Catcher In The Rye

5 Pages 1205 Words

Catcher in the Rye Essay

Holden’s speech is often sarcastic, negative and dismissive to most people he encounters. Occasionally, we see glimpses of sensitivity, gentleness and compassion in his thoughts and observation of the few people he cares about.

The way he speaks gives us a clear insight into his character as we see both anger and contempt, but also his extreme vulnerability and sense of sadness and aloneness. Salinger’s use of Holden’s voice gives us a vivid and immediate sense of who Holden is. We feel as though we are in his head.

Throughout this book, Holden is constantly putting others down whether it be in his head or out loud. The way he speaks shows the reader that he doesn’t really want to be telling this story. In the first sentence of the book, he starts out by saying “ f you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that a David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” This passage shows that he feels as if he is being forced to tell the story. His negativity is the first thing you notice about this character when you first start reading this book. On page 42, when he’s fighting with Stradlater, he says, “I didn’t even answer him. God, how I hated him.” This passage shows that he almost never has anything nice to say to people. Another thing that Holden is constantly doing throughout the book is lying. On page 54, when he is talking to the mother on the subway he says,” ‘Rudolf Schmidt,’ I told her. I didn’t feel like giving her my whole life history. Rudolf Schmidt was the name of the janitor of our dorm.” This passage shows that Holden lies for no reason what so ever.

Although most of what comes out of Holden’s mouth is negative, ther...