Examples Of Phoniness In Catcher In The Rye

In J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, the main character's favorite concept is phoniness. He spend a lot of his time talking about people and how they are fake. What Holden does not realize that he is just as phony as the people he talks about. J.D. Salinger uses the character of Holden to express The Catcher in the Rye's theme of phoniness.
In the novel, Holden does not want to grow up. His main reason for this is that he believes that all adults are phony. One of the main reasons that Holden says he left Elkton Hills, a school that he went to, was because of all the phonies, the worst of them being the head master. "They had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. Ten times worse than old Thurmer.
One of the first was Stradlater, his roommate. "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," (28). Because Holden thinks that Stradlater is pretending to be something that he is not, Holden labels him as a phony. Another main person who Holden labels as a phony is Sally Hayes, who he has known for a while. When he takes her on a date, he becomes annoyed with her when she talks to another guy. "Then all of a sudden, she saw some jerk she knew on the other side of the lobby. Some guy in one of those very dark gray flannel suits and one of those checkered vests. Strictly Ivy League. Big deal. […] Finally, though, the jerk noticed her and came over and said hello. You should've seen the way they said hello. You'd have thought they hadn't seen each other in twenty years. […] The funny part was, they probably met each other just once, at some phony party," (137). It is easy to see from the way that he talks that he is annoyed with the phoniness of the two's
One example of this is that throughout the novel, Holden states that he does not want to grow up, but when he is on his own it seems as if he is doing everything he can to seem older, from going to different bars and drinking to even paying for a prostitute to come to his room. Another phony thing about Holden is his pointless deceptions and how he is a compulsive liar. An example of this is on the train when he is talking to Mrs. Marrow. "She had a terrifically nice smile. She really did. Most people have hardly any smile at all, or a lousy one. 'Ernest's father and I sometimes worry about him,' she said. 'We sometimes feel he's not a terribly good mixer.' 'How do you mean?' 'Well. He's a very sensitive boy. He's really never been a terribly good mixer with other boys. Perhaps he takes things a little more seriously than he should at his