Since the novel is satire, Salinger's focus is more on the
society as phony rather than the individual. Of course Holden is a phony, but it is
only because he is a victim of the phony culture.
On the
phony scale, though, Holden is pretty low: he is materialistic and obsessed with sex.
But, he's tame compared to Stradlater, for instance. Here are the major
phonies:
1. Glad-handing adults
(headmaster)
2. Over-sexed teens
(Stradlater)
3. Pretentious snobs
(Luce)
4. Celebrity-obsessed girls (in Lavender
room)
5. Materialistic artists
(D.B.)
Now that he is given a choice as a young adult,
Holden is deciding whether or not to drop out of the phony culture. He doesn't know if
he is courageous enough to live as a non-phony for the rest of his
life.
Holden fears being a hypocrite, or a phony. He wants
to live a quiet life surrounded by books instead of people and money, but he's afraid
that he'll be the "wrong kind of monk," a "stupid
bastard."
Later, on his run-away journey in the city,
Holden sees two nuns and their dilapidated suitcases. The nuns also are symbols of
holiness, and their suitcases are symbols of modesty, humility, and anti-materialism.
Holden likes the way they look and the way they "never [go] anywhere swanky for lunch."
As such, nuns are some of the few non-phonies in the entire
novel.
All this is echoed near the end of the novel when
Holden gets advice from Mr. Antolini, an Italian and--like Mercutio and the nuns--likely
a Catholic. He says Holden is “in for a terrible
fall”:
"The
mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of
the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for
one."
Was Mercutio a noble
man? Are the nuns noble? Would Holden be noble if he becomes Catholic? Or joins a
monastery? What is Holden's noble cause?
Holden could end
up like Mercutio or the nuns. He could die for a noble cause, like Mercutio and James
Castle, both of whom committed suicide. Or, he would live humbly for one, like the
nuns.
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