Holden's Use Of Phony In Catcher In The Rye

Holden uses the word phony throughout the book. According to Holden, a phony is anybody who is acting to be someone who they are not, insincere, or “fake”. In the book he named everybody phonies except for his sister Phoebe, his deceased brother Allie, and himself. Holden is very unreliable as he says in the book as he refers to himself as being an amazing liar. I think that Holden is the phoniest person in the book. Holden Caulfield has a lot of jealousy inside him. When he was talking about Stradlater he called him a phony because he was actually jealous of him and his “coolness”. I hate how Holden repeatedly calls other people phony. He sees a person who is self-conscious, inconsiderable, and conventional as phonies. In one chapter of the book …show more content…
He is too busy observing behavior in people around him. Throughout the novel he meets many characters who do seem snobby, phony and shallow. Sally Hayes, Carl Luce, Maurice and Sunny, and even Mr. Spencer stand out as examples. Some characters, like Maurice and Sunny, are no doubt harmful. But although Holden uses so much energy and time obsessing over the fakeness in others, he never realizes his own fakeness. His lies are just plain pointless but he can’t stop. For example, on the train to New York, he lies to Ernest's’ mother for no reason at all. He'd like us to believe that he is a perfect model of good and right behavior in a world of fakeness, but that simply isn't the case. Although he'd like to believe that the world is a simple place, and that good thing/excellence/advantage and innocence rest on one side of the fence while shallowness and fakeness rest on the other, Holden is his own counterevidence. The world is not at all simple as Holden thinks it is. In conclusion, Holden needs a huge reality check and needs to realize that he is as fake as everybody else if not more. Many people can’t really tell when they are being phony, they do it