The inciting incident of the book Catcher in the Rye is Holden Caufield flunking out of his prep school for the fourth time. From the beginning, it is obvious that Holden's poor performance in school is deliberate; despite the excuses that he gives to his teachers, he often reads educational books, and is also very good at writing, at odds to his poor performance in History. Despite writing a terrible essay for Mr. Spencer (which is part of the reason he is being kicked out of Pencey), he is able to come up with a thoughtful composition for Stradlater (which he wouldn't receive any credit on). He does poorly in school because he only wants to learn things for the sake of learning-- he doesn't want to learn it for 'phony' reasons like recognition from teachers or having good grades. Holden only displays his knowledge when it won't bring him any sort of recognition or praise so that he can make sure that he is staying true to his ideals.
Holden sees doing work to get good grades in school as the same thing as performing the piano for a cheering audience. When he explains why he isn't failing English, he says "I didn't have to do any work in English at all hardly, except write compositions once in a while." Although this statement heavily obscures Holden's inner monologue for Mr. Spencer's benefit, it shows that he doesn't consider reading the books for the semester as doing work to get good grades; he reads the books because he likes them. He discusses Romeo and Juliet with the nuns he meets, because they are asking him out of genuine curiosity about his thoughts on the subject, and not because they want to grade him.
While Holden deliberately flunks the final paper about Egyptians in Mr. Spencer's class (he claims that he "can't seem to get very interested in [the Egyptians]" (page 17)). In direct contrast. he tells the kids he meets in the museum that Egyptians were "very interesting" (page 263), and tells them that they should know about them. Holden doesn't receive any sort of recognition for this display of knowledge; in fact, the kids quickly grow bored and leave, which Holden is unbothered about. He doesn't feel like he displayed this knowledge just to be praised or rewarded, but for 'pure' reasons, like educating a little kid.
Throughout the book, a shadow over Holden is the fear that he's only doing things for attention or praise, making him a 'phony'. He worries, especially close to the end of the book, if he would even be able to tell if he was being phony. When Phoebe asks Holden if he would like to become a lawyer, he responds with "Even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save those guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was to be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back". In this part, Holden shows that he can't think of a way to grow older without being at risk of being phony. Even if he wanted to save people, he wouldn't be able to do that without being congratulated, which makes him not want to even try save people. In a way, Holden's grades are his way of assuring himself that he isn't phony. He knows that he's clever, and seeing the bad grades proves that to himself that he doesn't care about other people's opinions or praises of himself.
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ReplyDeleteI agree, part of Holden’s resistance to accept the coming-of-age process is because he fears he will fall into the “phony trap.” The other characters his age who are in the coming-of-age stage (like Sally Hayes, Stradlater, and even Sunny), have seemed to grow up and become more phony in Holden’s eyes, which I think influences his resistance as well. In a way, he’s kind of phony on the outside to others despite his inner thoughts. Maybe this is why he wants to be the catcher in the rye--even though he’s not able to completely escape the possibility of becoming phony, he can still help the kids stay within a pure state for as long as they can. I really liked your post!
ReplyDeleteIt does seem like Classic Holden that he writes such a "real" and heartfelt essay for Stradlater--which would presumably be graded as *Stradlater's* work, long after Holden has left the school. And he presumably has already completed this same assignment--Stradlater talks as if they have the same teacher, who knows they're roommates, so Holden needs to "put the commas in the wrong places" so his writing looks like Stradlater's. We never hear about what Holden wrote about *for actual credit in the class*--presumably he just cranked something out without a lot of effort, which is how he describes his general performance in English at Pencey (he'd "already done" all that stuff at his prior school). We get the impression that he would specifically REFUSE to write something meaningful and real "for school," but perversely, he's fine with putting heart and soul into this deeply personal essay for a guy he doesn't particularly respect or admire.
ReplyDeleteIt's one of the first glimpses of Holden's odd self-destructive streak, and good evidence for the idea that he likes to see himself as *rejecting* school, not simply "failing" at it. He "proves something" about how phony and pointless the whole school is when he can't deign to complete any of their phony assignments.
What Holden deems phony seems a bit weird at times, for me at least. Like, having the intention that you're helping out someone as a lawyer because you want to wouldn't be phony, but stating that that's the reason would probably be phony. I also think that Holden massively overthinks things when it comes to phoniness, to the point that if something is phony it makes him think about it a lot and comment on it repeatedly in his inner narrative. At the same time, though, if Holden isn't thinking about phoniness and does something that he might normally deem phony, he hardly even notices it.
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