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Post by The Thought Police (admin) on Dec 10, 2016 6:49:43 GMT -5
1) Holden’s view of phoniness.
Holden discusses why he left his previous school at ‘The Elkton Hills’. ‘They had this headmaster, Mr Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life… He’d be charming as hell and all. Except if some boy had funny looking parents. It makes me so depressed I go crazy’
Holden’s cynical view of the world is t first similar to that of any teenager. He despises double standards and adults who fail to meet his expectations. In particular, Holden has a hatred for the materialism and snobbery of his private education.
He tells Sally Hayes: ‘All you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to buy a goddam Cadillac.’
However, Holden’s anxieties about school seem to go far deeper than that of a healthy teenager. We discover that Holden is routinely ‘flunking’ his subjects and is asked to leave the schools he has attended. This pattern of behaviour confirms that Holden’s troubles are genuinely part of his depression. He almost begins to realise this late in the novel when he tells Sally:
‘I don’t hardly get anything out of anything. I’m in bad shape. I’m in lousy shape.’
Despite understanding or feeling as though he is going crazy, Holden is unable to see any solutions and retreats into a fantasy that he and Sally can run away together and live some form of The American Dream in a cabin in the woods. When Sally does not agree to this, Holden self-destructs further by pushing her away.
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