Meaning of "fix you up" in The Catcher in the Rye In Chapter 20 of _The Catcher in the Rye_ : > ... I kept worrying that I was getting pneumonia, with all those hunks of ice in my hair, and that I was going to die. ... Then I thought about the whole bunch of them sticking me in a goddam cemetery and all, with my name on this tombstone and all. Surrounded by dead guys. Boy, when you're dead, **they really fix you up**. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody. What does Holden mean by " **fix you up** "? And, who is he talking about when he says " **they**?

To _fix up_ idiomatically means to improve or repair. From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary entry for **fix up** :

> _transitive verb_
> 1: refurbish
> _fix up_ the attic

Holden is thinking about how undertakers _fix up_ or refurbish corpses. Specifically, they perform cosmetic repairs to any damage to the corpse's facial features from injuries that might have been the cause of death; dress the corpse up in formal clothes; style the corpse's hair; and apply makeup to make the deceased look as good as possible.

Holden sees this as another example of the hypocrisy that finds all-pervading in the universe. According to our hero, everything and everybody in the world is "phony", and the general practice of fixing up a corpse to look good when it is, after all, _**dead**_ is part of this lack of authenticity. For Holden, fixing up a corpse to mask incipient decay shows how in this phony world, appearance matters more than reality.