It’s almost spring, and the ninth graders are reading The Catcher in the Rye again. Again the line that says that D. B. is in Hollywood, prostituting himself, perplexes them. They haven’t heard this term used metaphorically before, and they skate right over the framing device on the first page, too, not noticing that Holden is telling the story from California, not Agerstown, that he’s had to “come out here and take it easy” after “all the madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas.” They don’t clock that the Holden telling the story is seventeen, not sixteen, a year out from the events he relates to us, that he’s had plenty of time to think about how to tell his tale.
"Unlike Holden, I’m aware that rebellion past a certain age isn’t really possible, which is why I’ve taken four hours of personal time and cleared them with HR in advance."
You know its funny, I read the link you posted and I realized that I read it back in 2009 and probably had a very different reaction to it.
I think my take away from when I read Catcher in school may have been similar to that of many other students: "Yeah ok, cool, this kid seems rich and grumpy and he seems to speak about women poorly. Whatever, what is the teacher going to ask on the test/quiz or what am I going to have to remember so that I can write a decent essay? Man, I have to go do some pre-calc homework now, and then there is the French reading. Oh wait, I have a statistics quiz tomorrow, right?"
After re-reading the book in recent years, I think what really hit me was how Salinger got into the mind of a kid and how incredibly challenging that must be to do. I can take away many themes in the book: loneliness/depression, love/family, wealth, misogyny, that awkward scene with the (former?) teacher. But above all it was voice and how Salinger got it. For me, time has passed since the book's writing and we can look at many things in context to that era (for better or for worse), but Salinger's ability to put one in Holden's shoes... I am still in awe.
That words change -- what a great lesson. All the characters in nineteenth century novels who have a gay old time...
I wonder how different the class dialogue is and what is picked up/taken away by students compared to when we read Catcher in the Rye in school.
"Unlike Holden, I’m aware that rebellion past a certain age isn’t really possible, which is why I’ve taken four hours of personal time and cleared them with HR in advance."
So good.
Tell us more about the trip. And if the kids eventually got to like *Catcher.*
You know its funny, I read the link you posted and I realized that I read it back in 2009 and probably had a very different reaction to it.
I think my take away from when I read Catcher in school may have been similar to that of many other students: "Yeah ok, cool, this kid seems rich and grumpy and he seems to speak about women poorly. Whatever, what is the teacher going to ask on the test/quiz or what am I going to have to remember so that I can write a decent essay? Man, I have to go do some pre-calc homework now, and then there is the French reading. Oh wait, I have a statistics quiz tomorrow, right?"
After re-reading the book in recent years, I think what really hit me was how Salinger got into the mind of a kid and how incredibly challenging that must be to do. I can take away many themes in the book: loneliness/depression, love/family, wealth, misogyny, that awkward scene with the (former?) teacher. But above all it was voice and how Salinger got it. For me, time has passed since the book's writing and we can look at many things in context to that era (for better or for worse), but Salinger's ability to put one in Holden's shoes... I am still in awe.