I think we all can relate that being a teenager is not easy. There are some fun times but also some bad ones and sometimes when we’re in the bad, we just feel like we’re stuck and we don’t know what to do. Well, Holden Caulfield-- the 17 year old narrator in The Catcher In The Rye goes through a point in his life where he feels like his feelings are all over the place. This novel relives the days following the expulsion from Pencey Prep-- a university preparatory school. I think Holden is projected as an authentic teen because of a couple reasons. One would be, how he talks. The way the author of the book, J. D. Salinger, has him think and talk is the way a teenager would talk. Swearing, judging, thinking about oneself all the time, trying
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The whole novel is really an example of informal language that accurately reflects the inner workings of a teenager's mind. Salinger uses slang and informal phrases such as "...and all..." to give the reader the impression they are listening to Holden speak directly to them. It also gives the impression that these thoughts are free-flowing--just coming off the top of his head, and not carefully calculated and edited into a formal presentation. It’s not written as a novel, it’s more of like a dialogue, a sort of really long monologue. It’s not just the swearing and vulgar language that makes it applicable to being an authentic teenager. Just the fact that the book is not really structured. It’s like we are in the Holden’s head and it uses seemingly unrelated events and facts and whatever else might pop into the character's brain to create a point, idea etc. In the beginning, Holden begins his story by saying “If 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 was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t want feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth” (1).This just makes it all much more realistic because this is really how most teenagers think. They may start somewhere, but then branch out to other
The whole novel is really an example of informal language that accurately reflects the inner workings of a teenager's mind. Salinger uses slang and informal phrases such as "...and all..." to give the reader the impression they are listening to Holden speak directly to them. It also gives the impression that these thoughts are free-flowing--just coming off the top of his head, and not carefully calculated and edited into a formal presentation. It’s not written as a novel, it’s more of like a dialogue, a sort of really long monologue. It’s not just the swearing and vulgar language that makes it applicable to being an authentic teenager. Just the fact that the book is not really structured. It’s like we are in the Holden’s head and it uses seemingly unrelated events and facts and whatever else might pop into the character's brain to create a point, idea etc. In the beginning, Holden begins his story by saying “If 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 was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t want feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth” (1).This just makes it all much more realistic because this is really how most teenagers think. They may start somewhere, but then branch out to other