Is Holden Trustworthy?
I believe that Holden has a love-hate relationship with trust. Occasionally he is very trustworthy and tells the truth exactly how it is, but a lot of the time he lies and hides the real truth. In Catcher in the Rye Holden says two different things that portray the different sides of his trust. When he is referring to what his parents would say when he tells them about getting kicked out of boarding school is, “Well…they’ll be pretty irritated about it.” This to me, seems to like he is only half telling the truth or holding part of it back to hide himself from more shame. If I had gotten kicked out of school for the fourth time, I know that my parents wouldn’t just be irritated, they’d be furious. Also, it doesn’t seem like Holden has a great relationship with his parents and he probably doesn’t want to think about how they will react to his news. Holden later goes on to say, “I shake my head quite a lot. ‘Boy!’ I said. I also say ‘Boy!’ quite a lot. Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I’m seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I am about thirteen.” When Holden says this, I think he is being trustworthy in his description of his character. From what I’ve read so far, Holden acts very young and is sarcastic. Here, I don’t think he is being sarcastic and is judging himself correctly, therefore being trustworthy.
