Holden Caulfield's Hypocrisy
One thing I noticed while reading The Catcher in the Rye was how many contradictions Holden makes. There are so many examples of this hypocrisy throughout the book, and it slowly gets worse and worse, showing how his mental state is declining. For example, he says "boy" all the time, but when Mr. Spencer calls him "boy", he gets angry. At the beginning, he didn't say anything of the sort, but once Mr. Spencer starts getting on his nerves, he changes his narrating style and gets angrier. Another example is on page 136. He is talking about how girls say that boys have inferiority complexes, even when they don't. However, he then continues to say "he really had an inferiority complex". Even though the girl he is talking about is correct, he wants to restate it himself, and, while doing so, is hypocritical.