- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
Holden asks his cab driver about the Central Park ducks. Though the question is earnest, the driver does not take him seriously.
On the surface, Holden’s question seems ridiculous, or even sarcastic, thus showing that his occasional earnest statements are rebuffed by a society that expects social acts to be relatively artificial. Here, we get a sense of why Holden sees others as phony: they demand such a practiced and coded type of social interaction that they’re apparently incapable of direct and meaningful conversation. The inability of Holden’s cab driver to answer his straightforward question speaks to this disconnect.
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