Deception In Catcher In The Rye

Everyone has insecurities. Some are physical, which can be covered up, but others are about personality. This can cause people to hide parts of their personality, or even convince themselves that those personality traits don’t exist, resulting in loss of self. It can be confusing to be unaware of one’s true personality, and a major cause of stress. Sometimes personalities can be hidden through actions of others, too. In Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare, and The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, characters experience confusion about who they are.. Katherine’s, Holden’s, and Aristotle’s isolation highlights that self deception results in loss of
self, and consequently loss of social touch with the world.
One example of a character who deceives herself is drastically different than her character at the end of the book. She is rude, hostile, and she even threatens to hit someone over the head with a chair. She is not interested in any of the men in her town, to the annoyance of her sister Bianca, whom she hates because of the fact that her father favors her. However, once Petruchio, her husband, marries her, and subjects her to emotional abuse, she deceives herself that she should obey all of his orders, and loses her personality as a result. She becomes completely docile, thinking that he is right about everything, and he is her sole purpose of living. Her last monologue is about how women should submit to men. In her last monologue, she says, “A woman moved is like a fountain troubled” (Shakespeare 219). This is completely out of character for Katherine, for her to say that angry women are spoiled women. She has changed drastically, and lost her personality that she was known for. Katherine is a shell of her former self. She has fooled herself into thinking that Petruchio is above everyone else, and she has lost her character as a result. Additionally, Katherine becomes out of touch with the world as a result of her loss of personality. She acts strangely to strangers as a result of her loss of personality from Petruchio’s actions. Petruchio told her to believe everything he says, and she does this to a fault. When the two meet VIncentio on a path on their horses, Petruchio points out how beautiful of a young woman he is, and Katherine says, “Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet” (Shakespeare 189). This causes Vincentio to think she is very strange. She does not care that he thinks she is strange, so she effectively isolates herself from everyone except Petruchio. She is so out of touch because she is deceiving herself. If she continues to lose her personality and believe everything Petruchio says, many more people will think she is insane, resulting in her loss of touch with people in the world. Aristotle from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is another great example of self deception. Throughout the whole book, Aristotle does not know who he is as a person. This is a common problem among teenagers trying to grow up and figure themselves out, but it is a major source of stress for him. His main problem is that he cannot figure out relationships, especially his relationship with Dante. He is deceiving himself about the true nature of their relationship, and therefore deceiving himself about himself. He cannot fit in with his Mexican culture, and he does not have any friends other than Dante, so he cannot find his personality. He even writes this in his diary, multiple times. Before the school year starts, he writes, “I don’t know who I am” (Sáenz 65) and “Somehow, I’d hoped that this would be the summer that I would discover that I was alive. The world my mum and dad said was out there waiting for me. That world doesn’t exist” (Sáenz 66). A disconnect with oneself can cause one to feel dead, like personality has not come around yet. Ari’s world has not been found yet, because he does not have any sense of self and cannot live fully in the world he is in. He is tricking himself into thinking that his relationship with Dante is purely platonic, and this causes him to lose his sense of self. His isolation from others and his habit of lying to himself keeps him from forming a sense of self. However, when Aristotle realizes that he loves Dante, he stops deceiving himself and finds the answers to the universe, and finds himself. His parents had to push him to realize his feelings, but when he realized them, suddenly everything snapped into place. He realized he had been hiding a part of him, and that caused him to lose his sense of self and his social life. After he kisses Dante, he tells us, “This is what was wrong with me. All this time I’d been trying to figure out the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been so close and yet I had always fought them without knowing it.” (Sáenz 358). He had been so confused about himself throughout the whole book, not knowing who he was, but Dante helped unlock the secrets. Once he stopped tricking himself, he realized a lot about the world and himself. Likewise, Holden deceives himself that he adulthood is terrible and to be avoided, and it causes him to sink into depression and lose touch with the world.
Holden spends much of The Catcher in the Rye wandering around New York City, not knowing who he is or how to connect with others. He is lonely and desperate for contact with the world, but he does not know how to get it because he is so hung up on protecting children from the void of adulthood. He feels like he has not got any friends. However, he can always talk to his younger sister, Phoebe. One of the reasons he likes Phoebe so much is that she is a child, and he loves children. He loves how innocent they are because he is obsessed with youth because he hates adulthood. He cannot talk to teenagers or adults, and he is out of touch with the world, but he is happy to call Phoebe, and he tells us this. He says, “I damn near gave my kid sister Phoebe a buzz, though. I certainly felt like talking to her on the phone. Somebody with sense, and all.” (Salinger 66). He is so out of contact that he thinks a child is more sensible than adults are. Holden cannot connect with the rest of the world because he believes that adulthood is horrible, and this is as a result of him deceiving
himself.
Furthermore, Holden does not understand himself and his emotions because he does not know how to connect to the world.
Holden is most likely depressed, and he admits it multiple times, but he cannot understand why he is depressed. He would probably benefit from some therapy. He lost himself because he was too obsessed with maintaining youth and fooling himself into thinking that adulthood is terrible and something to be avoided. When he is in Phoebe’s school, he says, “When I finally got off the radiator and went out to the hat-check room, I was crying and all. I don’t know why, but I was. I guess it was because I was feeling so damn depressed and lonesome.” (Salinger 153). The reader knows that Holden is depressed because of the death of his brother and his self-deception of the concept of adulthood, but he cannot realize that. Holden’s self deception regarding adulthood causes him to not be able to understand himself.
Throughout the books The Catcher in the Rye, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, and The Taming of the Shrew, characters lead themselves to believe ideas that are not true and it causes them to lose social skills and lose their sense of self. Holden, Aristotle, and Katherine all struggle with their lives because they are not true to themselves and they lie to themselves. The ideas one believes can shape who the are, and the more deceitful the ideas, the more harmful they are to the
person.