In the first paragraph of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield addresses his nominal audience in two distinct idioms. At first he is truculent and defensive, using slang like “lousy” and “crap” and employing long, rambling sentences as he tells his listener what he won’t be talking about; his “whole goddam autobiography.” However, towards the end of the paragraph his defensive language drops and he speaks in more precise sentences as he shares a literary interest; a “terrific book of short stories” written by his brother, and provides a brief description of his favourite story. Salinger use’s these two narrative voices throughout the novel, and in this paper I will examine how they contribute to the meanings and effects of the text.
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