The Catcher in the Rye Holden Caulfield

             I have changed courses on the novel I will be blogging on.  I am now reading The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.  I am currently on chapter four and so far like the novel.  In most novels, the first couple of chapters tend to be boring because the author is trying to set the foundation for the rest of the novel. 

            From the first page of The Catcher in the Rye, you are able to see that it is going to be a different read than you are used to.  I say this because the very first sentence shocked me.  “If you really want to hear about it the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth” (Salinger 1).  Most authors start their novels out with exactly what Holden said.  You do not start to really learn about Holden until the second chapter. 

            Holden Caulfield is seventeen years old, who usually acts like he is around the age of twelve or thirteen.  He lives in New York.  “I’m six foot two and a half and I have gray hair” (Salinger 9).  Holden towers over many of the people he meets, which is a lot because he cannot stay put in one school for very long.  It is very peculiar that a seventeen year old has gray hair.  The gray hair started to appear on the right side of his head when he was a kid and it kept spreading.  Holden Caulfield is the type of person who does not like to apply themselves in school.  He has a lousy vocabulary because he does not feel like extending it.  At Pencey, the school he was attending, Holden flunked four out of the five classes he was taking.  The only class he did not fail was English and that was because he knew the criteria being taught.  A previous school had already gone over it.

Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 1951. Print.