The Catcher in the Rye

All the students in the English Social Studies class have to read a book this fall. We had to choose between “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy and “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D Salinger. I started reading “The Road”, but I thought the beginning was a bit slow and boring, therefore I decided to start reading J.D. Salinger's novel instead.

I have now started reading the novel «The Catcher in the Rye» by J.D Salinger. His whole name is Jerome David Salinger, and he was an American author best known for the novel I'm reading. He was born in January 1919, and died just a couple of days ago on January 27 2010. He wrote the novel “The Catcher in the Rye” in 1951, but the novel is still very popular today.

I'm going to write a bit about the book while I'm reading it. In that way I can see how I might change my opinion through the book, and it will be easier to look back and see what happened in the different chapters.

Chapter 1-7

The book is written with first-person narrative and it follows a 15 year old boy who's about to quit the fourth school he has gone to. He's failing in almost all of his classes, and he doesn't seem to really care about school. His name is Holden Caulfield, although he seems to change his name a lot when speaking to strangers. We meet two of the other students at Holden's school (Pencey): The handsome ladies man Stradlater and the raunchy and annoying Ackley. It doesn't seem like Holden have a lot of friends at his school, which is not that strange considering it's the fourth school he goes to. But even though it seems like Holden is annoyed by Ackley, they kind of seem to have kind of a friendship. The day before Holden leave Pencey he meet his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, for one last chat. Mr. Spencer try to talk some sense into Holden and his attitude towards school, but with no luck.
Holden and Stradlater have a fight after Stradlater goes on a date with a childhood friend of Holden, and Stradlater ends up hitting Holden. That night Holden leave Pencey. With blood dripping from his nose, he pack his bags and say a final goodbye to Ackley before he walks away from the school.

This book is a bit different from what I'm used to be reading, but I kind of like it though. The language surprises me a bit. I think it is very modern- “oral”, therefore it is a bit strange to think that the book was written for about 60 years ago. The narrator use words like “hellja”, “sonuvabitch”, “wuddaya” and “goddam”, which make me think the book is of newer age.

My opinion of the book so far is that it seems pretty good. I really like the language and the oral-type of writing because it feels like the narrator is talking directly to the reader.