Catcher In The Rye -- JD Salinger

A detailed Summary of Catcher In The Rye -- JD Salinger


This is a carefully crafted text. Salinger adopts the persona, language and speech patterns of a west coast American teenager.

Some aspects of the text create the impression that the speech is spontaneous and disorganized, Holden Caulfield repeats himself, he gets side tracked about his brother and divulging "pretty personal stuff" about his parents, and he doubles back on himself, about his brother in Hollywood, mentioning it halfway through the text, "D.B ... my brother. He's in Hollywood" and then again at the end, "now he's out in Hollywood, being a prostitute". Of course him brother is not actually a prostitute he is a writer, writing screen plays, but Holden chooses to see it as working for the establishment and "prostituting" his words. This piece is coherent, and Holden's train of thought is easily seen, but it does not have the fluidity that most pieces of text have, but the writer has specifically crafted it to be like this.

It sounds as if Holden is speaking to the reader. This is because of the very effective use of the first person narration style. Holde


Salinger helps us to understand what his character is feeling by his use of emotive language. And he also uses the stereotypical teenage "I don't give a crap" attitude to perfection. It is easy to understand the character because most of us are or have been a teenager and understood the term known as "teenage angst". Holden is the epitome of a sufferer of "teenage angst", "My lousy childhood" and "David Copperfield kind of crap" and "My parents, ... They're touchy as hell". Another 'symptom' of this teenage angst is the set of morals Holden chooses to use. He respects the fact that his parents are 'king' and he had better not say anything bad about them but also he has his own opinion on his brother for "prostituting" his words, maybe Holden sees his brother as prostituting his 'art', much in the same way as die hard fans of modern bands accuse them, once they break into the main stream of, "Selling out".

Salinger uses certain phrases that are only used in speech such as "If you really want to hear about it" and "don't even mention them to me".

The narrative styl

Some common words found in the essay are:
He's Hollywood, Salinger Holden, David Copperfield, America Hees, English Salinger, , Holden Caulfield, teenage angst, he's hollywood, holden chooses, characters events, prostituting words, understand character, west coast, don't mention,

Approximate Word count = 725
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

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