Holden Caulfield's Intentions

Mother Theresa said, "do not judge people, for you will have no time to love them".

One of the most important themes in "The Catcher in the Rye", is the tendency people have to judge one another. The narrator, Holden Caulfield, is not only judgmental of the people he meets, but of society as a whole. Throughout his experiences, he criticizes the phoniness and shallowness that he encounters in the world around him. One sees, that while Holden spends much of his time judging the actions and intentions of others, he never recognizes his own faults.

Throughout the novel, Holden runs into both old and new faces. He almost instantly begins to criticize them, never taking the time to think about their true intentions. An example of this is seen