Catcher In The Rye Character Analysis Essay

Holden is a complex character in, The Catcher in the Rye. He has a lot of emotions and thoughts that give him a lot to think and talk about it. Sometimes those emotions can cause his views to be skewed and he can be quite harsh. Holden is a teenager who can take things and really blow them out of proportions. He is a critical thinker who over-analyzes everything. In, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden's feelings affect how he sees other things in the novel. The first thing that sticks out about Holden and his views is when he is riding the subway away from Pencey and a woman sits next to him and starts talking to him about the school because her son goes there. Holden knows the kid and hates him so he says nothing in particular.
"Oh, how lovely!
"I must tell Ernest we met," she said. "May I ask your name, dear?" "Rudolf Schmidt," I told her. I didn't feel like giving her my whole life history. Rudolf Schmidt was the name of the janitor of our dorm.”(Salinger 54).
Holden talks about phonies throughout the whole book. He mentions how he hates everyone who is a phony and how most people are. Holden lies about his name because he does not want to give this woman his whole life story. There is no reason to do so. He had no reason to lie, and it makes him a phony by lying. Holden is being a hypocrite by lying and calling other people phonies. He has this view on the world that does not apply to him. Holden has this view about people, but ultimately he is an example of what he preaches. Another example of Holden and his views is when he is in the washroom with Stradlater while everyone else is still at a game. Holden is explaining who Stradlater is;
"You remember I said before that Ackley was a slob in his personal habits? Well, so was Stradlater, but in a different way. Stradlater was more of a secret slob. He always looked all right, Stradlater, but for instance, you should've seen the razor he shaved himself with. It was always rusty as hell and full of lather and hairs and crap. He never cleaned it or anything. He always looked good when he was finished fixing himself up, but he was a secret slob anyway, if you knew him the way I did."(Salinger
The items themselves, in Holden’s picture of his allotted future or of New York City, are not innately repellent, and Salinger does not clothe them in Faulkner’s deliberately repellent imagery. The impression is that Holden’s outpouring of complaints is only an expression of an unrest within him, the real nature of which he knows he doesn’t know." (Finkelstein).
This states that Holden's emotional state is why he is saying all of these awful things. It expresses that Holden is angry with himself making him say things about others he does not really mean. It can explain why Holden is so critical on Stradlater and about something so