---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 13:58:14 -0600 (MDT) From: me <ho3318ni@meteor.uscolo.edu> To: eng493wh@meteor.uscolo.edu Subject: Focus Question #1 What does phony really mean? Hey All! Will wanted me to forward my ideas on phoniness and the Catcher In the Rye so here it is:) What does the word "phony" really mean? I think to most of us as well as Holden "phony" means in our minds to be unatural or superficial. Holden believes many of the people he encounters as being "phony". It isn't just merely saying the person is superficial or anything like that it is more in depth than this. Holden believes people who live their lives for other people are phony. He believes those who go to a prep school to impress parents or college are "phony". He realizes he must flunk out and leave Pencey to perhaps save himself from becoming "phony". He meets a girl named Bernice whom he finds to be of the unintelligent race. Although he seems obsessed with her phoniness he can't overlook the fact that she is a terrific dancer. The girl has an obsession with meeting movie stars(which holden despises) but at the same time he is able to see a positive characterisitc in this girl who appears to be "phony". Phoebe is one individual Holden finds to be genuine(in addition to his brother Allie). Even his brother D.B. he proclaims "prostitutes"his work to Hollywood. Phoniness is people who can't find the time to be themselves. Holden himself at times seems to be representing someone other than himself. Holden sees most of the world as being "phony". He sees most people doing things to impress other people and not for themselves. He realized he didn't fit in with all the "morons" at Pencey and that by staying there and continuing what he believed to be a "false education" that he himself would become a phony person. Holden believes also that education is not entirely learned through books and classroom settings. Each day we live life we learn something new. Maybe it wasn't technically the right thing to do by leaving the school but who is to say what it is technically right? Maybe some would shun Holden for his decision to leave school but others would secretly applaud him. Thoreau once took a month off and went out into nature to learn more about life. Sure he wasn't learning about iambic pentameter in poetry but he was learning about poetry in a way that relates to his life. It is obvious that after five schools Holden was just not cut out for that kind of life that he was there for another purpose and that he felt his parents just couldn't get it in their heads that Holden was not the person they tried to portray to society but that he was his own being. Many people say in college it is important not only to gain scholarly knowledge but also knowledge in the experience of life. Holden in many ways seemed to be in the mind frame of someone older than he. You wouldn't expect a sixteen year old to have read some of the books he had read. So what if he didn't read the textbook about Egyptians, the point is he did read something and he read something that he could relate to. Holden almost seems to be ahead of the rest of the world...maybe that is why they think he might be "crazy" because they just don't understand yet. This alternative way of gaining knowledge shows genuinity and can take us away from the "phonies" of our world. We don't have to be like anyone else in this world for we are the ones who must live our lives. I think we can learn a great deal from Holden in knowing that we are what we live so we might as well make the best of it.