If I said that, would you believe me? Probably not. Or at least, you wouldn't remember. Honestly, no one cares about my shirt, and it wasn't really a Catcher in the Rye shirt anyway. Not directly, in any case.
So I pulled out this shirt with red lettering all over the front. The first thing you notice is the huge "California" in Coca Cola font (they think they're slick; they're not. We knew that font). Then you see the words above and below it, reading "HOLLYWOOD" and "IT'S THE REAL THING!" So now my shirt reads:
HOLLYWOOD California IT'S THE REAL THING!
I'll let that roll around in your head for a second. Now for the connection (in my strange, Alex-brained way): Holden's brother, D.B. is in Hollywood. And Holden has this problem with things and people that are "phony," or as we refer to it in class, "not real."
Blahblahblah, Holden hates Hollywood and movies (yet made a date with Sally for a matinee), mostly because he thinks they're phony. For example, in the book Holden states that he hates actors because "they never act like people." I agree that things in Hollywood aren't real; everything is glorified and elevated to a higher level of awesome than necessary. Everything in Hollywood is phony, because it's all acting. Even outside of movies, people are pretending to be suave or to like each other. Like Mr. Mosby in the Suite Life of Zack and Cody said (regarding a plastic vase that looked important): "It's just like everything else in Hollywood; PLASTIC!!"
I digress. Basically, I was wearing a shirt that advertised the exact thing Holden hates. The end.
Aside from his dislike for all things that are not as great as they outwardly appear, Holden is a very pessimistic and carping--there goes that vocab word!--teenager. Not that there's anything wrong with that; it's a phase...a phase.
OK. There is a problem with that. I notice it a lot, but Holden is a downer. He sees almost everything around him as phony or stupid or irritating or depressing. Suitcases, old straw baskets, Broadway and its many shows, the empty corridor in Pencey, etc. The only things that cheer him up are thinking of Allie, Jane, and Phoebe, and hearing that kid sing that song.
I think that, to Holden, there are two kinds of people in the world. Overly optimistic phonies who overrate things and pretend like they're hotshots, and the cool, sane realists who don't care about the world around them and go their own way, of which there are very few. These realistic people are the ones Holden is searching for in his Red Hunting Hat. However, Holden is overlooking the other kind of people, one of which he himself is: the pessimists.
You can't keep looking at the world as "lousy" and "depressing" and find fault in every little detail, especially those trivial things on the surface. Like we discussed in class, Holden is concerning himself with tiny details, like how people appear on the outside, and he doesn't consider the reasons behind appearances.
But Holden himself is a phony, isn't he? Because he does one thing and thinks something completely different. I feel like if anything, Holden is being phony to himself. He might act true to others, but he seems to turn in on himself too.
I think that really, as a 16-year-old guy forced to attend prep schools, Holden is just trying to find himself while defying the fact that he has to grow up sometime. I think that right now he's just blaming people for superficial things, but he will grow to accept people's double-sidedness.
[Edit: I was gonna have "Caulfield the Nonconformist" as my title, but I talked too much about pessimism and not enough about the nonconformism
--Fin~
"The pessimist complains about the wind;
the optimist expects it to change;
the realist adjusts the sails."
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