Catcher in the Rye: The Bhagavad-Gita's Quote

'Better is one's own duty imperfectly carried out than

following perfectly the law of another.

Better is death in the fulfillment of one's own law,

for to follow another's law is perilous.'

-The Bhagavad-Gita

 This quote talks about how marching to the beat of your own drum, or sticking up for yourself as an individual, is always better then standing in the line with the rest of them. Holden seems to believe this same kind of ideal, and although he tends to conform on the surface, his mind is filled with this notion. Holden wants to follow his own path, and strike out on his own; he just can't seem to find the support, whether it be internal or external, to bring this dream to reality. He certainly pushes this judgement upon others, though, recognizing their fulfillment of the law of another as phony.

There's a quote from Kurt Vonnegut that goes like this:

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

This says a lot about what Holden does half the time: people can only see what he pretends to be, so they assume he is what he pretends to be. When he suddenly reveals a deeper layer of him that what we expected, people tend to be surprised. Of course, this quote is kind of out of context since it's from Mother Night and it was talking about WW2 propaganda, but it applies to this just the same, eh?