Catcher

In the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the protagonist and narrator of the story, Holden Caulfield is a thoughtful and sensitive sixteen year old boy, who has a history of expulsions from various prep-schools. This is mainly because of his incapability to adjust himself to the academic life and the society around him that withholds hypocrisy and phoniness. As he narrates through the novel he narrates with a tone between bitterness and cynicism. He is currently at Pencey Prep-school, a school in which Holden despises for its prevailing phoniness. “Phony” is the word Holden uses to characterize insincere or fake people. Phonies, like his fellow students are most interested in playing a part or looking good than in doing or saying anything honest. As Holden narrates the story he constantly changes the setting a lot. He goes from being at Pencey Prep-school to a hotel, to Ernie’s Bar to Central Park.

When being at Pencey prep-school, Holden is surrounded with his fellow students, he finds their attitudes to be unbearably phony. During his stay at Pencey he meets his roommate Stradlater ,a vain self-centered senior at Pencey who Holden strongly dislikes because he saw him as the quintessential phony. Stradlater often puts some sort of act in order to keep his image as a jock and to impress girls. He also meets Ackley, his next dorm neighbor, according to Holden he is an obnoxious guy who is a “terrific bore” (pg.19) and a slob in personal hygiene, as said in the book, “The whole time he roomed next to me, I never even once saw him brush his teeth.” (pg.19). Holden simply puts up with Ackley’s behavior and disgusting habits. Though Ackley is not the typical guy Holden would like him to be, they tolerate each other because they isolate themselves from the rest of the students, though this does not excuse Ackley from being a phony like the rest of them. In the book Ackley says he hates almost about everyone, but he honestly dislikes Stradlater, and leaves the room every time he shows up. When a fight between Stradlater and Holden occurred, Holden asks Ackley if he could sleep in his roommates’ bed, but Ackley does not let him. Holden feels lonesome and wish he dies. He decides to leave Pencey that night, he wakes up Woodruff, a wealthy student and sells him a typewriter for twenty dollars. Before he leaves he yells “sleep tight, ya morons!”(pg.52). Holden went to Edmond Hotel, from his room he is able to see other rooms and concludes that the hotel was “lousy with perverts.”(pg.62),he saw a man dressing up in high heels and an evening gown and he sees in another room in which a man and a woman are spitting water on each other. When Holden goes down to the Lavender Room, a nightclub in the hotel he sees that the band there is putrid and the majority of the people are old. When he attempts to order a drink,