Catcher In The Rye
Catcher In The RyeThe book Catcher in the Rye tells of Holden Caulfield's insight about
life and the world around him. Holden shares many of his opinions about
people and leads the reader on a 5 day visit into his mind. Holden,
throughout the book, made other people feel inferior to his own. I can
relate to this because although I do not view people inferior to myself, I
do judge others unequally. Holden and I both have similar judgements of
people from the way they act and behave. We also share feelings about
motivation as well as lack of it. After reading this book, I came to the
conclusion that Holden and I are much more similar than I initially
believed.
Holden portrayed others to be inferior to his own kind all throughout
the book. He made several references as to how people aren't as perfect as
he was. "The reason he [Stradlater] fixed himself up to look good was
because he was madly in love with himself." (pg. 27) Holden had an
inferiority complex. He was afraid of not having any special talents or
abilities and used other methods to make him out to be a rough tough boy.
"Boy, I sat at that goddam bar till around one o'clock or so, getting drunk
as a bastard. I could hardly see straight." (pg. 150) Holden tried all he
could to fit in. He drank, cursed and criticized life in general to make it
seem he was very knowing of these habits. I myself have found me doing this
at times, also. I, at times, feel the need to fit in to a group and do
things similar to what others do in order to gain acceptance by them. I
smoked a cigar once with two friends of mine because they kept going on and
on about how great cigars were, but that was only once. Holden and I both
place people on levels other than our own for amount of knowledge and
likeness to ourselves.
Holden used the term 'phonies' to describe more than a few people in
this book. He used the term to be what a person is if they don't act
naturally and follow other people's manners and grace. Holden didn't like
phonies, he thought of them as if they were trying to show off. He didn't
like it when they showed off because it seemed so fake and unnatural every
time they would do so.
"At the end of the first act we went out with all
the other jerks for a cigarette. What a deal that
was. You never saw so many phonies in all your life,
everybody smoking their ears off and talking about
the play so that everybody...
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