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.


Comments

  1. LaraFebruary 19, 2021 at 4:47 PM

    I definitely agree with you that Holden is very hypocritical. I actually did my blog post on this topic too and you found some examples I didn't think of. I didn't take into consideration how his mental state is declining throughout the book and how that might have made an impact on his hypocrisy as well. While Holden was hypocritical throughout the entire book, many of the hypocritical moments that stood out to me were in the latter half of the story. It's interesting to see how his hypocrisy intensifies through the book and how he is seemingly oblivious to it the entire time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Adit's BolgFebruary 24, 2021 at 8:04 PM

    Just like we discussed in class, Holden is a huge hypocrite. I like your incorporation of his mental state as a means to explain his behavior a little bit, something that I didn't think about. The angrier narrative style is also a very good point. Nice work!

    ReplyDelete
  3. RowanMarch 10, 2021 at 8:01 AM

    I really like the examples you use of Holden being hypocritical, and kind of in an almost funny way. I think my main question would be whether Holden is a uniquely hypocritical character or just hypocritical in the way that all people sort of are. I'm definitely leaning towards the first one but I'm not totally sure.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jason's Coming of Age

     I know this is a broad topic, but I thought it was important to address Jason's broad coming of age in this book, and, more specifically, the ways in which we can tell. His behavior changes a lot from the beginning to the end. At the beginning, we can tell that he is uncomfortable, immature and scared to speak up, even when other people are hurting him. However, he goes through many growth experiences throughout the book that open his eyes, the most notable of which being his interactions with Eva. She points out many interesting things to him that he hadn't noticed before, and kind of exposes all of these things that Jason has been keeping locked up inside of himself (like his stammer and the "hairy barbarians").      One of the biggest changes we notice in Jason is the fact that he stops using the word "gay" to describe things, and even sometimes uses words that he would have described as "gay" before (like "beautiful" when he'...
Read more

Triggering the Atonists

     Mumbo Jumbo. A phrase we have all heard throughout our lives to describe gibberish, nonsense, and the ridiculous. As a extremely stigmatized term, I wonder: why would Ishmael Reed use it to name his novel?  In fact, for someone who seems to be trying to destigmatize a lot of the things in his book, why would he seemingly make his novel so much more confusing for readers who have probably never heard these terms before?     I think the answer has been right in front of us the whole time: he's trying to weed out the atonists. Now, hear me out. In the context of the novel, a possible explanation is that the atonists are purposefully trying to delegitimize the book by adding in typos, making it seem more confusing, etc. But let's take it outside of that context for a second. What is Reed's actual reason for making everything so confusing? I think it's to both weed out and anger the atonists, the enemy. What would be an atonists worst nightmare? A nove...
Read more

Oswald and Ruby, Ruby and Oswald

 When we started reading the part of Libra  on Jack Ruby, something immediately stood out to me: the eerie similarity between Ruby and Lee. They're obviously different in a lot of ways (Ruby is trying to take out loans from the mafia, whereas Lee is advocating for communism and the advancement of communist ideals in the United States).  The similarity, however, lies in their personalities and the way in which they are viewed by the world. They are both guys with really bold ideas who think they are important in the grand scheme of things, but with huge insecurities. Everyone else around them views them as a joke, and the serious actions they take (Lee going to the Soviet Union or Ruby beating the guy up) aren't really seen as that important. No one thinks they are actually a danger or at risk of really acting on their words, which is really interesting when you think about what they both end up doing. Obviously, Oswald ends up assassinating John F Kennedy and Ruby ends up...
Read more