In the very first chapter, Holden
says:
Pencey
was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these wealthy families, but it was full
of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has. I'm not
kidding.
He explains that
someone stole his good camel hair coat the week before, so while he was watching the
football game, he was freezing, because of not having his good coat. Holden does not
understand why rich boys have to steal, but they do. He believes it is just the way
things are. The more boys don't need to steal because of their richness, the more they
do steal. It makes no sense tohim.
Throughout the rest of
the novel, Holden often refers to people at Pencey (and everywhere else, for that
matter) as phonies. The students are phonies, the teachers are phonies, the people that
come to Pencey as speakers are phonies (like the undertaker) and the administrators of
the school are phonies.
Holden's roommate Stradlater is a
phony because he has a "nice guy" image but he is really a jerk. He gets others to do
his work so that he can go out on dates and pretend to be a "stud". Robert Ackley, a
fellow classmate, is a phony and an annoying nuisance. Holden explains that Pencey in
general is full of phonies and even the advertisement for Pencey that is published in
many magazines is phony. It shows a boy jumping over a fence on a horse, which is phony,
Holden claims. It makes it appear as if all one does at Pencey is play polo, and that is
phony. The magazine ad claims to mold boys into upstanding young men and Holden
complains that the only upstanding young men at Pencey are only one or two boys he
knows, and they probably came to Pencey that way.
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