Symbol-ism
when/why does Holden wear his red hunting hat?
He wears his hat to feel confident (it's his armor), for example he wears it when writing about Allie.
Who is Holden's favourite brother?
Allie
Holden said: "I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all." Who are the people he is trying to catch?
Children
What does phony mean?
it means fake.
What is Holden's last name?
Caulfield
when/why does Holden drink?
Holden drinks to socialize, to cope with his trauma, and to escape from his problems.
Throughout the novel Holden talks with a lot of people, what is he looking for in these conversations.
To be listened to and/or for someone to reassure him about his fear of adult life.
What does this quote show us about Holden?
“I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.”
He's insecure, he lies, he sees himself as unrefined or unscholarly because he struggles in school, but his extensive reading (like Ring Lardner) proves he's actually quite knowledgeable and engaged with literature, even if he doesn't fit the "educated" mold
Name one contradiction that people, in the US., in the 50s, experienced that made them look phony.
They had to have a "normal life" even though there was a chance they everbody would die from a nucelar bomb. Even though some people had a lot of money, cultural minorites lived in extreme poverty. People had to be "normal" but the government was making movies on how to be "normal." Other answers...
the novel is narrated in first, second, or third person?
First person
the ducks in the lagoon in winter symbolize what?
Holden's fear of change. He's afraid that he will have to change his life just like the ducks do come winter time to survive.
Name one way in which Holden "masks" his emotions when narrating the story.
He uses the passive voice, his narrative voice is full of words to minimize his trauma like "sort of," he lies, he repeats the same words many time, he drinks (substances), and he exagerrates a lot.
Holden said: "The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. . . . Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you" Explain the relevance of this quote.
It shows Holden's obsession with stopping time, and wanting everything to stay the same.
Tell me one moment from the book that showcases Holden's feeling of alienation.
answers may vary.
Holden often says "it killed me." Usually it means that you find something funny, but Holden says it for what other reasons?
To try to play off sad things that happened to him/that made him mad/sad.
The carousel and the golden ring symbolize what?
the carousel symbolizes youth and innocence. A carousel is mostly a children’s ride. Reaching for the golden ring, however, is symbolic of growing up. As the kids on the carousel try to grab the golden ring, Holden is afraid Phoebe might fall off the ride trying to get it. As “the catcher in the rye”, Holden longs to preserve the childhood innocence the carousel represents but by the novel’s end, he acknowledges, if not accepts, the need for children to grow up eventually and that he can't protect them:
“The thing is with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them.” (211)
The shape of the carousel is also worth mentioning. As a circle that keeps on spinning, the carousel is both stagnant and infinite, which aligns with Holden’s desire for things to stay as they are and has its parallels with his fondness for the museum displays, which are essentially frozen in time.
When Holden visits Mr. Antolini, we learn of two traumatic things happened to him when he was younger. Name one of them.
1. He was seuxally abused many times.
2. One of his classmate took his own life in Holden's jacket.
Holden said: “I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.” Why is that quote important?
Becasue he thinks that we live in a world full of phonies, and that you have to be a phony to survive.
Mental illness is a major theme in this novel, name three signs that Holden is in dire need of psychological help.
his loss of interest for many things, his cynical worldview, his suicidal thoughts, his trauma in relation to his sexual assaults, death of a clasmmate and his brother, his substance abuse, his mood swings, etc.
Salinger was drafted in WW2, and was surely traumatized by his time in the war. How does he portray that trauma in the book?
Why is it so important that Phoebe puts on the red hunting hat on Holden's head at the end of the novel?
Phoebe puts the hunting cap on him, as if to say: this thing gives you the confidence you need to keep the rain out of your eyes and go on living with some semblance of integrity in the adult world? So wear it. In short, in a very quiet and subtle way, Phoebe empathizes with Holden, which is striking mostly because no one has empathized with him in the entire novel.
Explain to me why even though Holden lies, is unreliable, exaggerates, and is sometimes mean, he is still being authentic.
Holden is authentic because his lies, exaggerations, and meanness stem from his genuine pain, fear, and longing for connection in a world he finds "phony," making his unreliability a truthful reflection of adolescent confusion, trauma (Allie's death), and a desperate, if flawed, attempt to protect his sensitive, innocent self from a corrupt adult world, ultimately revealing his authentic desire for truth and purit
Mr Antolini said: "I have a feeling that you’re riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall. . . . The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. . . So they gave up looking" Explain the relevance of that quote.
Mr. Antolini’s words here resonate with the desires Holden has just expressed to Phoebe: like the catcher in the rye that Holden envisions, Mr. Antolini is trying to catch Holden in the midst of a “fall.” But the fall Mr. Antolini describes is very different from the one Holden had imagined. Holden pictured an idyllic world of childhood innocence from which children would fall into a dangerous world; Mr. Antolini describes Holden in an apathetic free fall—giving up, disengaging himself from the world, falling in a void removed from life around him. In both cases, we sense that although Holden envisions himself as the protector rather than the one to be protected, he is the one who really needs to be caught.
Pick a major theme of the book, and give me four reasons why your team believes it's the main theme of the book.
answers may vary...
Alienation
Phoniness
Mental illness
Growing up
In the end, does Holden succeed in getting someone to listen/empathize with him? Why or why not?
He succeeds in doing so through this novel. Remeber ther are two Holdens in this novel. The sixteen-year-old Holden who has trouble getting someone to listen to him, and the seveteen-year-old Holden who found a way to write his story. Through things like the red hunting cap, we understand him and we can listen to him. That's the miracle of language, especially effective, figurative language. The hunting cap, the passive voice, the Natural History Museum, the carousel: all these things are ways into Holden's experience. That's how he gets into our brains and lets us see the world through his eyes