I associate the word “phony” with a more urban word which is “fake”. If used in a sentence such as “that guy is such a fake”, it is used as an insult. Calling someone “fake” is essentially saying someone is not true to themselves or how they present themselves to other people. For example, they could be a person who seems very nice to everyone, but then talks poorly of them behind their back. This association with the two words first occurred to me in chapter three when Holden is talking about Ossenburger. The way Holden describes Ossenburger shows that the man is full of hypocrisy. Holden says that Ossenburger runs a discount funeral parlor that takes advantage of the grieving families but on the other hand, he tells all the students that they should have integrity and pray devoutly. “He started off with about fifty corny jokes, just to show us what a regular guy he was. Very big deal. Then he started telling us how he was never ashamed, when he was in some kind of trouble or something, to get right down his knees and pray to God. He told us we should always pray to God–talk to Him and all–wherever we were. He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car. That killed me. I just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs.” This here tells me the exact definition of Holden’s word “phony”. It is simply a word he uses to describe people or something that isn’t true to their words or true to themselves. Holden uses this word many times in the course of the novel in regard to not just people but to things as well. Holden might use the word phony himself quite frequently to describe other people, but how phony is Holden? I see Holden going against his own beliefs and being fake or phony multiple times throughout novel. I don’t think he fully realizes it when he does it though. This shows that even though he is so against the phoniness in the world, he still partakes in it without even realizing that he’s doing it. Holden has a very known hatred towards movies. He mentions it countless times throughout the novel about how phony movies are. He sometimes describes the actors as acting “too real” indicating to me that he feels that movies are fake and should be acted as such. He brings up many times how he doesn’t enjoy movies at all and finds them extremely phony and how people who enjoy movies are unintelligent people and are extremely phony themselves. Yet Holden still goes to see movies, despite his hatred towards them. He can talk all day about his enormous hatred towards movies but when it comes down to it, if a female friend of his wants to see a movie, he’ll go see it. He feels that just because he sees movies doesn’t mean he actually enjoys them or stops his hatred towards them. If he was a true movie hater and stuck to his word, he wouldn’t step a foot in a movie theater. In a way, he is like Ossenburger by going against his original words. His hatred towards the phoniness of movies and the phony people that surround movies can be easily overrul>