I finished! The end was great and it was pretty easy to see what the book led up to.

In this book, Holden tells about a few normal days in his life- how his childhood was lousy, how his parents were never really close to him, how his history teacher at Pencey, the school he got kicked out of, was worried about him and it made him depressed. Everyone he ran into over the few¬†days that the book was set, he just looked down on, judged them, told how they were just “phonies”, and they always made him depressed. He goes to bars and hotels and judges all the people he runs into. Everyone depresses Holden and there are very few people in the world he does like to think about including his two brothers D.B. and Allie (who died) and his sister Pheobe. He also likes an English teacher at his last school he went to, who lives pretty close to his apartment. Another person he seems to only talk positively about in the book is this girl Jane who he knew and liked. She was a respectful girl unlike most of the girls he does know that he talks about in the book.

Holden’s problem is that almost everything makes him depressed and most of the book is written just to show us that. He talks about how he saw this kid walking in New York one day who was singing this song about catching someone in the Rye. He gets in an arguement with his little sister Pheobe when he first gets home to say Hi to her and she basically tells him how he doesn’t like anything- the people he meets, the schools he’s gone¬†to, etc… and she says what do you want to do? Is ther eanything you want to do in life? and Holden tells her that he wants to be the Catcher in the Rye. He explains¬†it as a person who stands on the edge of this cliff that catches any of these kids wondering around playing games in this Rye field because some of them might fall off of the cliff. I think that Holden is one of those kids about to fall of the cliff. The rye field represents life and the cliff is the limit to becoming one of those people that just hates the world. Holden needs a Catcher in the Rye. The person who I think catches him is his old English teacher. He stays the last night in the book at his English teacher’s house and he lectures him on how he needs to find his place because he’s falling. The next day Holden goes to the Zoo with his little sister and he seems to enjoy himself. In the end you can tell that he has been caught but I’m not going to go too into detail with it.

It was a great book, though. It was a pretty easy read and the symbolism is pretty easy to pick up on. I’ll probably read it again sometime.

I am 80 pages away from finishing The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I will probably finish it tonight, but I feel like posting a soon-to-finish-type report on it.

Holden Caulfield is a 17 year old kid who has a lot of potential, but really does nothing with it. He’s plenty smart enough but he never tries¬†hard in school.¬†His social life is pretty dry, but almost everything he does is accompanied by his picky judging of the people around him. He’s always judging people that he doesn’t know or doesn’t know well enough to be judging, yet, in my opinion. He’s obviously a New Yorker because the whole book is written in 1st person he says a lot of New Yorkan cliches. It’s been over a span of 2 or 3 days, so far,¬†on his way home from getting kicked out of the 3rd or 4th prep school he’s been kicked out of. He got kicked out of this one, in Pensylvania, for failing 5 or his 9 classes.¬†It doesn’t seem like his parents were ever very involved with his life, but they’ve always been around. His dad’s wealthy, which a few things can be implied from that… maybe, he works a lot and never gave his son too much attention, but I don’t think that’s where Holden’s problem was caused. I think he’s just an overly pessimistic person that is too scared to allow anyone to get¬†too close to him. He looks a lot older than 17: he has gray hair and really doesn’t look to young. He drinks and smokes but it doesn’t seem like to much of a problem. The time of this book is around World War II to maybe the early 50s. He cares more about his brothers and sisters than anyone: they’re pretty much the only people he only talks positively about. One of his brothers, Allie,¬†died when maybe 6 years back and it really tore him up. He’s obviously a smart person because he’s always over-observing everyone. He never stops throughout the whole book. He considers a lot of people “phony” and “corny”: he doesn’t think very positively of anyone. He is able to get girls and never really had a problem; although, he wants to lose his virginity, but everytime the opporunity comes up, he gets depressed and can’t do it. A lot of things depress Holden.

I’m not finished with the book, yet, so, I really don’t know what this is all leading to but I really haven’t been able to put it down since I started reading it. I will definitely post another blog when I finish, which will probably be tomorrow.