Catcher In The Rye Holden's Downfall Analysis

Phoniness was Holden’s Downfall

Holden Caulfield sees life and the entire world as a struggle between the artificial things and those that are authentic. His main pasttime is to detect phoniness in other people’s lives and to harshly critisize it, as well. And, although he loves the purity and innocence that childhood brings with it, and hates the artificiality of the adult world, he is, troughout the story of “The Catcher in the Rye“, gradually forced into it, due to his surroundings as well as himself. Sanford Pinsker described the book as beinga “mixture of bright talk and brittle manners, religious quest and nervous breakdown, [which] captured not only the perennial confusions of adolescence, but also the spiritual discomforts of an entire age.” His quest for phoniness is successful, yet the
realisations it brings with it ultimately lead to his downfall.
To understand the novel’s setting and some of the character’s motifs, one must have an understanding of the time in which it is set, which is the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. After the 1930’s, the economy improved greatly. There came a huge financial influx with World War II, plus the financial programs of the new president Franklin D Roosevelt, helped the US finally get over the Great Depression. In the following years, the 1940’s and 1950’s, politics of the country became more conservative (which is the time-setting of the novel). During the years of America’s involvement in WWII, between 1941 and 1945, the average weekly earnings of an american had almost doubled. During this time, women also contributed to the economy, since they had to take over some of the jobs while the men were fighting overseas. This was an important step towards the emancipation of women. Other women returned to their position as a housewife when the troops came home, enabling enough jobs to be free for the men to return to. In early 1950 there was also the whole McCarthy fiaso for Americans
to deal with. He was trying to prove that there were many known communists working in the Department of State and started a quest that was similar to the witch hunts in Salem. Since the communists now became scapegoats for everything, and most US citizens were on the lookout for communists among them, these years were called “the age of suspicion“. Many people were fired and even blacklisted, ruining their careers. Also, the GI Bill of Rights was developed. It was designed to give the men who had now returned how financial and educational backing. Suddenly many thousands of americans could attend college, though normally they wouldn’t have had the money to pay for it. Soon after, however, inflation took over. This could double prices in less than a month, making life for people with a fixed income hard, especially as it also affected rent and food, general necessitites.

Holden’s family, however, seem to have no financial problems: they live in an expensive New York City flat, and Holden’s father works as an attorney, though Holden does not seem to think highly of this position, since he says that all lawyers do is “make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot.” (pg. 151). One can see that Mr. Caulfields financial situation is quite good. Even in the very first chapter, Holden notices that the Spencer’s don’t have a maid, realizing they open the doors themselves, mentioning that: “They didn’t have too much dough“ (pg. 24). Also, Holden has switched private schools, with no mention of the money that this is costing, plus they have a maid that lives with them in their household. Hence, the reader hears the opinion of an upper-middle class boy.

Holden addresses the reader from a mental institute in California. The story is like one long flashback. He starts out at Pencey Prep, a private school in Pennsylvania. Holden has been expelled, and goes to say goodbye to his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, since he is told not to return to school after christmas break. After being lectured by his old teacher he decides to go back to his dorm, yet after some fights with a fellow student, Holden decides to leave the school and go to a hotel in New York City instead, until he is due to arrive home for Christmas. In New York, Holden has a few encounters with some women, yet none are successful, so he finally opts to order a prostitute instead. At the very last minute however he changes his mind, paying the girl to leave instead. Unfortunately for him, he gets beaten up by her pimp later that night because he didn’t give the prostitute enough money – his second fight lost in that night. The next day he sets up a date with Sally Hayes, a girl he had already been on a date with once, for later that day. Before then he has various random encounter throughout the day: He meets two nuns at first, with whom he discusses Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet“. He also overhears a little boy singing “If a body catch a body coming through the rye“, which strangely enough lightens his mood. When he meets up with Sally, he realizes she may be attractive, but she is also “phony“, a trait Holden utterly despises, yet still spends the evening with her. Their night comes to an abrupt halt when Holden tries to discuss serious matters, ending in his suggestion that they run away together. Holden spends the rest of the night alone, watching a movie and getting very drunk. He finally heads home to see his 10 year old sister, Phoebe, whom he is very close with. Holden also has an older brother, D.B., whom he used to look up to for writing great short stories, yet now ne thinks he has “sold out“ since he is a screenplay writer in Hollywood. He used to have a younger brother, too, Allie, yet he died some years ago. With Phoebe, he speaks of the catcher in the rye, and how he would like to be that person, stopping children from falling off the edge of a cliff. Since he doesn’t want his paretns to see him he leaves again that same night, and heads to an old teacher’s house. However, Holden does not stay very long, since he awakes startled that same night, finding Mr. Antolini patting his head, which disturbs him so much it causes him to leave very quickly. The next and final day of Holden’s story, he meets his sister for lunch. He tells her of his plan to move to the west of America, wanting to live as a deaf-mute so he doesn’t have to speak or listen to anyone evr again, yet she convinces him to stay. His story ends with him contently watching his sister ride a carrousel in the rain. In the very last chapter, Holden only tells his readers that he is in a mental hospital in California, nothing more. He merely says that retelling the story has made him miss everyone, even the people whom he at first considered to be “jerks“. His story begins on a Saturday and ends on the following monday. He calls what happened the “madman stuff“ (pg. 190).

Throughout the entire novel, Holden contiuosly describes people as well as things as “phony“, and how their “phoniness“ affects him. The two schools that Holden speaks of and went to, Pencey Prep and Elkton Hills, are symbols for the artificiality he so much despises, definitions for “phony“. He finds the advertisments and school mottos especially repulsing, since he thinks they are completely untrue and misleading. The Pencey school motto is: “Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men.”, which Holden finds amusing since he thinks all they boys are terrible, especially sicne someone has just stolen his winter coat and gloves. In the advertisment for the school they speak of horsemanship, yet Holden claims he has never even seen a horse close to the school at any point in time. His roommate, Stradlater, is another aspect of this school he despises, since he for him represents a major part of the student body as a whole. As good as he may superficially look on the outside, Holden finds him to be a dreadful boy on the inside. The school has a similar problem, since it looks grand and flashy from the outside, but Holden when Holden describes the boys to Phoebe he says: “You never saw so many mean guys in your life.” (pg. 111). He finds his teachers phony as well, saying that they only act like teachers in class but are completely different people in their private lives, when they converse with people who are not students, which he finds very superficial.

Two more aspects of his schools which he finds phony and thus despises are Mr. Haas, his old headmaster, and Mr. Ossenburger, an alumni. Mr. Haas, the headmaster at a school of his, Elkton Hills, was very sweet to parents who looked as though they were rich, yet other parents, that were dressed badly or were even merely overweight, he would overlook or make cruel remarks about them. Holden also found Mr. Ossenburger and his job quite phony: The wing in which Holden’s dorm is situated in is named after one of the school’s almuni, Mr. Ossenburger, who works as a mortician. Holden mocks him and this establishment since the man is full of clichees and tells corny jokes. He even finds that he cannot take fellow students seriously, though they should be on the same level as him. Stradlater, a fellow student, is as example of such. Though he is quite handsome and popuöar at the school (Holden calls him a “Year Book kind of handsome guy“), he is very arrogant, rude, slobbish and vain. Holden describes his razor with disgust, saying it is rusty and full of hair, and also mentions that his dorm room is in a state and never gets cleaned. Though on the outside he is clean, on the inside he is filthy, both literally and figuratively speaking.

This feeling of being surrounded by phoniness is what leads Holden to desparation. The first sign of Holden feeling like he is losing himself is when he goes to visit Mr. Spencer, his old history techer whom he wants to say goodbye to. He is very cold, and there is no sun out, and he feels like he might vanish whilst crossing the road. His bad feelings for the school and his resulting depression is why Holden decides to leave and go to New York City. On his train ride to New York, Holden sees a magazine filled with adventorous and romantic stories, and mentions that he also finds phony,especially since this by some people is considered art or literature. He goes so far as to say that these stories at times make him feel nauseous. Holden goes to the nightclub “Ernie’s“, once he has arrived in the city, in search for some women or at least some amusement. However, he is once again surrounded by phoniness – he finds Ernie’s bow at the end of his show, a man who he considers to have ’sold out’ just as much as his brother D.B., phony, since it is meant to look humble but most likely not really so. Also, he finds everything about Lillian Simmons phony, a woman who used to date his brother and is now dating a navy officer. He finds her artificial since it is obvious to him that she is only seaking his attention so that he will later pass on the news to his brother. Once again, he is surrounded by artificiality, and it depresses him more and more. He finally is so lonely and desperate that he decides to hire a prostitute. Later on, when Holden is sitting in his hotel room with the prostitute Sunny, he realizes he is too depressed to sleep with her, so he sends her away. This is another sign towards his downward spiral, since he has been chasing women all night long and yet decides not to go forward with it, though the situation could not be more simple. It also shows that he is a good guy with morals, since he is still a virgin and decides he would prefer not to have his first time with some random prostitute. The image of this girl also adds to his depression, since she looks almost as young as he is (she uses girlish terms such as “crum-bum“) but is leading a completely different lifestyle. She acts very childlike, which makes him feel very sad for her, and frightens him more than if he had been sent an old-lady prostitute. Another sitation that points towards Holden’s depression happens soon after he kicks out Sunny. After the fight with Maurice the pimp, which he again has lost, he speaks of suicide. He then compares himself with a figure from the Bible. He speaks of a man in the bible he likes, whom he describes as “that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones.” (pg. 75). He identifies himself with this madman, and later on, himself, ends up in a sanitarium. The next day he sets up a meeting with Sally, which is strange because she seems to be a perfect example for the phoniness which he so much despises. Sally, to Holden, is the definition of “phony“. She often describes things as being „grand“ or „lovely“, yet Holden feels as though she doesn’t really mean it. She finds it important to be seen by other important people during the intermission of the play, and greets other people she hardly knows as if she has greatly missed them. The theater, which he visits with Sally, is also something Holden hates and finds phony. He thinks it is artificial, and he considers the audience dumb for clapping and laughing at the wrong moments and for the wrong reasons. The reader very quickly realises that anything that seems authentic brings Holden great joy. The society in which Holden finds himself seems to have different values then Holden does. He rebels against it, since he finds his surroundings shallow and materialistic. This may be why Holden enjoys speaking to the nuns, since they give up any material worth to become a nun and thus seem sincere to him. When he meets to nuns, one of which used to be an english teacher, he discusses “Romeo and Juliet“ with them. He enjoys this so much that he ends up donating 10 dollars to them, a large amount for a student at that time. The record he buys for Phoebe, “Little Shirley Beans“, is another example for this – Holden finds that the singer, Estelle Fletcher, is singing the song in a way that makes him find her authentic, not overly artificial as some children’s songs are. In juxtaposition to Estelle Fletcher stands Ernie, the nightclub owner who occasionally also plays the piano for his guests entertainment, and also his own brother, D.B., who has sold himself as well as his stories to Hollywood. He compares all of this phoniness to prostitution. He also very much enjoys the authenticity of the child on the street singing the catcher in the rye song, since he is just singing for himself, not for anyone else, and quite good, as well. His joy in D.B.’s short stories are quite similar to what he feels when he sees the little boy dancing in the street. He wrote the stories just for himself, and wrote about what he thought was right, not thinking about what others may think of him. The movies and the theatre on the other hand just sadden Holden, adding on to his earlier depressions. His meeting with Sally is strange, because even though Holden hates phonies, he seems to be surrounding himself by them – the people at school, the women, the girls, and the guy Luce whom he meets for a drink. As lost as Holden is, the more sturdy his younger sister Phoebe is, so he turns to her for halt. The scene at Holden’s home, when he visits Phoebe, is really quite depressing, although their conversation is very caring. Holden is, afterall, only 16 years old. He needs to borrow money from his 10 year old sister, and then sneaks out of his parents home to go sleep at an old teachers house. Alongside all of this he is depressed and lonely, and it is also nearly Chistmas. The episode with Holden’s old teacher, Mr. Antolini, greatly disillusions and upsets him, and doesn’t help him ridden himself from any depressed feelings. He leaves his house more confused and lonely than he was before, even though it is up to the reader to decide whether the teacher was just overly caring or if he had some sexual thoughts were his motifs. When he wakes up the next day, on Monday morning, the feeling he had when he was crossing the street to Mr. Spencer’s house reoccurs – he fears he may just disappear, and this thought continues throughout the day everytime he crosses a street. He becomes so afraid that he asks his dead brother Allie for help, and he starts to sweat despite the December temperatures. The events of the last two days really seem to be taking their toll on Holden. He is in such despair that he decides to leave New York City and move far away to the west, yet his little sister manages to persuade him to stay. In the last scene of Holden’s flashback, everything seems almost perfect – he just stands there, watching his sister ride the carrousel in the rain, describing her as beautiful and innocent, and feeling very content, wishing the moment would never end. Holden spends loads of time searching for the phoniness in others, yet doesn’t detect the phoniess in himself. He lies and often makes cruel remarks about others. A good example for that would be his train ride to New York, where he speaks about one of his fello school mates to the students mother, who happens to sit next to him in the train. Though the reader knows that Holden hates this particular boy and finds him repulsive, he takes on a false identity (that of the janitors) to the mother and says only nice things about her son. Though it might make her happy at the time, what happens we she goes home and tells her son about the boy she met on the train, only to realise he was a fraud since he gave her the janitors name? This carelessness or even cruelty shows that Holden himself is far from perfect, although he seems to search for perfection in others, criticizing anything they do wrong, and only finding very few people that like up to his standars, such as his little sister Phoebe. He seems to almost be on a quest to detect phoniness in other peoples lives, and is indeed quite successful since he finds himself surrounded by it. However, this realisation leads to his feelings of loneliness and sadness, and result in his telling his story from inside a mental institution.

Pinsker, Sanford: The Catcher in the Rye: Innocence under Pressure, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY: 2001.

Salinger, J. D: The Catcher in the Rye Penguin Books, Suffolk, UK: 1994.

Tookey, Nigel: York Notes for GCSE, York Notes, London, UK: 2003.