Catcher In The Rye Rhetorical Analysis

In The Diary of Anne Frank you get a feeling of hope, optimism, even knowing that the outcome is not a favorable one. In Catcher in The Rye it’s almost impossible to miss the sarcasm that is present throughout the book. Every book has a certain attitude about it, its tone, that varies from author to author depending upon the feelings that the author felt when writing that scene. For Anne Frank when writing her diary, she felt hopeful that one day her family would be able to come out of hiding, which explains the optimistic tone of the diary. For Salinger, he wanted to narrate the life of a boy observing and criticizing the world around him, resulting in a tone that is undeniably sarcastic. In order to establish a tone, though, the author needs …show more content…
Tone is used to convey viewpoints and perspectives that the author has on a subject, and it can explain why an emotion is felt that normally wouldn’t have even been acknowledged. With tone, the author is inserting a part of themselves into the book, their emotions, thoughts, and feelings are all injected, influencing the way they write. This causes the tone that is produced to be influenced, for example on page 112, Skloot describes the treatment that the kids had to endure from the hands of Ethel- the stereotypical step-mother. Before reading this passage, you felt that Henrietta was indeed wronged but still felt that the author was trying to maintain an objective tone, but once reaching this part the tone noticeably changes and feelings of sadness, anger, and desperation come flooding in. A somber, melancholic tone with an attitude of desperation has taken over, entering when Skloot describes situations like how Joe had to stand on one foot in a corner with dirt entering his eyes and how Ethel would beat him. The desperate tone fully settles in when Skloot finishes with saying there was nothing Sonny or Deborah could do to help him. The tone had changed because the situation had invoked new feelings in the author, a new viewpoint that was reflected in her writing and amplified the readers' reactions to that