- Position‹5 of 5
- The Catcher in the Rye is about morality
- Argument
Everyone is a phony
Holden Caulfield is disgusted with the fakeness of society.
The argument
Throughout The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield shares his disgust in other people, specifically their "phoniness." The term is the key to reading the novel as a moral book, because Holden's definition is itself a moral one: to Holden, a phony is someone who does not show real emotion to try to fit into society. What he objects to is not stupidity or unkindness but insincerity, the substitution of a performance for a person, which makes his contempt a judgement about honesty rather than about taste. Repeatedly he accuses others of being phony, including his older brother. Holden's older brother, D.B., is in the film business in Hollywood, which automatically turns him into a phony. That the charge extends to his own family shows how uncompromising the standard is, since Holden applies it without exemption for affection, and the cost of that rigour falls on him as much as on anyone. Movies anger him, and he claims that the actors never act like people, an objection to the whole business of simulating feeling for an audience, which is what he takes the adult social world to consist of. Holden continuously struggles to find morality in the world around him, believing himself to be surrounded by superficial people. He believes himself to be one of the only "real" people remaining, causing him to feel isolated and lonely, and the isolation follows directly from the standard he holds: a person who can find no one honest has no one to be close to. As Holden matures, he struggles to maintain his morals in a society that encourages him not to, and that struggle is the book's central conflict.
Premises
Counter-arguments
By calling other phonies, Holden is being a hypocrite. He criticizes others for being fake, yet he repeatedly lies. He first refers to himself as a "sex maniac", but later admits he is a virgin. Additionally, he claims to be "the most terrific liar he had met." Despite trying to set himself apart, Holden is still a phony since he pretends to be a person who he isn't.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P2] Holden himself is a phony.