In reality, though, Holden sees that he’s nothing but a social climber who only cares about people if they have money. Haas presents himself as a kind, welcoming, and polite man. After giving poorer families a “phony smile,” he talks to rich parents for as long as half an hour. Haas shakes hands and speaks with visiting parents, but Holden notices that he all but ignores families who aren’t wealthy. For instance, his sensitivity to adult phoniness enables him to recognize that the headmaster of Elkton Hills (one of the schools he attended before his current school, Pencey Prep) only pays attention to the parents of rich students. In many ways, Holden is right that the people around him are frustratingly inauthentic. In the end, this attitude leads him to little more than lonely hopelessness, hinting that his expectations for the world are unrealistic and self-destructive. In this way, he uses his hatred of phoniness as a crutch, allowing him to reject anything that presents itself to him as a challenge. More importantly, he uses his judgmental attitude to avoid failure or emotional pain, choosing to be apathetic about schoolwork and his relationships so that he doesn’t have to apply himself. What he doesn’t seem to recognize, though, is that he is often rather phony himself, since he frequently lies and misrepresents himself. And though Holden feels this skepticism most prominently toward the adults in his life, he’s often horrified to find that even his teenaged peers embody the same lack of authenticity as his teachers and other authority figures.

He sees such “phoniness” everywhere in the adult world, and believes adults are so superficial that they can’t even recognize their own insincerity. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, a novel about a teenager’s many frustrations with the world, 16-year-old Holden Caulfield constantly encounters people and situations that strike him as “phony.” This is a word he applies to anything hypocritical, shallow, inauthentic, or otherwise fake.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger