Catcher In The Rye

When I imagine New York City, I almost always picture comfort, belonging and affluence. Especially during Christmas, I imagine relatives going home to their families and children making snow angels on the streets. Everyone just seems to fall right in place. But through Holden Caulfield's mind, New York City became distorted and hostile. I saw a fog hovering over citizen's plastered smiles. There was no concern in the eyes of the people in New York City; none for Holden or even for the ducks in Central Park.

I've never been to New York, but I've seen it through "The Catcher in the Rye". Holden's narration was my looking glass to the dark and gloomy snow globe of New York City.

There is something wrong with this picture. If New York is as terrible as Holden described, then why don't the other characters in the book feel the same way about it? Then I realized, maybe the scene inside the slow globe isn't dark and gloomy, maybe it's the glass that allows me to see the inside. Maybe the glass is really scratched from repeatedly falling or filthy because the people who touched it before didn't take care of it well. Maybe it's Holden Caulfield who has a problem, and not New York City. Maybe the entire story, and the way we understand it is twisted because the person narrating the story is twisted.

The entirety of Holden Caulfield's personality must be scrutinized first so we can understand how much he has disfigured the people and the things around him.

Holden is a disturbed teen. He's sixteen years old but he doesn't belong to any clique. He doesn't even mention anyone that became close to him, except Phoebe, his ten year-old sister. His brother, Allie, died when he was young. He's been kicked out of four boarding schools already. He continuously pretends that he's an adult by smoking often and bringing up the sexual related topics and but seems too scared to actually try what he is saying.

He is admittedly a habitual liar, even a pathological liar, probably. He even divulges that "Once I get started, I can go on for hours if I feel like it. No kidding. Hours." (page 58). This confession is the main reason why he is such an unreliable narrator. This tells the reader that every fact Holden shares may not be accurate.

His lies vary from totally incorrect statements and leaving out important details of the story to exaggerating his descriptions of people or situations.

On the train from Pennsylvania to New York, Holden meets Mrs. Morrow, a parent of his schoolmate at Pencey. When she asks for his name, Holden says "Rudolf Schmidt", their janitor's name at Pencey. He had no reason to give a different name to Mrs. Morrow. He just said that he didn't feel like giving his real name when she asked for it.

Some of Holden's stories may also be half-truths. Sometimes, he conveniently leaves out pieces of the account that do not necessarily fit into what he wants the readers to believe. He describes Phoebe as a perfectly as he could - attractive, intelligent, witty, humorous. He says that "She's very good in spelling. She's very good in all of her subjects, but she's best in spelling." Then he shares the content of Phoebe's notebook which has several errors in spelling and grammar - from failing to capitalize proper nouns such as alaskan eskimos to spelling sagitarius wrongly. Phoebe could really have been okay in her studies, but not as good as Holden makes us think. Without realizing it, Holden himself exposes to the readers that Phoebe isn't as perfect as he wants us to believe.

Lastly, Holden likes to blow things out of proportion. He describes Mrs. Antolini as someone who is sixty years older than her husband. However, there is no evidence in the story that would suggest that she is really that old. Holden liked to exaggerate things simply because he gets "a bang" out of doing it.

Because of Holden's habitual lying, he subconsciously rejects anyone and everyone around him who seems to have even the slightest concern about him. He criticizes them, calls them phonies, gets into fights with them or just simply magnifies every little flaw they have. Why then does Holden Caulfield lie? It is because he wants everything to remain constant. He never ever wants anything to change.

While reading the book, I realized that Holden felt secure in the things that were unchanging. "Certain things should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know it's impossible, but it's too bad anyway", Holden says.

Holden's lies build up to create a fabricated world of Holden's fantasy, one that he wishes to remain in. He expresses his fascination with children by being

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