Holden Caulfield Phoniness

Societal standards and viewpoints can be seen as corruptive and imposing; they have lead people to refrain from translating their thoughts into their actions and instead provoked them to assert themselves fakely for their own benefit. Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the novel The Catcher in the Rye, has labeled this inconsistency in people as “phoniness,” and classifies almost every adult that he meets as a phony. In contrast, he is drawn to the innocence and genuinity of children, and he believes that they are the only people who are devoid of phoniness because they have not yet been affected by the adult world and its fraudulence. He believes that the change from childhood to adulthood is fatal, as he compares the transition from one

stage to the other to the fall off of a cliff. He makes many futile attempts to prevent it from occurring, but is eventually able to recognize its inescapability and its necessity in life. In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the action of falling is a symbol of the transition from childhood to adulthood, which Holden makes over the course of the book.
Holden desires to save children from change by preventing them from falling off a cliff to adulthood because he is immature and unable to accept the inevitability of adulthood. When Phoebe asks Holden what he would like to be when he grows up, he responds by saying he would like to be a “catcher in the rye” from a Robert Burns poem he misinterpreted. “‘I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around-nobody big, I mean- except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff’” (173). The cliff that Holden is picturing is representative of a barrier that separates the goodness of childhood from the badness of adulthood. He views adults as phony and corrupted by society, while he views children as blissful, innocent and genuine. In this fantasy of his, Holden wants to be the “catcher” of the children about to fall off the cliff; he wants to keep them from making the change to adulthood and confine them to youth. He sees himself as the only “big” person on the cliff because he refuses to accept this change people must make into the grown up world; he thinks he is the only grown-up who has remained as pure and genuine as a child and thus the only “big” person who is fit to play the role of the “catcher”. His ignorance and immaturity prevent him from recognizing that the growth from childhood to adulthood is inexorable, so he believes he can stop it in himself and those around him. Before he undergoes the transformation himself, he believes it to be preventable and cannot recognize it as a fact of life.
When it is brought to Holden’s awareness that he may be wrong to not accept the change of children to adults, he becomes closer to taking his fall to adulthood.

Mr. Antolini, Holden’s former teacher, is lecturing Holden when he decides to write down a quote for him, “‘The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.’” (188). When Holden reads this quote of Wilhelm Stekel, it brings him closer to overcoming his childishness and realizing that the fall from childhood to adulthood is an unavoidable part of life. The immature man’s death for a noble cause is reflective of Holden’s fight to save children from adulthood, which ultimately does not benefit the children and their well-being. Mr. Antolini is trying to convey to Holden that if he continues to follow this path of unacceptance, he will never find a way out. He is trying to encourage Holden to follow the mature man’s path of life and to eventually understand and accept change in children. Mr. Antolini is a catalyst for Holden’s growth; he comes closer to his ‘fall’ to adulthood through their

conversation.
By accepting the inevitable fall off the cliff from youth to adulthood, Holden overcomes his immaturity and desire to save children from growing up.

When watching Phoebe on the carousel, Holden says, “‘The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it’s bad if you say anything to them’” (211). This quote of Holden’s indicates a complete reversal of his previous opinions on childhood. His former wish to be the “catcher in the rye” is refuted; instead of stopping children from falling to adulthood, Holden comes to the understanding that children must reach for the “gold ring,” symbolizing something of the adult world, and if they fall into adulthood while doing so there’s nothing anybody can do to stop them. He realizes that the entrance to this adult world is necessary for children to make, and attempting to prevent it is futile and transgressive. He is finally able to live humbly for a cause and not take actions that only worsen it, and as a result he is finally happy to just sit in the rain and watch Phoebe rather than running for shelter. His ability to recognize the truth shows his growth throughout the book from ignorant and childish to content and

mature.
As Holden comes to understand throughout the novel, growth and change is an essential part of life that cannot be avoided. He wants so badly to preserve Phoebe’s innocence, even though she’s not a little girl anymore, but he eventually realizes that if she wants to grab the “gold ring” and transition into the realm of adulthood, he must let her take that fall without “saying anything.” Although a subtle change, he comes of age over the course of the novel by gaining a sense of maturity that teaches him to just let children fall instead of ineffectively trying to shield them from doing so. Just as every baby must fall as it learns to take its first steps as a toddler, every child must fall as it learns to take its first steps as an adult.