Innocence
- Holden idealized children
- Quote: "you take adults, they look lousy when they sleep"
- Speaks highly of Phoebe
- "I saw something that drove me crazy… 'f. you'"
- Believes someone sneaked into the elementary school to write graffiti
- Catcher in the Rye - title - Holden wants to "catch" and protect children from losing their innocence and becoming adults
- Children are authentic
- Children are free and seem happy
- Teenagers/grown ups don't seem free and happy
- Sunny - prostitute, but only 17, seemed innocent (also nervous - shaking her foot)
- Use of language: "like fun you are"
- Why is Holden so obsessed with innocence/ is he innocent?
- He wants to be innocent - wants to go back to childhood - smokes, drinks, hired a prostitiute
- Doesn't like the way he is
- Allie's death
- Sees Allie as an innocent who died
- Doesn't feel like he's gone - thinks he would be scared in the graveyard
- Natural History Museum
- would like to keep everything the same - especially little kids
- "the only thing that would be different would be you"
- Wants to place people [himself?] in a glass cage and preserve ["A Rose for Emily"]
- Reality - kids aren't that innocent
-obsessed
with innocence because of Allie's death
-wants
to save all the children - related to him wanted to erase all the bad things in
the world, but knows he can't
- "I'm not too sure old Phoebe knew… I don't think she knows what I'm talking about"
Dramatic irony - she understands: "you
don't like anything"
- Does Holden see himself in the kid singing the song "Catcher in the Rye"
- Holden's detachment from his own parents
Sunny's dress
- Stripping off her innocence?
- People are stripped of their innocence
NON-CONFORMITY AND AUTHENTICITY
- Red hunting had
- Wants to show people he's a non-conformist
- Phoebe takes away his red hunting hat
- Trying to stand out and not fit in (not authentic)
- Doesn't try to socialize
- "this is a people shooting hate"
- Alienation (isolates himself)
-has
he figured out who he is? The whole novel he pretends to be someone else
- "I'm the only dumb one in the family"
- Playing the victim
- "got sick" after all this - downward spiral - we see him getting to his lowest point
- He would think he was phony if he met himself - lies, puts on acts
- Drinking etc. lack of human contact [intimacy] - Phoebe and Jane are who he's closest to
- [although teachers feel some responsibility and sympathy for him]
- Phoebe tells Holden that it's not "when a person meets a person" "it's when a body meet a body" - the song is actually about sex - not innocent at all dramatic irony - Phoebe actually understands the song better than he does [not so innocent]
- He does see things differently [football games, leaving epees on the subway, poems on Mitt, liking certain songs, "a Holden conversation"]
- Death of Allie triggered his "downward spiral" [prolonged grievance since he never had closure or support of his family]
- Doesn't want to conform [subversive]
- Noticing phoniness, or being the same
- Allie's death preserved him as the perfect child forever [ think of newspaper articles about teens or kids dying "straight A student, top athlete]
- Allie didn't have a chance to be a person - he never got to make choices - [frozen in time]
- Holden has grown up and seen the world through different eyes
- people obsessed with material things
Movies - shape
society - makes people conform
- ["people always clap for the wrong things"]
Hope - kids gave
Holden hope (carousel )
-battling
between being yourself and being authentic
CHANGE/PROGRESSION/GROWING UP
- Scared of change
- But wants to go somewhere else - [phone]
- Mental change - leaving schools
- Doesn't want to change the idealization of children
- He moves forwards, but also taking steps back
- Is changing schools real change? - different place, same people
- What's Holden afraid of
- Doesn't want Phoebe to change
- How does his opinion change?
- What's holding him back?
Natural History Museum
- Not changing because other people want it to
- People change - he will be different
- Starts to depress him because he'll know that he changed
- When does Holden change the most? - when Allie died?
- When he goes back to Phoebe - he realizes how he needs to change to get better
- Death of Allie put a "pause" on him changing (or growing up) [they say people who are addicted stop growing and progressing when their addiction starts]
- Holden doesn't mentally get around what happened - unable to grow up
- Mentally preserve children - to keep Allie
- Funeral - ["who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody!" Holden doesn't realize that giving flowers to dead people is for the living to feel some kind of ending and to celebrate or note someone's life - we have many symbols in our lives - a wedding ring, for example]
- Holden lying to himself
- "when I leave a place I like to say good-bye, if you don't, you feel even worse" - wants closure everywhere else
- Had he gone to the funeral, he would probably have processed Allie's death sooner
- Does Holden change his mind about needing help?
- Started to realize in the bars?
*prepare
quote sheet - use page numbers
*try
to come up with an umbrella topic which would fit with all of these themes
*consider
the symbols
*prepare
thesis statements
No comments:
Post a Comment