Catcher in the Rye

Holden Caulfield’s Erratic Personality

In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, appears to have an erratic personality and is irrational in his thought and logic. One way in which Holden appears to be irrational is his classification of people as “phonies.” Holden refers to anyone as phony if he believes he or she is fake or hypocritical. Although Holden does not admit it, he is a phony himself in many ways due to his hypocritical nature and tendency to fabricate lies. Another aspect of Holden’s character that contributes to his erratic personality is his immaturity. Holden’s immaturity can be attributed to his inability to become intimate with a woman and his fear of becoming an adult. Also, throughout the novel Holden is resistant of and fearful of what change might bring. Holden would rather remain a child than lose his innocence and become associated with the phoniness of adulthood. Holden’s erratic personality and desire for isolation stem from his hypocrisy, immaturity, and fear of change.

Holden Caulfied is a hypocrite. Throughout the novel “Holden uses the word phony or some derivative of it at least 44 times” (Corbett 105). Although the exact definition of phony is not specified in the novel, “phoniness is the generic term that Holden uses to cover all manifestations of cant, hypocrisy, and speciosity” (Corbett 105). In many ways Holden fits this exact definition of phoniness. One reason for his phoniness is that he is a compulsive liar. For

Rosen 2

example, when Holden was riding the train to New York, he winds up sitting next to his classmate Ernest Morrow’s mother. Even though Holden thinks of Ernest as “the biggest bastard that ever went to Pencey, in the whole crumby history of the school,” he lies to Mrs. Morrow about how popular Ernest is and that he would have been voted class president, but was too modest to accept the nomination (Salinger 54). Holden continues with the ridiculous lies about how...