#15

#15. You are kind and polite even to geeky, nerdy kids who are very unpopular at school.

While this seems like a very nice, honorable trait in a person - to be nice to those people - Holden certainly wouldn't think so.

Holden has a point throughout the novel, with his hate of 'phony' people. If everyone is always acting and always being so wonderfully nice to all their peers, things are going to get messy. The worst kinds of people are the passive aggressive type. When they'll shake your hand and smile at you, but in their minds they're thinking, "I'd learn a cover of 'Your Guts' just to dedicate it to you." Hidden tensions need to find a release. They'll lead to much worse than your average high school bickering with empty insults. A healthy release is to simply get it out: 'I strongly dislike you. I do not want to be friends. Please stay away from me.' At least let it out subliminally, if you can't afford to be so frank with the person you hate. They'll sense it.

But to an extent no one deserves to be treated less than human (let's account for Hitler). A level of tolerance is necessary and logical because, you don't have any more right to be who you are than the person you despise. Don't be their best friend. But be cordial. In a world where progress is all that's truly valuable, order and understanding are required.

This ties back into what Ms. Berdick said was the message of Catcher in the Rye, when she said it was saying that conformity is sometimes good and other times bad. In the same sense a balance must be struck with toleration of others. It's rare that an extreme variety of anything is the best (what a relative term) option. But in the same sense, it'd be extreme that the extreme option is never the best option. Our natural world, from the simplest to the most sophisticated levels, is ever about a balance.

oleg kovalenko