23rd Chapters 1-10 We basic check out this while i was just a tiny older than Holden Caulfield. This new voice is most beneficial, trapping Holden’s sixteen-year-dated viewed-it-all-in advance of disdain for one thing phoney, that covers just about everything and everyone he experience. I think that my personal late-youngsters mind don’t spend much focus on his privileged lifetime and immovable sense of entitlement… ericans are just like. And possibly a feeling I’d from my very own characteristics when you look at the the nation is actually some around the one that Salinger is actually satirising. If that is what he could be starting. However, I’m not sure I got a handle towards Holden’s neediness and you may vulnerability all of these years back. He covers it out-of themselves, of course, and i believe I ran as well as the image he was to present, including the his pretended rely on and you can teenage ennui. Possibly that’s what the majority of people would once they understand that it book within a young age.
But that was then. Today, We question if it book is just throughout the a troubled adolescent. Holden’s far from xxx-upwards thinking to everyone is actually recognisable in all a lot of grownups about western. In their eyes, as for him, the interest paid back towards private worry about much outweighs one questions regarding neighborhood, plus it generally seems to myself this is exactly what Salinger satirises very mercilessly. Holden might be an adolescent, given that will be the people because most other legendary novel regarding mid-20th 100 years anxiety, God of the Flies. For the reason that book, Golding try shopping for a people devoid of new moral ability to manage the country it actually was undertaking. Salinger, at the same time… exactly what? Their narrator is destroyed on the blessed world he resides in, dislikes the new meaninglessness of it, detests their own incapacity so you’re able to navigate they, and contains little idea how to handle it. The guy informs us, have a tendency to, how ‘depressing’ it is. This is the new post-war community.
I am able to see why I adored it then, even after not an american which have parents rich enough to posting us to a pricey school
But I should tell you what the results are. He confides in us he really wants to start with ‘your day I left Pencey Prep’ and you can, 10 chapters inside, he’s not after his long afternoon’s trip into the evening. In almost any section discover other find you to definitely confirms their incapacity so you can apply at some body. Their roomie at college, his exasperated record teacher, anyone the guy meets you to definitely nights once he is chose to leave the newest place a few days early. He is come dumped-he confides in us this really is ‘about’ the brand new fourth date it offers occurred-as the he are unable to build relationships his degree much better than just having anyone up to him. You will find members of their lives, he informs us, that he would love to keep in touch with. But his more mature aunt, a writer, has started to become a great ‘prostitute’ from inside the Movie industry, their younger sibling try lifeless, in which he can not phone his precious more youthful cousin in place of his parents understanding exactly about they. He idolises them all, assure united states they are ‘the actual only real stupid one in the household.’ But stupid infants don’t understand Karen Blixen and you will Thomas Sturdy having pleasure. He has a lot of time having Eustacia Vye, Hardy’s headstrong (and ultimately worry about-destructive) anti-woman. He’d love to get in touch with the author in the event that he was not inactive also. It appears everybody fascinating may be out of reach.
Its neighbour next place provides unpleasant mossy-searching teeth, and a whole lot regarding crappy designs Holden loves to share with united states on, however, he however encourages him out over a film that have other friend
All of their knowledge try tricky, otherwise contradictory, otherwise one another. The guy does favours having their place-partner, however, dislikes ways the guy shaves, how the guy treats females (in the event the guy, Holden, tend to fantasises on what he would want to manage if the seniorpeoplemeet the guy could), just how the guy understands just how a good-searching they are. The guy really loves their record teacher, but concentrates on his bony tits in his putting on a costume-gown as he visits your in the home to state good-bye. When he actually starts to obtain the inescapable lecture, the guy desires the guy had not already been. Holden desires the guy to such as for instance him, and you can attempts to deflect his questions courtesy glib solutions. Such, does the guy have qualms about his upcoming? ‘Oh, We have a number of qualms, alright. Sure. . . not unnecessary. Not even, anyhow. I suppose they have not really struck myself but really. It entails one thing a while hitting me personally.’