Name: Aldona

English Teacher: Anna Goldstein

Year completed: 2001

Holden HA-HA

During even the most cursory reading of Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye one cannot help but notice how often the word “phony” occurs. Teachers, schoolmates, actors, and audiences - almost all are dismissed by the novel’s hero, Holden, as “phony.” Through its broad and seemingly indiscriminate use, Holden rejects nearly everyone and everything in his world. Yet, a closer look at the text reveals that Holden’s negative judgments are in fact not capricious; the people and things he dismisses have in common a particular set of qualities. Moreover, Holden’s negativity is not total; some people are not only spared his disdain but are viewed by him with great admiration and respect. Thus, Holden ultimately emerges as a person of values, values however which are not easily reconciled with the world he encounters.

One of the many qualities dubbed “phony” by Holden is embodied by the people who fit, or strive to fit, the ideals of his society. These ambitious characters are, in Holden’s opinion, those who attend Ivy League schools, have obscenely convenient good looks, shake hands, deliver striking if somewhat strained smiles, and are essentially succeeding in the quest for what he perceives as a life undermined by superficial perfection and shallow ideals. Holden encounters with hostility quite a few of these people throughout the book. One night at a club in New York, he finds himself surrounded by this type, “On my right there was this very Joe Yale-looking guy, in a gray flannel suit and one of those flitty-looking Tattersall vests. All those Ivy League bastards look alike. My father wants me to go to Yale, or maybe Princeton, but I swear, I wouldn’t go to one of those Ivy League colleges, if I was dying, for God’s sake.” (pg.85) Holden feels that the people who try to be the ideal are forgetting what is real in life by settling for what society ordains is real. Thus, they are dismissed by Holden as phonies.

Another quality of phoniness to Holden is showing off, an act that is perpetually annoying to him. Holden believes that if someone is obviously aware of the fact that they have talent, they show-off, exploiting their repertoire and abusing the effect of their skills. This quality is frequently manifested in the book by the ever-present “hot-shot.” A person in the book who emulates this type of phoniness is Ernie, an pianist who owns a night club in New York. Holden acknowledges Ernie’s incredible talent as a pianist, but he cannot help but notice the conspicuously “show-offy” way in which his performance is executed, I’m not too sure what the name of the song was that he was playing when I came in, but whatever it was, he was really stinking it up. He was putting all these dumb, show-offy ripples in the high-notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass ...Anyway, when he was finished, and everybody was clapping their heads off,old Ernie turned around on his stool and gave this very phony, humble bow. Like as if he was a helluva humble guy, besides being a terrific piano player. It was very phony - I mean him being such a big snob and all...I don’t even think he knows any more when he’s playing right or not. (pg.84)

Holden also finds this kind of phoniness in actors. Holden hates actors and considers most of them to be bad at what they do. The ones that are any good ruin it, in his opinion, with their knowledge of that fact, “In the first place, I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do. Some of the good ones do, in a very slight way, but not in a way that’s fun to watch. And if any actor’s really good, you can always tell he knows he’s good, and that spoils it.” (pg.117) Holden says this upon buying tickets for himself and Sally Hayes to a show called I Know My Love. It starred the Lunts, two actors who, however popular, do not amuse Holden, “They acted more like they knew they were celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but they were too good...They acted a little bit the way old Ernie, down in the Village, plays the piano. If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don’t watch it, you start showing off. And then you’re not as good anymore.” (pg.126) By being aware of themselves, these people become “phony”. It makes one wonder if that makes Holden “phony”, by being so aware of everything himself. For example, he states that he is aware of his tendency to lie, “I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.” (pg.16) Lying in itself is an adequate act of phoniness. In identifying this trait in Holden’s character, Salinger is leaving him open for analysis, drawing a fine line between Holden’s own ideas of truth and the phoniness that he tries so hard not to be associated with.

Holden also ordains “phony” the people who think they are something that, in his eyes, they are not. This perhaps is the epitome of phoniness itself. A character who personifies this is Sally Hayes, a friend of Holden’s for whom he has somewhat mixed feelings. First of all, she tries to be sophisticated in terms of society’s common demand, by delighting in what is generally accepted by society as highbrow material, “ I didn’t much want to see it, but I knew old Sally, the queen of the phonies, would start drooling all over the place...She liked shows that are supposed to be very sophisticated and dry and all, with the Lunts and all. I don’t.” (pg.116-pg.117) Furthermore, Sally believes herself to be supremely intelligent and something of an intellectual, which Holden sees right through,

I used to think she was quite intelligent, in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about those things, it takes you quite awhile to find out whether they’re really stupid or not. It took me years to find out, in old Sally’s case. (pg.105)

Lastly, Sally is constantly exercising the use of “phony” words such as “grand,” and “marvelous,” which irritate Holden immensely. This quality of phoniness is expressed by countless other characters in the book, including the many authority figures Holden does not hesitate to question, such as Mr.Haas and Mr.Thurmer, two of his past school principles.
One of the few characteristics that remain free from the mark of phoniness in Holden’s critical eye, is the mentality of children. Holden admires and longs for the innocence and simplicity people experience for such a short, sweet time during the years of their childhood. Kid’s “kill” him, and he often finds them better company then the rest of the world, which can be exemplified by the way he values conversation with his little sister, Phoebe, “I certainly felt like talking to her on the phone. Somebody with sense and all.” (pg.66) He feels so strongly about this quality that he wishes that he could preserve it, and protect children from the inevitable fall that they’re riding for as they approach the cliff of adolescence; the fall from their warm childhood into the harsh and often phony adult world. This is expressed by his desire to be “the catcher in the rye,”

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all...And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch
everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. (pg.173)

Holden’s dead brother, Allie is the very definition of these qualities to Holden. When Phoebe asks Holden if there is anything he actually likes, Holden replies, “I like Allie...” When Phoebe reminds Holden that Allie is dead, Holden only feels stronger about it, ”I know he’s dead! Don’t you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can’t I? Just because sombody’s dead, you don’t just stop liking them, for God’s sake - especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that’re alive and all.” (pg.171) Allie represents this quality to such an extreme degree because he was such a beautiful person while he was alive, and he died before he could really change, experience the consequences of puberty, or become in any way “phony” to Holden. Observing the metaphor of the catcher in the rye, Allie is forever a child, preserved in the glass case of the rye field, caught before he could fall over the cliff’s edge into a world of phonies, actors, and adulthood, caught before he could change into someone without the honesty and innocence of a child.

Holden also likes the people who he considers to be real. These are the people who Holden feels are being themselves as opposed to the “phonies” who try to embody what reality should be as established by contemporary social standards. An example of this would be the nuns he meets at a sandwich bar in the train station after his departure from Pency. First of all, their appearance is something real. Holden describes one of the nuns’ physical appearance as one that obviously lacks the distracting beauty of someone like Sally Hayes, but is made genuine by her character, which radiates in her brilliant smile, “She had a pretty nice smile when she looked at you. She had a pretty big nose, and she had on those glasses with sort of iron rims that aren’t too attractive, but she had a helluva kind face.” (pg.109) Furthermore, Holden admires the nuns because they are nuns, holy and reserved in their spirituality and yet they still have the faults of humanity in them. He is surprised when the nun expresses such delight in Romeo and Juliet, “Oh, Romeo and Juliet! Lovely! Didn’t you just love it? She certainly didn’t sound much like a nun.” (pg.111) She does not lie or try to put up a shield in defense of her holiness. She is not trying to be a nun, she is not trying to be anything; she is just living. She is real. Also, unlike so many other people in his life, the nuns listen to Holden, they are interested in what he has to say. When he says that there were some parts of the play that he wasn’t particular crazy about, the english-teaching nun wants to know what he thinks, she values his opinion, even though she has just clearly stated that she loved the play. Holden admires them because of what they are doing as well. He tries to imagine other women in the nun’s place, taking up collections in front of a department store, and it just doesn’t come out the same.

It was hard to picture...My aunts’s pretty charitable...but she’s very well-dressed and all, and when she does anything charitable she’s always very well-dressed and has lipstick on
and all that crap. I couldn’t picture her doing anything for charity if she had to wear black clothes and no lipstick while she was doing it. And old Sally Hayes’s mother. Jesus Christ.
The only way she could go around with a basket collecting dough would be if everybody kissed her ass for her when they made a contribution...She’d get bored. She’d hand in her basket and go someplace swanky for lunch. That’s what I liked about those nuns. (pg.114) Holden admires the nuns for this reason, they care about what they’re doing, not about what they look like doing it. They’re beyond the selfishness, superficiality, and social standards that Holden finds so “phony,” they are real.

Lastly, Holden sympathizes with the underdog. An example of this is his sympathetic fondness towards Selma Thurmer, the headmaster at Pencey’s daughter, “She had a big nose and her nails were all bitten down and bleedy-looking and she had on those damn falsies that point all over the place, but you felt sort of sorry for her. What I liked about her, she didn’t give you a lot of horse manure about what a great guy her father was. She probably knew what a phony slob he was.” (pg.3) Holden befriends many of these characters where others probably would not, preferring them over many of the beautiful people in life. The element of pathos that these characters have makes them more interesting to Holden than the people he encounters that are living the Harvard success story. These characters have things in common with Holden that others tend to overlook or do not appreciate. For example Holden admires Richard Kinsella, a past schoolmate whose passionate digressions in oral composition class were not understood by anyone but Holden. Holden can also identify with the underdog figures on a certain level because of his own loneliness and alienation. They have been spared by phoniness in Holden’s eyes, and he considers them for the most part to be a sadder component of reality.

Holden’s harsh and sometimes hypocritical perceptions of the world around him contribute immensely to his loneliness and depression. His values are products of his hypersensitive analysis, and quickness to judge. This makes Holden’s environment somewhat black and white, a world of extremes; it is either “phony” or it is not, for Holden there is no middle ground. In order to overcome his alienation, Holden needs to tone down the intensity with which he observes people. He could make his obvious critical distance a little less distant, giving people more of a chance, and not boarding up the options so quickly and with such force. This would involve toning down some of his values, but not their total abandonment, because they are interesting and unique to a person of his age. They show a very mature and critically developed, if negative outlook on life that is necessary to a society if it is not to loose itself in superficial narcissism.