Holden Caulfield is a 16 year old boy who recently was kicked out of his fancy prep school. For a 16 year old, he’s highly immature and makes poor decisions. In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D Salinger, Holden’s condescending and impulsive ways, along with his compulsive lying is all because he does not want to grow and is holding onto his childhood.
First, Holden lies profusely for no reason at all. He tells a lady on the train that his name is Rudolf Schmidt because he “didn’t feel like giving my whole life history.” Stating your real name isn’t giving your whole life history and lying about a name is just immature. As the novel progresses, his lies begin to get worse. Such as telling a prostitute that he recently had surgery on his clavichord. Holden doesn’t even realize that he lies so much, but the reason he lies so much is because he wants to make himself appeal more interesting to hide his pain. He’s still hurt from the death of his younger brother Allie, who died when they were both kids. It’s a cry for help.
Secondly, Holden is also condescending. He constantly calling or thinking everyone around him is a moron. For a 16 year old, this is an elementary school way of expressing anger and frustration. …show more content…
It’s ironic that he’s an intelligent boy, but doesn’t think situations through fully. During his second encounter with Maurice, Holden is clearly at a disadvantage in terms of strength with him and has the opportunity to not get hurt, but instead he chooses to call Maurice a “dirty moron” right before he was leaving. This random spurt of anger leads to him getting beat up. This is also a redundant event to his fight with Stradlater where he does the same thing. His mentality is that he has to get the last word in no matter what, like a pre-adolescent child would do. He thinks that he can get away with saying anything to anybody, but since he is older it doesn’t work for