What drives a person to constantly judge others? Holden Caulfield is the main character and protagonist in the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and he spends the three days that this novel covers wandering around and making endless comments to himself about the people he knows and meets. However, while one might assume that one is superior to others to look down upon them, Holden does not have very much confidence in himself. Still, he continues to call people he knows "phonies". Being somewhat of a "phony" himself, Holden can also be viewed as a hypocrite. He does not understand that people can be separated into categories so easily.
             Holden seems to describe people who are phony as people who do not act like who they are or refuse to acknowledge their shortcomings. Phoniness can also be being deceiving and lying just for the fun of it. Undeniably, Holden is guilty of this, and therefore can also be described as phony. For example, on the train, he meets the mother of one of his classmates from Pencey Prep and extracted some amusement from lying to her about how popular and successful her son was at the moment. He did not show any remorse for lying unheedingly, but admits that when he starts a lie, he can continue it for quite a long period of time. He repeats these unfeeling actions throughout the novel and as with his classmate's mother, shows no remorse for what he does.
             Complications do not bring any comfort to Holden who prefers things to be simple. It is easier for him to classify everything and everyone as being either good or bad. Obviously, the line between these two are not at all distinct and it is not possible to label anything one or the other. Most people that Holden meets are placed in the bad category as phony people. There are not a lot of people that Holden feels is not a phony. His ten-year-old sister, Phoebe Caulfield, is six years younger than him, but is the only person...