Catcher in the Rye: Week 1

                I am reading “The Catcher in the Rye”, a novel by J.D. Salinger. The book starts off with this teenage kid named Holden Caulfield, talking about how he’s had a fine life and his family and everything. After that he starts talking about the school he recently attended called “Pencey Prep”. He tells the reader about the school a bit and what he didn’t like about it. That, to me, is the whole intro where he gives a little bit of his story and an idea of the situation he is in.

                Now I have read up to a part where he is talking to this old man who seemed to be a teacher from the old school. By now I have gotten a good idea of his personality, he is slightly negative with a hint of pessimism in the way he explains and talks about things. I can tell by the way he talks that he can see some of the illusions in life and doesn’t like how a lot of things are but he keeps it to himself.  For example, he always talks about words or phrases he hates and gets off the story he is talking about just to tell the reader how much he hates something. In this part where he is with the old man, Mr. Spencer, he hears Mr. Spencer say “I had the privilege of meeting your mother and dad when they had their little chat with Dr. Thurmer some weeks ago. They’re grand people”. After Old Spencer says that, Holden starts talking about how he hates the word “grand”.  Which is pretty funny to me right now but I can see his negativity in things getting old and annoying later in the book.

I can also see at the part of the book I am reading, that he didn’t really care for the exam paper he had to write for Mr. Spencer about Egyptians. Mr. Spencer told him to go get it and read it out loud to him. He was saying the whole time how he knew it was a trap, or in his words “a dirty trick”, right when Mr. Spencer brought up the paper and how it made him really mad. Mr. Spencer pointed out how he wrote a couple decent paragraphs then was done with the paper. This really made Mr. Spencer mad but Holden didn’t seem to care too much because he wasn’t interested in what Mr. Spencer was teaching. This probably explains why he failed all his other classes too, because he didn’t care enough to try and pass.

In the essay Holden wrote a note to Mr. Spencer saying “I’m sorry that is all I know about Egyptians. I didn’t find them very interesting… It is alright with me if you flunk me though as I am flunking everything else except English anyways”. In this part he showed how he didn’t want to make the teacher feel bad about flunking him but he didn’t even care if he was flunked. I’m not sure why he hasn’t started caring about school and why he spends time with this teacher if he doesn’t like school, it doesn’t make a lot of sense yet but it probably will as I keep reading.