One thing I like a lot you mean?

Something that really caught my attention was the relationship between Holden and his sister, Phoebe. 

Holden went to his house only for visit her, in secret, because his parents were out at that time.

He and Phoebe had a gorgeous conversation. But, why was gorgeous? They did not say anything extraordinary, however, was the first time that Holden felt himself talking to another person in the entire book. It felts as a natural and spontaneous stream of consciousness by Holden, as I was reading him, but finally, face to face to Phoebe.

Our main character always says that she is only a girl, but half of the times she can understand exactly “what the hell are you trying to say.”

Suspicious, Phoebe noticed that the presence of Holden before Wednesday was strange, and guessed that he was kicked out of school.

“Daddy will kill you! Oh, what did you do it?”

In short, Holden supported that Pencey was one of the worst schools he ever went to and furthermore was plenty of phonies.

After all his explanation, Phoebe declared probably, the truth and Achilles’ heel of his brother.

 

“You don’t like anything that’s happening.”

 

Bomb. Try to deal with it. “Because you don’t. You don’t like any schools. You don’t like a million of things. You don’t.”

 

“Name one thing.”

 

Holden couldn’t concentrate, and finally, he answered that he liked his brother Allie and doing what he was doing right now. Sitting there with her, and talking, and thinking about stuff.  But the problem was, according to Phoebe that his brother was dead. Holden yelled that he knew it, but you don’t just stop liking people because they are dead, especially if they were a thousand times nicer than the people you know that are alive at all.

Wow, you know that you are reading a good book when you need to stop and take a deep breath to continue. Certainly, at this point, as Holden will say, the book “killed me, it really did.”

“- I like now. I mean right now.

-That isn’t anything really!

- It is so something really! Certainly it is! Why the hell isn’t it? People never think anything is anything really. I’m getting goddam sick of it.”

Next, Phoebe inquired him to name a real thing, like a scientist or a lawyer. He answered in a way that might take away the masks that people daily wear. He said that lawyers were all right, but it doesn’t appeal to him. Why? It is all right if you are a lawyer and you go around saving innocent people. But they usually don’t do that. They make a lot of dough ad play golf and play bridge and buy cars… Even if they go around saving guys’ lives and all, how do you know that they did it because they really wanted and not because they only wanted to be a terrific lawyer, with everybody congratulating them?

By the end… “How would you know you weren’t being a phony?” Do we want to succeed for being better people or do we want to succeed only for appearing and demonstrating that we are good people, great hot-shots?

Is the world an entire fake, a circus, a simulacrum, a competition?

I don’t know the answer. But may be never, sometimes or always?

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