Is Holden a Good Friend in The Catcher in the Rye?

Is Holden A Good Friend? Holden Caulfield is the main character in the novel, “The Catcher In The Rye.” He lies often, judges everyone and thinks they are all phony. He has no direction and is always very negative on everything. There are many reasons I would not be able to be friends with Holden Caufield. “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 asks where I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible.”(Salinger 16) Holden even admits it himself, on page 16, he is an awful liar. One of the key essentials of friendship is trust. Obviously, he lacks the ability to tell the truth. So it would be hard for me to trust him to tell the truth Another thing I did not like that Holden said is, “What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out of the window. I probably would’ve done it too, if I’d been sure somebody would’ve cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn’t want a bunch of rubber necks looking at me when I was all gory.”(Salinger 104) Holden has a very negative outlook on life and could be very depressed and lost. I would not want to be friends with someone who wants to kill himself. I would not be able to handle the stress of all their problems. One more quote from Holden that I did not like is, “Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.”(Salinger 155) That is very disrespectful. It does not even make sense because, true, nobody wants flowers when dead, but only because they are dead. People only do that out of respect and decency. Once again, he is also very negative. Everything he says is negative. These reasons are just a few examples of how Holden