Holden Caulfield on Nuns who are Attractive!

In J.D.Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye", Holden Caulfield, the teen aged protagonist of the novel, deems most people sees a "phony" - starting from the principal of his school who ingratiates himself selectively to rich parents of students to the piano player Ernie who craves celebrity more than the pleasure of art. Holden wants to love life so that he can truly life, but the people who live around him are crassly materialistic and too given to ephemeral desires that life does not seem heartening, Holden sees them as "phony".

Just when I was getting really tired of descriptions of overwhelming phoniness Holden meets two nuns at a breakfast place having a simple meal of toast and coffee. He describes them as people with "helluva kind face", with nice smiles. There was nothing phony or vomity about them. The Nuns deeply impress Holden that perhaps there still are people who perhaps have a deeper apprehension of life, one that is meaningful.

Holden sees two virtues in them that helps him see their genuineness. 

1. Other-Centeredness: The first thing he notices about the nuns is that one of them having "one of those straw baskets" (nothing MK about it!) to collect money for others. He comments that his Aunt did charity work but that it was always about wearing good looking clothes and lipstick and acting swanky. The nuns wore black clothes with no lip stick. 

2. Simplicity: The nuns are having toast and coffee, their breakfast is missing the essential American ingredient of bacon and eggs. 

3. Unpretentious: Holden volunteers to contribute to the Nuns' cause by putting money in their straw basket. The nuns say that they were not collecting money at the moment and that they were carrying the basket on hand because they did not have place for it in their suitcases. Holden reasons that anyone else would have thrown away the cheap basket and bought a new one when they needed one later instead of carrying it around while travelling, compromising their appearance. 

Holden goes around looking for people who could convince him that there is more to life than meets the eye, which is why the question of what happens to the ducks when the water freezes during winter bothers him. He asks what he sees as deeper questions about life to a cab driver, to his friend from Yale and his former teacher who ends up being a perv. Not getting an answer he goes into the streets and looks to see if he can find the nuns again and talk to them but is unable to find him.

Holden in many ways is like the millennials who care more for meaning in life than materialistic excesses. Such meaning seeking millennials are attracted to simplicity than flamboyance, ethics over economics, authenticity over pretension. Those who, like the nuns, live as people imbibing the Sermon on the Mount will be attractive to the meaning seeking millennials.