person is a phony. J.D Salinger makes it clear that Holden is flawed, but he is aware of his flaws, and even so he is able to be loved by others and cared for. One must accept that one can never be perfect to be able to live out one’s life contently.
Holden Caulfield is a peculiar teenager. He's hypocritical, cynical, dishonest, and most of all...confused. All of these traits add up to an unreliable narrator, to say the least. You can never take what Holden says at face value: you have to read between the lines. In between the lines lies the fact that he is extremely lonely, and that his fear of abandonment causes him to isolate himself in opposition to that. He often tries to cover this up from both himself and outsiders, hence the lying and contradictory nature of his thoughts. The problem is, he doesn't know why he's lonely. He feels cut off from the rest of society; feels as though he is all alone in this world of supposed phonies. Throughout The Catcher in the Rye, Holden's loneliness shines through in the way he frequently reaches out to complete strangers for companionship (strangers he generally dislikes, too, which shows just how desperate he is for company). True to his contradictory nature, he also tries to isolate himself at the same time, for he fears abandonment. Abandonment, as a matter of fact, is at the very root of his issuance with creating connections: he reaches out to people and then immediately proceeds to push them away, for he is terrified of getting hurt by them.
In 1950 J.D. Salenger captures one of society’s tragedies, the breakdown of a teenager, when he wrote The Catcher In The Rye. Holden Caulfield, a fickle “man” is not even a man at all. His unnecessary urge to lie to avoid confrontation defeats manhood. Holden has not matured and is unable to deal with the responsibility of living on his owe. He childishly uses a hunter’s hat to disguise him self from others. The truth of his life is sad and soon leads to his being institutionalized. He tries to escape the truth with his criticisms. Knowing he will never meet his parents’ expectations, his only true friend is his eight-year-old sister Phoebe, to whom Holden tells that he really wants to be ‘the catcher in the rye”. Holden admits his only truth and shows that Phoebe is his only friend. Another form of escape for Holden is his acting, which he uses to excuse the past. Holden has tried to lie, hide, and blame his way through life; when he finds that it is not the answer he collapses.
Many of the times that Holden criticizes people, it is something he does himself. (Pg 13) “. one of the reasons I left Elkton was that I was surrounded by phonies.” Holden himself is many times what he refers to as a “phony”. He knows that he lies and pretends to like people that he would rather not be with.
To Holden, everyone is either corny of phony. He uses these terms to describe what a person is if they do not act naturally and follow other people?s manners and grace. Holden dislikes phonies and thinks of them as people who try to be something they are not. He loathes people who showed off because it seems unnatural every time they do not act like themselves. Holden does not allow himself to have friendship because of his dull attitude. In the beginning of the book, the reader knows that Holden is lonely when he separates himself from the rest of the Pencey students by watching the football game from Thomsen Hill and not the grand stands. Holden is not a very sociable person partly because he finds himself better than many others. He dislikes his roommate because of his generic leather luggage. His next door roommate Ackley does not seem to want a friendship with him either. Holden finds Ackely?s zit crusted face ridiculous and doesn?t want him in his room at first. This shows the reader that Holden is a lonely person because he chooses to be lonely and does not want anything to do with people who do not fit into his perception of normal.
“The truth is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.”- Yani Lavigne. Mo Willems, the author and illustrator of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, lets one explore the meaning of this quote through evaluating the pigeon’s actions in the book. Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus takes one on a journey where he or she explores the persuasion of a mischievous pigeon who wants to drive a bus that is not his, whilst the onlooker has to respond to the situation in an authoritative manner. The book starts off before the title page, where as soon as the book is opened, the pigeon is illustrated daydreaming about driving the bus. On the very next page, the bus driver is introduced and assigns one task: