The Catcher of the Phonies by Monica

The Catcher of the Phonies by Monica - February 2015 Scholarship Essay

There are a lot of different activities high school students enjoy doing: playing sports, joining clubs, making new friends, and exploring new opportunities. When asking a high school student their favorite activity, “reading” is rarely an answer that is given. When I was in high school, there were very few books that captured my attention, or even more, my heart. Then, after years and years of reading, during my senior year I came across a book that changed my life: The Catcher in the Rye.

The Catcher in the Rye is a fictional book written by J.D Salinger. The book is centered around Holden, a boy who is struggling to find his place in the world. Holden is consistently surrounded by people he calls “phonies”. He believes almost all people he meets are hypocritical, shallow, and mostly fake. For him, all of these people are obsessed with appearance rather than reality. It is during my senior year when I realized that there were so many times I, myself, have been surrounded by phonies. Not only that, but I have also been a phony towards other people. This book had so many underlying themes that I could relate to and themes other high schooler students could relate to, as well.

We all know high school is filled with cliques: the jocks, the cheerleaders, the nerds, the goths, and so many more. One clique always has some thing to say about the other, preventing everyone from getting along. Each clique finds something “phony” about the other. But what if we are all phonies but in different ways? What if we are all so alike that we cannot notice because we are surrounded by our own “phony-ness”. This is one of the ways in which Catcher in the Rye opened my mind. The book showed me that I cannot let myself self-destruct in the same way Holden does. Instead of pointing fingers and calling other people phony and never letting myself form any genuine relationship, I can recognize that I, much like others, can be phony myself. I can learn to stop judging myself once I learn to stop judging others. I can learn to be more accepting of myself and of others by seeing we are much more alike than we are different.

Holden has a hard time realizing that although people can be phony, they are still capable of loving and being loved. In high school, there were times when I was a very bitter person. I did not want to love or be loved by shallow, fake people. I choose to not love and that harmed me in ways I did not recognize at the time. I closed myself off to people, like Holden without knowing why. After I read The Catcher in the Rye, I realized I was looking at people with only negatives eyes. I was focusing on the little bad, rather than all the good they had to offer. I, like Holden, closed myself off to any little measure of phony someone had.

The Catcher in the Rye is a great book for adolescents to read because it is extremely eye-opening. Not only do you start to appreciate more people in the world, it helps you self-reflect, as well. The book helps you from seeing people as inauthentic people and helps you to appreciate relationships, instead.