Escape from the truth In 1950 J.D. Salenger captures one of society’s tragedies, the breakdown of a teenager, when he wrote The Catcher In The Rye. Holden Caulfield, a fickle “man” is not even a man at all. His unnecessary urge to lie to avoid confrontation defeats manhood. Holden has not matured and is unable to deal with the responsibility of living on his owe. He childishly uses a hunter’s hat to disguise him self from others. The truth of his life is sad and soon leads to his being institutionalized. He tries to escape the truth with his criticisms. Knowing he will never meet his parents’ expectations, his only true friend is his eight-year-old sister Phoebe, to whom Holden tells that he really wants to be ‘the catcher in the rye”. Holden admits his only truth and shows that Phoebe is his only friend. Another form of escape for Holden is his acting, which he uses to excuse the past. Holden has tried to lie, hide, and blame his way through life; when he finds that it is not the answer he collapses. Holden is a pathological liar. He lies, some times for no reason. Holden says his name is Rudolf Schmidt, who is acutely the janitor, to Mrs. Morrow on the train. He continues to lie throughout the conversation and avoids getting together by saying he has a tumor in his brain. This is the type of lies Holden tells. One reason for this might be that he is trying to hide his true identity. He does not want people to know who he really is or that he was kicked out of his fourth school. Holden is always using fake names and tries speaking in a tone to persuade someone to think a cretin way. He does this when he talks to women. While he is talking to the psychiatrist he explains peoples reactions to his lies like they really believe him, when it is very possible that he is a horrible liar and they are looking at him with a “what are you talking a bout?” expression. Holden often lies to the point where he is lying to him self. To Holden ever one is a “phony”, and every one has a problem that he feels he needs to exploit. While Holden is speaking to the psychiatrist, he criticizes each person as he meets them in his story.
Again, this is one of the few people that Holden likes and doesn’t consider a phony like everyone else. He talks highly of her and he sees himself in her in the way that she alternates between behaving like an adult and behaving like a child, the way he says he also does. It bothered him greatly when she asks him if he “got the ax again,” referring to his expulsion. She starts asking him questions about his future and what he likes (if he likes anything at all) and it forces him to wake up. Everyone has been telling Holden to realize his situation and put more effort into schoolwork and relationships and to start caring. Holden’s reality is very simple: he wants to be the catcher in the rye to protect children’s innocence and stop them from growing up because all adults are phonies. Again and again, being told that that isn’t plausible annoys him. He feels betrayed, when his own sister, someone who he thought would understand him, joins everyone else in telling him to put forth more
In the novel Holden is what you would call an unreliable narrator. The definition of unreliable is - a person or thing that cannot be counted on or trusted. You cannot trust Holden if you know that he lies all the time. Since the reader knows that he is a habitual liar you may never know the difference from when he is telling the truth or when he is telling another one of his stories. Holden goes in and out of mental lapses throughout the novel that affected his mind and psychological state greatly.
The Catcher in the Rye The world around us can be very strange at times. From space it resembles a nice round blueberry, perfectly happy and content with itself without a care in the universe. But, if you take a closer look you will see poverty, famine, war, and peace all set atop one big huge chunk of liquid hot magma floating around, spinning endlessly in space. It could be said that the world is a very uncontrollable and unstable place.
One of the most depressing and misleading characters to appear in American literature is Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye. Throughout the entire book, Holden goes on a journey trying to escape adulthood and protect innocence. He tells himself that there are phonies in the grown up world. These people who Holden despises hide behind a mask and wear fake smiles. It is that idea that keeps Holden stuck in between two worlds, adult’s cold, hard reality and a children’s fantasy. However, it is his actions, his language, and his habits of mind that causes him to provide a perfect example of the very phony he hates. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, illustrates a hypocritical narrator who embodies everything
Due to past happenings, Holden can no longer be considered mentally stable. The reader can come to this conclusion when Holden explains the events that took place in his past; he says, “…they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage” (Salinger 39). The obstacles that Holden faced in the past cause him to react differently from others and, in some cases, exaggerate more than usual when encountering particular circumstances. For example, when Holden spends the night in the home of one of his previous teachers, he is awakened by his teacher standing near him and admiring him. Holden explains, “I know more damn perverts than anybody you ever met, and they’re always being perverty when I’m around” (Salinger 192). Knowing that Holden has experienced troubles in the past that cause him to be very defensive, the reader cannot be sure whether Holden is being reasonable or over exaggerative. Because of this, Holden cannot be seen as a reliable
Holden's problems in the real world were too much for him, he had to make up things to make himself seem better than what he was.
Superficially the story of a young man getting expelled from another school, the Catcher in the Rye is, in fact, a perceptive study of one individual’s understanding of his human condition. Holden Caulfield, a teenager growing up in 1950’s, New York, has been expelled from school for poor achievement once again. In an attempt to deal with this he leaves school a few days prior to the end of term, and goes to New York to take a vacation before returning to his parents’ inevitable irritation. Told as a monologue, the book describe Holden’s thoughts and activities over these few days, during which he describes a developing nervous breakdown. This was evident by his bouts of unexplained depression, impetuous spending and generally odd, erratic behavior, prior to his eventual nervous collapse.
He describes himself as, “the most terrific liar you ever saw,” (16). He talks about how often he lies, and how he does it even in the most unnecessary situations. Heroism requires honesty, and Holden lies constantly. He has prominent traits of an anti-hero. When Holden is on his way to see Phoebe, he has to lie to the elevator boy by saying, ‘“I’m supposed to wait for them. I’m their nephew’...It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to,” (158). He lies to practically everyone, including strangers like the elevator boy. Holden has obviously had previous experience with lying, and it comes easy to
This proves that Holden finds “phoniness” repulsive and that it sickens him. Even though Holden has no tolerance for “phoniness”, he often shows it himself. Holden says he “shoots the bull” quite often. Furthermore, he rarely tells people what he really thinks when they ask him about something. Lying comes naturally to Holden, and he enjoys it as shown when he is talking to the woman on the bus and says, “Then I really started chucking the old crap around. ‘Did he tell you about the elections?’ I asked her. ‘The class elections?’ She shook her head. I had her in a trance, like. I really did.” (Salinger, 56). Later on, Holden states that he could lie for hours if he felt like it. Those who lie often, easily and enjoy it cannot be honest people. Therefore, even people who dislike being two-faced and being “phony” can easily show it themselves. This is most apparent in peoples personalities at home with their family, compared to how they act with different groups of friends at school. Since moving last year, I have realized this myself while meeting new people at school. I had made a new friend who seemed like a decent person, although soon enough it became more fun to laugh
In the novel, Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is an example of a prosaic rich adolescent boy,with a pedestrian set of problems, but a psychoanalysis reveals that Holden has a plethora of atypical internal conflicts. Internal conflicts that other students at Pencey, such as Stradlater and Ackley, would not normally experience.
J.D. Salinger’s, The Catcher in the Rye successful in many respects, from its popularity among adolescent readers, to its 29 weeks spent on the New York Times Bestseller List. One part of The Catcher in the Rye that was not successful is its main character, Holden Caulfield. Holden mentions at a certain point in the novel that he aspires to be a “Catcher in the Rye”. Whether he achieved his goal is controversial amongst many readers. I believe that in the end, Holden was not successful in becoming, the “Catcher in the Rye” because he cannot change the the lives of others by protecting their innocence.
After reading chapters 1-11 of The Catcher in the Rye, it is clear that Holden is not a reliable narrator because he lies and his actions don’t correlate with what he says . At the beginning of the story, Holden admitted to being, “the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life” (Salinger 19). Which makes him lose credibility because he admitted to being a liar and later on in the story he lies to people multiple times about his name and other personal information. In the book, Holden also mentions multiple times that, “[he] felt [very] lonesome” (Salinger 54). Since Holden felt lonely he could be exaggerating on his stories to get attention from people or to manipulate how they feel about him. Holden is always saying how things are phony
Holden’s carelessness about life displays his overall difficulty taking position among the norm. Holden states “I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody
Holden would tell people lies just so they could not become closer to the real Holden. Holden tells lies on numerous occasions to gain. Holden pathetically tells Mrs. Morrow, "I have to have a tiny operation. it isn't very serious. " I have this tiny little tumor on my brain" (58).
Holden’s lies and imagination in the last third of the novel are less extreme than previously. Previously Holden’s lies were focused on the people around him and he did not actually believe them. However, as the novel progresses, Holden begins to lie to himself about the present, past, and future in order to cope with the disarray his life is falling into. Holden wishes to escape his life and attempts to create plausible plans to run away. When on his date with Sally Hayes, Holden offers to take her with him; “‘what we could do is, tomorrow morning we could drive up to Massachusetts and Vermont, and all there, see’” (Salinger 146). This idea is entirely ridiculous as Holden is only sixteen and does not have the means to carry out this plan.