Why do people have such a hard time understanding that The Catcher in the Rye is a book about death? There's references to death on almost every other page.
There’s the “It killed me” on page two about D. B. being in Hollywood, and then, at the bottom of the page, they talk about the football game: “you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn’t win.” On page four Holden tells us that he “got the ax,” and by page five that “you felt like you were disappearing.” Still only on page five, Mrs. Spencer asks Holden, “Are you frozen to death?” and the next thing you know he’s being ushered into Spencer’s room, where the old man appears to be lying, practically, on his death bed. On page nine, Holden talks about his gray hair; on page eleven, about the mummies; on fourteen, about a remark Spencer makes, “It made me sound dead, or something.” On page seventeen, “That killed me” reintroduces the recurring phrase that I eventually counted at least thirty-five times, and by page twenty, “You were a goner.” On page twenty two, Holden says of his hunting hat: “This is a people shooting hat...I shoot people in this hat.” And so on, and so on.
Why do you think Holden’s hunting hat is red: because Allie had red hair. There's Holden’s comment that “I act like I’m thirteen.” Although he’s sixteen when the book takes place, he was thirteen when Allie died. Why is Holden so urgent to know where the ducks went in the winter when the pond froze: he wanted to know where Allie had gone, and where he could find his mourning and unavailable mother. At the end of his B-movie reverie in the hotel where he pretends he's been shot, whether or not we want to know it, he finally tells us the truth: “What I really felt like, though,” he says, “was committing suicide.”
Luke King
It's about child abuse, you dolt.
Henry Rodriguez
Actually it's about having sex with your little sister.
Adam Garcia
I think it's probably about death and the loss of innocence mainly. You and OP are both right
Elijah Collins
It is not a book about death. It is a book about an adolescent who has lost his mental balance.
Grayson Hernandez
And why has he lost his mental balance....? Death.
Liam Diaz
No, it's because he feels guilty about cumming in his sister.
Jaxson James
Then why isn't everyone unbalanced? The problem is within his reaction to the circumstances, not the circumstances themselves.
Besides, you could be more exact by naming his problem as "time," which would also encompass the death of his brother. When you say "death" you're simplifying it in a way that excludes, for instance, his general observations about human beings and his desire to protect Phoebe from life.
Mason Lopez
ITT: >A book can only have one theme
Justin Stewart
Stop over analyzing it. It's just about a whiny teenager.
Jaxson Young
>Stop over analyzing it. It's just about a whiny teenager.
Jaxson Myers
It has covert and overt elements of death, abuse, selfishness, incest, mental instability, juvenility, and many other subversive jewish themes because it was written by a jew, which is also the reason it's a shitty book and high schoolers are forced to read it.
Hudson Turner
He lost it because he is a disillusioned teenager?
Pretty much. Are you writing an essay for school OP? It's silly to dissect novels to this degree.
Jeremiah Sullivan
There are no themes of incest in CITR
Nathan Clark
by definition everyone is unbalanced, if balance is the attainment of perfection. Holden was emphasizing these characteristics so that others would become uncomfortable in their realization that they're not as perfect as they think they are. That's why certain characters who knew they were far from perfect enjoyed his company, but ultimately became annoyed with it because he couldn't drop the intellectual facade.
Ryan Sanchez
So I'm with a girl and she has on one of those pointy goddamn sad little cone bras and she asks me to take off my goddamn shirt before we make out. So I do, and know what the hell she does? She laughs at my back acne for chrissakes, just point and laughs right there in the bedroom and all. So I call her a phony and get up to leave the goddamn room but she grabs me by the arm and looks at me with these big ol' wet movie starlett doe eyes. Christ, that always kills me. It really does. So I make up my mind to stay. and she's giddy and beside herself and all and we start to make out but then I get this feeling, like way deep down in my stomach, this queezy feeling, and I remember jane gallagher in her red and whtie sweater and I realize what I'm doing is just wrong and phony and all and I just up and walk out of there. And then, on the train home, wouldn't you damn well know it, it just starts up and raining and I feel like gods up there, but not with the apostles, just alone, and he's judging me for what ive just done. But I couldn't help it. That phoebe is just so sexy. She really is.
Josiah Barnes
Because his younger brother that he loved died, and he also saw one of his friends commit suicide? Because all of the objects of Holden’s affection were unavailable? Who are they? Jane Gallagher, the girl of his memories now going to football games with someone else; his dead brother, Allie; his little sister, Phoebe, who loves him but is too young to understand his angst (she loses patience with him for not liking anything); and the Museum of Natural History (“I loved that damn museum”). In Holden’s world, love is wrapped up like a mummy. His failing history essay is about the Egyptians, what they used “when they wrapped up mummies so that their faces would not rot,” and his visit to the Metropolitan Museum culminates in his showing two little kids the way to the mummies. What Holden seems really to be looking for his own Mummy, or Mommy, who has been very distracted, or perhaps even dead to him since Allie died. I think this is at the heart of the book. In Holden’s world, you can’t go back to childhood—that’s locked up in the Museum of Natural History, where Holden doesn’t make it past the front steps--but you can’t grow up either because growing up means becoming a phony. This relentless awareness of death and the language of death, of common phrases that embody darker meanings, this language obsessively alert to itself, seems to me the sign of something closer to art than not.
Christian Moore
>Stop over analyzing it. It's just about a whiny teenager. >It's silly to dissect novels to this degree
Go back to r/books sweeties
Dylan Butler
>silly >wrong
Blake Taylor
It's about a spoiled outcast learning that conversational prowess doesn't build relationships on it's own, and that there's more to life than sex and cigarettes.
He's pissed his closest friend sleeps with his childhood crush so he goes to new york to buy a hooker, expecting her to be homely and un-intimidating, but then he gets robbed and has no more of his parents money.
He still feels alone and doesn't want to admit defeat by go home, and facing his parents, so he instead sneaks back in and talks to his sister.
She tries to run away with him and he realizes he's a child who needs to grow up. So he takes her to the carousel so she can enjoy her youth.
He realizes what he already has and sees the pointless cyclical nature of childishness and emotion or some crap like that.
Colton Reyes
...
James Ortiz
It's this type of stuff that reminds me of sitting in English class in secondary school, listening to the teacher drill essay points into us from the study guide. In Holden's words, it all felt very phony. I have nothing against analyzing a book, but at a certain point the analyzation goes from knowledgeable and insightful to grasping at ghostly straws for some sick sense of intellectual masturbation, or a good grade, if you are doing it for school. Yes, death is a theme in the book, but let's leave it at the obvious reasons, and not examine every individual word of the novel.This book has been meticulously constructed for school kids to write essays for and there is nothing interesting or profound to be gained for examining it so closely.
dis bok has ben mehtikolusly constrected for skewl kids to wright essay for and theer is noting intresting or profund to be geened for examing it so clozely
Bentley Phillips
u lack perspective, srry champ. I bet you strike up cool conversations at bars that last up until the point they realize you don't have much to say.
You're like a waterfall that draws from a lake where it never rains. Hammering on the ground below, until you're gone. And it stays around.
Grayson Gomez
Are you going to dump the rest of your "I don't have a real response" folder?
>going to bars
What are you, some normalfag? Well, of course a normie is going to post this kind of rubbish.
Anthony Fisher
There's reason in what you're saying but you're overplaying your case. People right books in the tone and mode that they do for readers to conjecture and question the motifs therein. This type of dissection does get off course and needs digression at times, but it's all still relatively healthy because it's prodding you to think about the developments at hand.
Looking back, I think I just explained how to read.
Bentley Murphy
ME RIGHT YOU WRONG. ME NO READ BOOK. ME NO CAN READ BIG BOOK LONG WORDS
Henry Gray
why am I so shit at typing with my phone
Jackson Bennett
>having a negative and generalized opinion of going to the bar >assuming everyone who goes to the bar shares the same mindset >trying to flip my comment back on me >not having the sense to sniff out non-normies >still using normie as an insult >secretly worrying that normie applies to self >posting anime to assure the crowd that out of all the ugly things you are, you are not a normie >needing validation this much >being that which you hate >being worse than that which you hate >being you
Grayson Peterson
yeah this, it seems hes grappling with existentialism
Benjamin Myers
Are we discussing how to write a book in this thread or are we discussing the theme of death in CITR? Death is a theme so death gets mentioned. We mainly know it is about death because Holden is constantly bringing up his dead brother. Where are we getting by counting the number of times death is mentioned? Like I said, what the OP wrote is page filler for a high school essay.
Since you are so good at dissecting the mechanisms of chan meme banter you obviously know it's time for me to call you an autist.
Benjamin Price
How many times death is mentioned is important because the relentless awareness of death and the language of death, of common phrases that embody darker meanings, this language that obsessively asserts to itself, is one of the most important parts of the book stylistically and thematically you mouth-breathing retard. Sounds like you should go back to a high-school english class, it would do you some good.
Liam Gray
autistically,
Bentley Morales
>2017 >not knowing catcher is about the Illuminati
Carson Nelson
It's about (((a world))) where adults fucc kids. Creepy teacher? Student kills himself? Older brother 'away'? Holden giving Phoebe THE TIME? Holden thinks every older guy wants to fucc him?
Luke Williams
You are partly right about the circle jerk that goes on when discussing something very deeply, trying to draw meaning, but people are making fun of you because you basically said " this book has been written for school kids to write essays for" and "there's nothing interesting to gain from analyzing this work".
It definitely wasn't written for school kids to write essays about it, that's pretty retarded, the reason it is in so many schools, is because it is a short, easy to read story about adolescence that has very obvious themes that run through it, as Holden is expressing the things around him as he sees them.
basically >1. easy to read >2. school kids can relate >3. "easy" to dissect >4. actually a pretty good book
If you don't like the book because you had to read it as a kid or you whatever the reason is fine, but you can't argue that it isn't a good book.
John Gray
I think ur dumb
Samuel Ward
Yes, stylistically it's a good writing technique. I'm still waiting to know, however, why you started up a thread to explain all this.
> you basically said " this book has been written for school kids to write essays for
It's my fault if people can't get jokes. These short, easy to read and thematically heavy books are just prime material for wankers to shove their intellectual might around people. And what they write is just a regurgitation of school study guides.
>there's nothing interesting to gain from analyzing this work Well, I didn't mean to say altogether, just at the length the OP is going to. But c'mon, not to shove my own intellectual might around but we are talking about Catcher in the Rye here.
Justin Davis
sounds like someone's dealing with Holden Syndrome
gitoutahere, go on! git!
Adam Barnes
Get the fuck out of this thread faggot, you have contributed absolutely nothing except your inane and pedantic criticisms of one of the greatest novels ever written.
Wyatt Gonzalez
>you have contributed absolutely nothing except your inane and pedantic criticisms
Still a notch above the rest.
>one of the greatest novels ever written
Overrated drivel desu. Well, maybe not pure drivel but still very overrated.
Blake Ramirez
it's like he's serious or something. keep poking him I wanna see what he does next!
Alexander Adams
Catcher is easily one of the most overrated novels ever written. It's a tragedy of American education that kids are forced to read that childish jewish drivel.
Daniel Reyes
are you smarter than the pastor at your local church? wait no, hold on. are you a notch above than the pastor at your local church?
Aaron Jackson
Hahaha this guy has read the Western canon??? And Catch Her is one of THE GREATEST? Hahahahahahahahahaha finest shitposting
Hudson Peterson
>doesn't realize some novels are written to create reactions >reacts by calling novel overrated >keeps Hitler alive by talking about him
Jacob Young
Someone whose name begins with a H deserves to be remembered and he didn't become an overrated novel.
Ethan Young
I acknowledge that this jew wrote this book to get a reaction. That's what jews do, they undermine their host culture. But that doesn't make it less of a shitty book.
Liam Edwards
look into my eyes:
u r a cosmic joke u r a hangnail u r not worthy of spelling words to completion
but apparently u r worthy of a reply but so was the homeless guy that asked me for my shoes earlier. fuck that. these are my good shoes.
Brody Howard
the parasite knows the parasite is shitty. and the parasite knows he has succeeded when people communicate what an excellent job they're doing at being shitty.
so congratulations, you're a fan
Michael Williams
You know I just have to say that I never thought I'd see the year when people on Veeky Forums were non ironically offended by nazis and things like nigger faggots. You can tell me to go to pol all you want but you've got to stop acting like such a Holden.
Ayden Reed
>the parasite knows the parasite is shitty. The parasite in question thinks it is chosen to rule the earth.
Isaac Fisher
no dude you are literally retarded and do not get it. I wasn't replying to the fact that you think hitler deserves to be remembered. I don't even know why you said that by the way. I mean I do. But it's because you're retarded. and I'll explain it if you want. But I don't feel like it other than saying you see implications where there are none because you have the tendency to project without realizing what you're projecting.
I was comparing Catcher to Hitler in that if you want something to disappear (not that I fucking want either to disappear, nothing should disappear, and assuming those kinds of intentions from that statement is going to keep you in the lower strata of society. maybe middle class at best.) then you stop talking about it. So if you want it to go away, then go away yourself and think about other things. You obviously have some pretty serious hangups with the book and its main character (calling me Holden for example). I hope you're able to work those out in the time we've spent here. Realistically, you have years to go.
Every time you write something people are introduced to how unbelievably unconcerned you are with your own lack of perspective. Because you're retarded. Not in intellect (yet), but in that you have your gates shut to anything new and uncomfortable.
I'd rather eat 34 flies than sit in a room with you and pretend you're an equal. Piss off and fetch me some tea
Juan Cooper
goal oriented. I dig it.
someone's gotta do it. don't hate the player.
Justin Gomez
So we agree that Hitler was right then and should be remembered? I don't know what you are trying to say.
Michael Morgan
"and to your left ladies and gentlemen you'll see a beautiful example of hopeless sapien
Brody Miller
end quote
Lincoln Williams
>Holden thinks every older guy wants to fucc him Sometimes, I really think this too.
Jaxson Jones
Were you that shit-poster who says he visits lit only to shit on books but doesn't actually read like a week ago?