Finally Finished The Catcher in the Rye !!!!

This week's reading response is going to be devoted to the hilarious book, The Catcher in the Rye. If you haven't already, go read my previous blog post about this book. I will attempt to add on to the previous response without being too repetitive.

This button is hilarious to me. Now, if you haven't read The Catcher in the Rye, I understand why you aren't laughing with me. Holden calls just about everyone and thing he sees a "phony".  He uses this word all throughout the book and is how he views insincere people. The reason because like his classmates at Pencey Prep, they all just care about how they look and looking good than doing or saying anything honest. Boy, does this aggravate Holden (notice the use of Boy, Holden uses this word very often in the book too, and he even mentions in it the first chapter!).  Holden just wants to stay young and innocent. The child world isn't filled with "phonies" as in the adult world. Also, its worth mentioning that people cry at movies when someone dies, but they don't cry when there's a huge mass killing, which is another reason why Holden calls people "phonies". Holden is very profound and many things depress him such as people behaving in a way that makes them a "phony",  movies because the actors are "phonies", stereotypical jock or frat boys because they are "phonies", and many more things that you'll just have to read to find out.

To respond a little deeper (I guess), I'll talk about the themes. There are a good bit, but I think the main ones are youth/innocence and isolation. As I said before, Holden wants to stay innocent and he wants the world to be innocent. He views children completely different than he does adults. He also is kinda obsessed with protecting kids, I mean he does want to be the catcher in the rye, which basically saves children from falling off a cliff in the middle of a field of rye. Also, when he sees provocative phrases in the school in which his sister attends, he freaks out and tries to erase everything. Isolation because this story is told from Holden's perspective for three days and he's alone. He feels alone in his little circle and he doesn't get along with his classmates at school. Sure he interacts and has many conversations with a lot of people during his stay in New York, but he alienates himself from everyone.