Just something I thought about...

I think if we had to do a cd for this book, this song would be a good one to use.

The Classic Crime:
Far From Home

I’ve got a bad taste in me
It’s like I’ve been robbed of something
I once was in my childhood memories
And it’s buried in sandboxes back where we used to see
The dreams could come true if believed
The sidewalks scream our names

We are so
Far from home
Far from home

I’ve got a bad pain in my heart
It’s like the first time that I looked in your eyes
The first time it all fall apart
And it’s buried in sandboxes back where we used to see
The dreams could come true if believed
The sidewalks scream our names

We are so
Far from home
Far from home
[x2]

All I have is words
To which I’m a slave
I scribble them down
Hoping to save me
But I’m lost
I’m so lost

These pages will burn
And I’ll pass away
Yesterday’s gone
And I just can’t shake
The fact that I’m lost
I’m so lost

But now we are so far from home
Far from home

Now we are so far from home
Far from home
[x5]


It is really similar to what something Holden might say. He practically lost his childhood after Allie dies, and he wishes that it could come back...

Week Four Blog entry: Characters...

I chose Pheobe as my character to analyze. Pheobe first appears in the book in Chapter 9, but is discribed by Holden in Chapter 10. "You'd like her. I mean if you tell old Pheobe something, she knows...what you're talking about."-p.67 From the very first time Holden discribes her, it almost seems like she is the girl version of Allie. Holden discribes her so similarly to Allie. Holden likes that Pheobe will listen to you and not put you down when you say something, she tries to encourage.

Throughout the book Holden does or says things for/about Phoebe. He buys a record for her when he is in New York. "I was lucky. The first record store I went into had a copy...I could hardly wait to get to the park to see if old Phoebe was around so that I could give it to her."-p.116 He doesn't want to hurt her in any way, and when he is drunk he breaks the record, "Then something terrible happened just as I got in the park. I dropped old Phoebe's record. It broke into about fifty pieces."-p.154 He says that he feels terrible, and he keeps the pieces. I am not sure what he was planning on happening about the broken pieces, if he was going to give them to her or not*. *I am pretending like I haven't read ch. 21 and 22, and that I did this post earlier :). When Holden talks about Phoebe he seems very happy, and in a different state of mind. I think that he tries to make things not as hard on her when he makes certain decisions.

Poem

IT JUST DIDN'T APPEAL TO ME

Caught in the moment.
I told her I loved her,
It was a lie.
But I meant it
When I said it.
That was then,
But this is now.
And now I know.
It was too good
To be true.
At first I was glad.
Now I am sad.

It would be nice
If things could be
How they were before.
I like the things
That never change.
Things that always
Stay the same
No matter how long
You have been gone.
I get very happy
When I think about it.
But,
When I got there,
It just didn't appeal to me.

Chapters 12-18

Well, I haven't blogged about anything since chapter 11, and now I am through chapter 18. A lot of things happened during these chapters. Holden goes to some bars, and tries to get alcohol. I don't think he really ever says why he wants to drink. Maybe he wants to be "older", or he likes the way they taste, or they make him feel better. I really think that it could be just drinking to drink, just like how he smokes and doesn't really care, he just does it; almost as a rebellion. He ends up going to Ernie's where he can get a drink. "If you were only around six years old, you could get liquor at Ernie's...nobody cared how old you were."-Holden p.85

At Ernie's he meets one of DB's old friends,Lillian, and she talks to him. Holden is annoyed and feels constricted and claustrophobic while in Ernie's. He ends up leaving and walking back to his Hotel because he doesn't want to be in another cab., and he was already surrounded by phonies all night. In the elevator up to his room, Holden is offered the chance to "having a good time" that night with a girl, and he has one sent up.

Holden is very nervous before she comes, and before he had stated,""Okay," I said. It was against my principles and all, but I was feeling so depressed I didn't even think."p.91 This is one of the first times that we see Holden say something that is considered bad to us, that he says is against his principles. It makes me think about what his other principles are if he smokes and drinks, and lies so much, etc. He doesn't end up doing anything with her, so he only gave her $5. Sunny takes the money but goes and brings Maurice up and tries to get $5 more out of Holden. Holden refuses because Maurice had only said $5. Holden gets hit by Maurice, and Sunny takes $5 out of his wallet,and they leave Holden on the floor.

Holden goes through a huge depression state. He starts to talk to Allie, he says,"...I started talking,sort of out loud, to Allie. I do that sometimes when I get very depressed."-p.98 He goes through things that he did to Allie that might not have been the nicest. From what Holden says, it sounds like he gets depressed a lot. We can see now more of the reasons he does the things he does. Holden is trying to figure life out, and when he is depressed he thinks about Allie who can't live his life anymore, and I think that Holden feels bad, or at least feels for him.

In the morning he calls Sally Hayes. He sets up a date with her later that day. He goes and buys tickets for a show, and goes to eat breakfast. He meets two nuns and then starts talking to them. He enjoys talking to them, and they are different then he thinks they would be., which I think surprises Holden. He always wants to find the bad in people, and then he was proved wrong. After they left, he was then afraid that they might have been trying to see if he was Catholic or not, which ruins his experience with them.

When he finally meets Sally, he automatically thinks that the wants to marry her. They go to the show, and all through their date, Sally kept showing that she was more phony than he thought or wanted her to be. They end up really breaking up and get upset. It is really sad, because this was Holden's first connection with someone he knew, and at the beginning he was really excited, but by the end, he was very upset with her. This situation ruins Holden's willingness (for now) to do things.

important/insightful passage

"I got up closer so I could hear what he was singing. He was singing that song,"If a body catch a body coming through the rye."... It made me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed any more. " -Holden p.115

Holden is in New York and he is walking on the streets towards Broadway so that he can pick up an album for his sister, Phoebe. After he gets the album, he goes back on the street and sees a family whom he expects is poor and had gone to church (it was Sunday). There was a little boy who was walking on the street next to his parents who were on the sidewalk, and the little boy was singing while he was walking.

This song gives us, the readers, a connection to the title of the book The Catcher in the Rye . It is clearly something the author put in their on purpose. I am not sure how it ties in yet because we are not far enough into the book to know, but I think we will be getting some more insight towards the end of the book. Right now I am not even exactly sure what "catcher in the rye" means; though I'd imagine that it is essential to the ending of the book. It is hard to analyze this quote because I don't know where the book, is going, but I do know that it will be important later.

Chapters 9-11 & Stuck between two worlds(part2)

Today I read Chapters 9 through 11 of The Catcher in the Rye . Holden is now finally away from Pency and out on his own. [He has not contacted his family]. Holden tries to act or pretend to be older to get with girls and get alcoholic beverages. He stays in a hotel by himself, and he also notices all the phonies, and other "bad influences" (people). I really think that Holden wants to be an adult and a child; depending on his mood. In these chapters his mood makes him want to be an adult, but for the wrong reasons. He does not want any of the responsibilities that an adult has or anything like that, he just wanted to be older so he could do things that were illegal for him to do as a minor. When he talks about his sister Phoebe, he talks the world about her. He loves her so much, and describes her very much similar to his brother Allie. When he describes both of them in the book, they are very similar, and he just seems in this rut and starts saying things over and over about his younger siblings. I think at these points, Holden wants to go back and have the feeling of being a sweet innocent child again, and go back and make different decisions. One of the things that I struggle with is that I don't want to get any older. Every year I get older, more and more responsibilities come to me. I love being a mature young adult, but the word that scares me is adult. The word that means I have to do things on my own. In a little over two months I will turn 17; this scares me because it just seems so old, and I don't want to feel old. I have felt more stress on myself from school every year since I became a teenager. However, there are some people that are teenagers, or younger that want to be older or an adult, so they can get out of their parents house, or be able to do "cool" things. I think that most of the time Holden puts out or tells himself that he wants to be an adult, so he can do his own thing; but deep down, he wants to be a child again, and because he keeps it put away so much he is closer to being an adult (a very immature adult), than to being a child-like person/teenager. At some points in his walk in life, it is a toss up for him. It is also hard to categorize him as an "adult", because he really is just acting like a very young person, and he doesn't want to deal with the responsibilities dealt to him. In most of the Chapters nine through eleven, he is trying to act like an adult; or just act old enough to seem old enough.

Chapters 6-8 & Stuck between two worlds(part1)

Over this weekend, I read chapters six, seven, and eight of The Catcher in the Rye . I was really looking forward to reading these chapters to see what came after chapter five, where Holden told us (the readers) about the death of his brother, Allie. In Chapter six we see Holden come out a little. He gets (some-what) angry at Stradlater and what he and Jane might or might not have done on their "date". At this point you can see that Holden really cares about Jane and that he respects her. Stradlater gets angry at the things that Holden says to him, and ends up beating Holden up. After Holden is beat up, he goes to Ackley and asks if he can stay in his room while his room mate was gone. I think that this says something about Holden, that he goes to people whom he doesn't necessarily like for help (or a form of help). I really think he didn't care if he was beat up because he was getting out of Pency soon. In Chapter eight, Holden takes the train, and meets the mother of one of the phonies at Pency. He engages in a conversation with her and lies about himself. It seems that if he knows that he won't see a person again, he can lie, or if the subject never comes up again, he can lie his way through anything. I think that his lies are a mask in front of his true self that he doesn't want to show anyone. I think that Holden doesn't want to feel emotional about his brother or his family. I think he wants to bury his past; his childhood. He tells himself that he had a bad childhood and he didn't want to talk about it, which is reasonable, because his brother died. I think at that point in his life he felt so overwhelmed with emotion and change that it kind-of made him grow up really quickly. He didn't want it to happen, but I don't think that he feels he can go back to how things were before Allie died, like he didn't want Allie to be jealous or something (that might be a stretch). He had to grow up so fast that he feels old and busy and not a child, while some of his actions could be called "childish", I would probably say more like immature, which is similar. I think he feels he should be like an adult in some ways, but it is obviously not working well for him. In reality, he really is stuck in between two worlds; of adulthood and childhood. He is not innocent as a child, but he makes a lot of decisions like a child, his age is right in between, but he feels old inside, he has a lot of responsibilities put on him (that most likely he doesn't do). He can't fit in either world, and he feels alone; alienated from both. {the evidence from ch 9-11, connection to us, and his place on the path on next post (part 2)}