Cigarette

Holden Caulfield, the novel's main character and narrator, is heavily addicted to smoking. Throughout the novel's time frame of a few days, he manages to go through an entire pack plus more that he takes from a brief visit to his home. The most prominent significance of cigarettes for Holden is that he smokes them whenever an act of hypocrisy, immorality, or general "phoniness" depresses or irritates him. Another use that the narcotic substance has is to demonstrate Holden's own hypocrisy to the reader. While he is nearly a chain smoker, he still manages to find others at fault for smoking.

"I lay on the bed and light up a smoke. Stradlater hated when I smoked in the dorm, it was against school rules but no one could smell it. Stradlater hated when anyone broke any rules. He was so goddam phony. It killed me. It really did, I just turned to the other side on my bed and smoked like a madman , as he clipped his goddam toe nails."

"At the end of the first act we went out with all the other jerks for a cigarette. What a deal that was. You never saw so many phonies in all your life, everybody smoking their ears off and talking about the play so that everybody could hear how sharp they were."