essay of definition: catcher in the rye
...ty and unwillingness to conform. Holden constantly refers to others as being “phony”, and in his sense of the word he basically means they are conforming. “Phony” denotes fake, not real, and perhaps lacking substance or originality, and Holden makes it a point to identify the phonies in everyone he encounters. One specific target of Holden’s accusations was the lot of young men attending Ivy League schools, whom he warmly deemed jerks. In Holden’s eyes, these men had to feel as though they knew everything and everyone and even possessed phony voices. These people were not genuine; they all gave the impression of being the same person in variations, and Holden set himself apart from them at every possible occasion. His appearance strayed from the norm in that instead of being uniformly clean-cut and presentable, Holden hardly showered and he donned his unique red hunting hat whenever he got the chance. His reasoning or lack thereof was far from ordinary; at one moment he desperately wanted to start a family in Massachusetts with his ex-girlfriend and at the next he planned on hitchhiking west and pumping gas for a living. Neither of these thoughts are typical for a sixteen-year old with little money and practically no education, and these aspects of Holden’s persona categorize him as a nonconformist. Nonconformity does not necessarily require outlandish taste in fashion or a peculiar way of thinking; it may simply be a distinctive point of view. For example in today’s society artists in particular tend to hold more individualistic ways of thinking or doing things. In the most literal interpretation of the word artist, one might think of a painter or a sculptor such as Picasso. Picasso is definitely considered a nonconformist in our time and it is apparent in the way his own style of art places noses where mouths should be and ears takin...