Monday, May 13, 2013

Who's the phony -- Holden or the World?



Throughout the book, Holden’s main complaint is the phoniness of the adult world. This theme resonates through Chapter 17, in which he takes his ex-girlfriend Sally Hayes out on a date. In Chapter 9, Holden had complained about how phony he found Sally to be but he decided to go out with her any way. As he waits for Sally at the Biltmore hotel, he notices girls lounging around waiting for their dates and finds it depressing as he muses about the artificial and phony lives that lay ahead of them. When Sally arrives, he is pleased to see her, much to his own surprise, as he did not fancy her. Inside he is thinking, “Oh puh-lease, why am I so pleased to see her?” He does mess around with her in the cab, as he was acting “super seductive and all.”


He found the actors in the play phony because he felt they were too good at what they were doing--- too good to be believable and too full of themselves. At the intermission, he is irritated by the artificial conversation people around him were having about the play.  Also, when Sally begins insisting that she knew someone she saw,  he taunts her by saying that she should go give him a kiss. He is nauseated by the encounter between Sally and her old acquaintance. He even found Sally’s reason to go ice-skating after the theater phony. He knew that she was merely going there to wear revealing clothes, not because she loved skating.
      In this chapter, Holden even seems to admit that he is crazy. He acknowledges the fact that he is giving us, the readers, a rather haphazard account of his life. His tone seems to convey, “I know something is wrong with me, and yet I seem to be proud of it.” Holden seems to pride himself on his view of the world. He finds reality horribly phony and wants to escape to an alternate dimension where no one puts on an “act,” and phoniness is not a part of reality. He is proud of his own conception of reality. 
The old saying goes, Pride leads to the fall.
So my questions are…
1.     Is Holden’s pride justified, or is he too obstinate to accept reality for what it is?
2.     Is  it Holden’s pride that gets him into trouble?
Explain/Justify your answers.
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousMay 17, 2013 at 8:13 AM

    This was a very well done analysis of the chapter Vidya. I do not necessarily believe that Holden is obstinate. I think he is simply bothered by the adult world. I believe that he fears what is coming, but he is powerless to stop it. It is like the feeling before one gets a shot at the doctor, or the feeling before one gets spanked by an angry father. He thinks that he is the only one that sees the adult world for what it really is. Therefore, he is proud to know the truth. It is not his pride, rather his continuous rebellious attitude towards growing up that gets him in trouble.

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  2. AnonymousMay 18, 2013 at 12:25 PM

    Vidya I especially like that you related the old saying "pride leads to the fall" to Holden and your analysis of the chapter is thorough and well done. I agree with most of your points too, yet I think that Holden may not be as proud to be crazy as it may seem. Holden is an unreliable narrator and often his actions and internal feelings are conflicting, and considering Holden has lots of internal issues occurring, maybe he only boasts he is crazy to mask the fact that he resents that he is crazy. Perhaps he only shows pride on the outside to mask his embarrassment or shame on the inside.

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