Phony In Catcher In The Rye

Improved Essays
In the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger, Holden’s journey through adolescence displays how their may be a terrifying change in life, yet it is unavoidable.
Throughout the book Holden has an apparent disgust for the phoniness of the adult world. Holden famously criticizes things in society by primarily using the word ‘phony’. One of the many things that Holden calls phony in the book is the world of hollywood and anything involving it, because of this he has tremendous anger for his brother D.B who is a writer in Hollywood. Furthermore Sunny, a prostitute that he meets, tells him she spends most of her time in film theaters. In addition to that the three women that he met at a bar are only interested in movies and famous actors,

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Holden’s word choice almost immediately classifies him as a young teenager without a sense of direction or discipline. Salinger expresses, “You never saw so many phonies in all your life, everybody smoking their ears off and talking about the play so that everybody could hear and know how sharp they were”(68). Through Holden’s perspective, everyone he meets is a “phony” or everything someone does depicts them “phonies”. Holden would rather be quick to judge someone so he does not carry them in his life in the attempt to distant everyone from his life. The reality of Holden’s adolescence begins to haunt him as he is in a mental institution.…

    • 915 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Catcher in the Rye is a story about a teenage boy named Holden Caulfield and has many themes. Some of them include insanity, phoniness, childhood, and sex. Throughout the story Holden criticizes people and labels them “phonies”. Ironically, in The Catcher in the Rye, Holden acts phony in many ways which one can see through his thoughts, words and actions. Because of this Holden cannot have functioning relationships with others, and it take a toll on him.…

    • 1067 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The word phony is used thirty-five times by the main character, Holden Caulfield, in The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. David D. Galloway said, “Wherever Holden turns, his craving for truth seems to be frustrated by the phoniness of the world.” Throughout the book, Holden sees phoniness around him by seeing the imperfect in the world, and he wishes to not have the “phoniness” in the world. Salinger wishes for the reader to perceive phoniness as the flaws in the world shown by the usage of phony by Holden to express his criticism of his surroundings.…

    • 1019 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Holden, the protagonist in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, is well known for his vast array of psychological problems which plague him throughout the narrative of the book. From the beginning of the story, a clear trend of Holden protecting his or someone else’s innocence is established, and this need appears to influence many of the events which unfold during the novel. He tries his hardest to avoid and obscure obscenities, perverted behavior, and phoniness. These qualities, which he associates with adulthood, are things which he wishes to escape from by preserving his and other people’s childhoods.…

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Throughout our lives, all human beings are forced to navigate from the world of our carefree simplistic childhoods to the more terrifying complex world of adulthood. For most people, this journey is fearsome and full of struggles and obstacles that they must overcome in order to venture to the other side. No matter how difficult this journey is, growing up and becoming an adult is necessary for our life experience. In the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the main character Holden Caulfield struggles with the concept of becoming an adult and leaving his childhood behind. Like most people, Holden tries to find an outlet for releasing his fears about growing up.…

    • 1472 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    All around the world, adolescent children roam the earth confused and lost between the stages of being a child and becoming an adult. The confusion and problems that every child faces is what shapes them to be the person they will become. J.D Salinger took an adolescent child’s experience and made it come to life as readers experience what the narrator of the story struggles through and how the narrator faces all the confusion of an adolescent child. In the novel A Catcher in the Rye, J.D Salinger represents adolescence as a time of uncertainty and confusion as the narrator struggles to walk the line between childhood and adulthood. Holden expresses his uncertainty about the adult world through the use of the word “phony”.…

    • 766 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “ I kept picturing myself catching him In the act, and how I’d smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam bloody” (Salinger). One one would assume this came from a violent person, a person with problems controlling their anger but no, it comes from 17 year old Holden Caulfield who just wants to be loved for once in his life. When we first meet Holden we see the dilemma that he goes through throughout the entire book. He goes on this journey, both mentally and physically, and it starts when he leaves his ‘phony” school Pencey Prep. Throughout this struggle we see Holden’s true form and how it's affected him.…

    • 659 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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.…

    • 927 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes”(Prather). Finding oneself in an era of change may lead a person down a complicated and frustrating path. Adolescents undergoing this development are faced with social standards set by older generations and often times are vulnerable to high levels mental stress. For instance, in J.D Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye, protagonist Holden Caulfield struggles with this transitional stage. The young boy’s perspective of the world around him is skewed after a series of misfortunate events, which he still has difficulty acknowledging are portrayed throughout the novel.…

    • 762 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Catcher In The Rye by J.D Salinger tells a story about a troubled teenager named, Holden Caulfield, who struggles with the fact that everyone has to change and grow up. Holden Caulfield has changed his perspectives in a few areas throughout the novel. He struggles with change, growing up, and expressing his feelings to other people. From the beginning of the novel, Holden isolates himself from society by ignoring helpful advice and holding on to his desire that everything in the world must remain unchanged. In the second chapter of the novel, Holden intentionally ignores Mr. Spencer’s advice, “life is a game, boy.…

    • 932 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Holden Caulfield Phony

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In the novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger, Holden Caulfield, the protagonist, perceives the world as corrupt and is full of “phonies” and believed that it’s not the proper surrounding to raise children in, especially when they’re still young and innocent. After the death of his brother Allie, who died when he was young and was free from the corruption of the world, Holden was influenced and felt it was his responsibility to protect his innocence and other children’s as well. He is conflicted as he is stuck between moving on from his childhood to the intimidating world of adulthood; but, realizes that he must mature whether he likes it or not. In response, he ventures out to New York where he reencounters moments of his childhood that…

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Holden Caulfield Therapy

    • 1159 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Catcher in the Rye begins with the protagonist Holden Caulfield telling the events that happened previously to him being put into a mental hospital for therapy. Although it does not directly state that Holden is in therapy until the end of the novel, if one reads between the lines they can interpret that he is in therapy within the first paragraph of the novel. As Holden begins to tell his story, he refuses to mention his early life, but he does mention that his older brother D. B. visits him mostly every weekend and is a writer. The reader can see that Holden is bitter because he believes that his older brother sold out to Hollywood, abandoning a career in profound literature for renown of the movies. Holden then tells the story of his…

    • 1159 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The never ending insecurities that build up into a ball, and roll down to crush people’s emotions, is a hard feeling to stop naturally. Many people may worry, get anxiety, or just grow a thin border of fake personality, to protect and hide their real selves, from human judgement. Holden, the sixteen year-old boy with internal struggles of the human nature, is the main character of The Catcher in the Rye; a novel written by J.D. Salinger. Holden often fights his vexation against people with fake, shallow, hypocritical, inauthentic, and superficial personalities; by criticizing them all in one word, “phony”. Someone phony often times shows their fake, thin personality, when trying to impress someone.…

    • 967 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The transition from childhood to adulthood is inevitable. It is an experience that tests teenagers to their breaking points. Most adults cherish childhood innocence, as they have experience with an onerous adulthood. At a young age, parents teach their children that the world is a perfect, Utopian society. As children mature, they realize that the once ‘perfect world’ was nothing but a false, sugar-coated take on the harsh realities of life.…

    • 906 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Adolescence is a time fraught with the dangers of loneliness. In a person’s journey through this period it is therefore important to maintain strong relationships with other people. Holden Caulfield is a teenager who lets such relationships deteriorate in J.D. Salinger 's The Catcher in the Rye. The novel follows Holden as he leaves his school, travelling through New York City alone in a depressed funk. Ultimately, Salinger uses Holden’s language to illustrate the theme that an absence of close relationships and feelings of alienation and loneliness pose a danger to adolescents.…

    • 1007 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays