1) what does holden learn during the course of salingers novel?.
"Do you happen to know where the ducks go in the winter-time, by any chance?-.
During the course of Salinger's novel, Catcher in the Rye, this is the recurring question Holden Caulfield needs an answer to. From the beginning of the journey in the school, Holden's only answer to the question is to run away. He criticizes and philosophizes about people who are boring, people who are insecure, and, above all, people who are "phony." But towards the climax, Holden, a young, confused, judgmental, cynical, intellectual and analytical member of the phony world finally understands fighting against the human condition is not a battle worth fighting for. .
Holden is a sixteen year old kid that hates the world and almost everybody in it as his sister, Phoebe, points out to him when she says "You don't like anything that's happening. . . . You don't like any schools. You don't like a million things. You don't-. .
Holden's self-discovery voyage starts at Pency. Holden, like almost everyone and everything, thinks that the school and the people in it are all phonies. "They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hot-shot guy on a horse jumping over a fence . I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place."" .
Holden refers to everybody as phony's'. His school is "full of phonies."" He classifies phonies into categories. For instance, Holden's brother, D.B., is a phony because he sells himself out. All his talents he sells to Hollywood production companies. "Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute."" And Robert Ackley, Holden's roommate, is also a phony because he loves talking to Holden but he pretends he is bored because he doesn't want Holden thinking he likes him. "He didn't want you to think he was visiting you or anything. He wanted you to think he had come in by mistake, for God's sake."" .
Holden thinks everybody is a phony, everybody except for Allie (his brother), Phoebe (his sister), Jane Gallagher (his old next-door neighbour) and some nuns he meets.