...media res Anyay it as Saturday of the football game ith Saxon HallSalinger allos his center character to tell his adventures in his on ay employing a first person narration. Holden does not alays function as a trustorthy narration. He is presented as an imaginative teenager, a compulsive liar characterized by habitual exaggerations.Holden gives us a partial vie on reality, his vie is often a diseases one and he doesnt give an objective account of the events. Although his state of mind makes him see only the filth and perversion around him, his criticisms are quite often valid.Salinger uses the limited omniscient vie the reader sees everything trough Holdens consciousness. Thus, e speak about internal focalization. Since there is only one character through hose eyes the events are vieed, the internal focalization is fixed. Salinger does not use internal focalization rigorously, since the focalized characters appearance, behavior and thoughts can ith difficulty be described objectively.In Holdens narration, e encounter the traditional formulas used by narrators You remember I said before, Ill just tell you, Some things are hard to remember.Salinger uses analepses ithin the story itself, but these are not formal flashbacks, since the earlier events come to us in fragments. The fragmented nature of their presentation is indicative of Holdens state of mind. There are certain events that deeply trouble him, that plague his thoughts.Holdens flasks remembering the death of his brother Allie and that of James Castle, his friendship ith Jane are that took place before the beginning of the story. He is troubled by the fate of the ducks in Central Park - these event appear as recurrent images throughout the novel. Thus, Salinger uses the technique of having identical phrases, and similar occurences appear from time in the novel. In describing Janes refusal to move her kings hen playing checkers, he uses the iterative She ouldnt move any of her kings. He, thus, introduces one of Janes favorite habits- a futile gesture hich comes to be a symbol for permanence.J. D. Salinger uses the repetitive to represent Holdens obsession ith different things. These obsessions are also rendered by his vocabulary, besides the recurrent images of the novel.Holden is deeply troubled by death and, from the beginning to the end of the novel, this appears under different forms. Death is present at Pencey through the Ossenburger chemorial ing named after an undertaker ho graduated from this school and ho gave Pencey a pile of dough. For Holden, Ossenburger is the unscrupulous phony interested above all in money he started these undertaking parlors all over the county that you could get members of your family buried for about five bucks apiece5. Stradlater himself calls the school a goddam morgue.Holden recalls over and over his late brother, Allie, hose death some years before caused another of his nervous breakdons. He cannot really accept Allie lying in that crazy cemetery, here all the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go some place nice for dinner everybody except Allie6.Holdens obsession ith death is present in his language, too on almost every page of the novel there appear the ords kill or dead or phrases analogous to them You ere supposed to commit suicide or something if old pencey didnt in, I nearly got killed, That killed me, She kills me, That kills me.Holden derives comfort from the dead among the fe people he likes there is James Castle, ho chose to die rather than go back on his ord.At the beginning of the novel, the narrator establishes some facts of the story foreshadoing the end of the novel prolepses. The reader knos that something unpleasant is going to happen to Holden.As for the category of duration, in The Catcher in the Rye, the dialogue and the descriptive pauses function in both ays they advance the unfolding of the events or they add extrainformation ithout contributing to the progress of the events. The description of the football game ith Saxton Hall is a means of setting the scene and the atmosphere of the novel ithout giving further information as to hat happened to Holden. The dialogue beteen Holden and Mr. Spencer, ith its frequent repetition of ho are you, hove you been and hos, underlines the failure of the characters to make a true communication. On the other hand, from Holdens description of. Mr. Spencer in his home, e may infer the eakness and inability of the teacher to help Holden. hat made it even more depressing, old Spencer had on this very sad, ratty old bathrobe that he as probably born in or something. I dont much like to see old guys in their pajamasTheir bumpy old chests are alays shoing7.This is also the case ith the description of Mr. Antolini. Although Holden is attached to the teacher, he drops some hints about Mr. Antolini being more itty than intellectual about being a pretty heavy drinker and about his smoking like a field, snoing that Antolini himself is caught in the fall and hence he is unable to be a catcher for Holden.Holdens dialogue ith the nuns doesnt advance the story, it helps to reinforce some qualities of Holden, hich his eccentric behaviour conceals, - such as compassion, love for literature and kindness.The semes converging upon Holden are scattered throughout the text and the character is thus gradually constructed. The reader is not given a static portrait of Holden. It is characteristic of Salinger that the reader learns very little about the characters physical appearance. ith Holden, e kno only some facts about his groth I gre six and half inches last year. Thats ho I practically got t.b. Im pretty halthy, though8Since Holden does not alays function as a trustorthy narrator, there is often a discrepancy beteen his opinions on himself and his actions. The reader himself. Despite his constant searing throughout the novel, he exhibits armth and much common sense. His hatred of movies is also misleading, because through his continuous role acting be proves to be a telented performer. His hatred of the orld around turns out to be deep involvement About all I kno is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. Even old Stradlater9.ith Holdens language, Salinger gives the reader an accurate impression of the speech of a teenager in the 1950s. The fact that the language is colloquial and slangy gives an air of realism to the novel and it also reflects the situation Holden is in he acts impulsively and often he fails to analyse the implications of his actions. The frequent use of and all, I really did emphasizes his basic insecurity as if he feels he has to repeat everything he says before anyone ill believe him he must also insist on the truth of his statements. His language is also suggestive of his sense of isolation.Much of the humour of the novel resides in the use of teenage slang She as about as kindhearted as a goddam olf, I kept holding into the phone, sort of, so I ouldnt pass out, Im sor...
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