Catcher In The Rye Phony Essay

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J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye is a story about a young man’s fall into despair. The main character named Holden tries to find a meaningful relationship with someone but everything appears to be “phony” in his eyes. Holden’s life gets worse and worse over the course of the book as he flunks college and continues to find this meaningful and not “phony” relationship with a person.

Even though Holden has a grudge against these so called phonies, he doesn’t realize that he shares similar qualities with them. For example in the beginning of Chapter 3 he says that he is “the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life”. An example of Holden being a “terrific liar” would be in Chapter 8 when he sees Ernest’s mom on the train and he takes the persona of “Rudolph Schmidt” as soon as they begin talking while also making up claims that Ernest is extremely popular at the school and that he has to go to a brain tumor operation in New York City. In my eyes, a person that would be a “phony” would be a very fraudulent person. Holden carries that fraudulent and contradicting quality of being a “terrific liar” all throughout the story.

Holden does not have much to live for in the later events of the novel as it is hard for him to establish social connections with some of the characters in the book. Most of the characters he ends up …show more content…
Holden asks Horwitz where he ducks go during the winter and Horwitz accuses him for not using his head. Both the ducks and fish share this pond the two are discussing but only the ducks are able to leave from the pond. This is a metaphor for life being that game because some are able to get out of the place like the ducks during hard times and the others end up being stuck down there and cannot do anything about it just like the fish in the frozen

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