Hypocrisy In Catcher In The Rye

In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye written by J. D. Salinger, it illustrate the story of an six-teen years old white boy named Holden Caulfield and his experience with struggles in transitioning to adulthood in the early 1950s. Holden encounter four times of kicking out of school and he show no apathy toward his own future. He struggles with emotional collapses from adolescence and angst to fully engage with others due to the fear of phoniness. As he travel for three aimless days in New York, Holden’s fear of change grows within, as he finds the adult world intolerable because of the hypocrites. Eventually, he wanted to move to the west to protect himself from the pain and disappointment of the adult world. Although Holden’s nostalgic longing

leaves him unable to negotiate his way of transitioning and leaves him on the gap of childhood and adulthood, Holden slowly accepts changes from the outside world as he grows perspective about the adult world and sex, opening his heart and mind to others, and accepting the unchangeable reality of adolescence.
Holden shows much of his interest in sex throughout the book and he even admits that he is the biggest sex maniac ever. Holden even shows how desperate he is for sex by calling Faith Cavendish, a prostitute that he met at a friend’s party, to have a good time together, but he was rejected, however when Holden actually have the chance to have practice with a prostitute, he refuses. When Holden accepts the offer, His thoughtless act of impulse blinds him from his principle of sex and leds him unable to see what he is getting himself into. He states when the prostitute is in his room, “The trouble was, I just didn't want to do it. I felt more depressed than sexy, if you want to know the truth” (96). Holden’s sexual interest alone is inadequate for him to have sex with a stranger, and Holden seems to be searching for something more meaningful. Although, Holden’s excuses for hiring a prostitute comes from desire of sex and wanting to practice, but he refuses as he demoralized by the fact that Sunny is around his age and that he wants to preserve her innocent. He strongly feels that sex should happen between two people who care and respect another, and he is upset by how casual sex can be.
Holden’s fear of social interaction comes from his fear of phoniness. Holden made several attempts to communicate with others but most of the time, he can not fully engaged, and ends up making lies and embarrassing himself and others. Although Holden is extremely cynical and have problems with relationships, he is actually not all bad. When Holden meets the nuns in the hotel, he realized how he is at a higher class than the nuns. While Holden is eating his luxurious meal with bacon and egg, Holden feels sorry for the nuns for only having toast and coffee. Over breakfast, he has a conversation with the two nuns and gives them a contribution. He states,
“That’s what I liked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing, that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch. It made me so damn sad when I thought about it, their never going anywhere swanky for lunch or anything, I knew it wasn’t too important, but it made me sad anyway” (114).
Holden feels guilty towards the nun because he is aware that the nuns have chosen to live a life without the privilege that Holden casually enjoys. Moreover, Holden label them among one of the few non-phony people because he enjoys how the nuns does not treat him like a kid and they live humbly and selflessly unlike the other adults. Not only that Holden start showing companionship, Holden slowly see more perspective of the adult world and realized that not all of them are phonies.
In contrast to how Holden sees adulthood as flaws and shallow hypocrisy, he views childhood as pure and full of innocence.

Holden constantly find ways to escape from the path of growing up such as escaping to a cabin or moving to the west. He explains that adults are phonies and they are so phony that they can not see their own phoniness and this is one of the reason why he wants to protect Phoebe’s innocent and stop her from growing. Alongside Holden does not want Phoebe to faced the issues that he faced while growing up ranging from sex to intimacy to death. Holden’s protectiveness is shown when he went to Phoebe’s school and sees a profane word written on the wall and Holden states, “ It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them...” (201) Holden’s anger come from his thoughts of how kids would ask and learned this world and how it would be the moments of corruption of innocence and departure from childhood. Holden scratched the word off the wall as an act that he wants to protect children from falling into these types of sensibilities, moreover Holden had become more selfless. To preserve kids innocent is also a prime reason for why Holden is so fascinated to become the catcher in the rye and to protect the kids from falling into the adult world of sickness and ugliness. Holdon actively seek to find ways to withdraw Phoebe from the crushing reality of growing up but however adolescence is a stage in life that no one can avoid and Holden seems to be slowly understanding the matter of that. As Holden watches Phoebe on the carousel and he thought about how the kids kept making mistakes. “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 marks a significant change in Holden as

he realized that being overly protective to children would only serve badly and that kids should be allow to make their own mistakes and receive the consequence from it. Reflecting on how Holden wanted to become a catcher in the rye, he no longer wants to catch others but instead he realized the importance of the process of falling itself.