The Catcher in the rye

My First opinion:

I heard a lot about this book and I heard it was very popular, so I thought this must be a great book. It looked a bit old fashioned but some old fashioned books can be fun. So I started reading. I read a few pages and I was very confused because I couldn't make any sense of it. So I did some research to give me some idea about what the book was about. And it seems that Holden, the main character, is writing this story from a nut house. This made it much clearer. Holden changes subjects quite often, which makes it difficult to follow. When I read the first lines I knew I wasn’t going to like the style of how the writer had written. I don’t like to read a book where they only use the first person perspective point of view (Miles, 2012). Maybe if it were told differently I would but in this case I didn’t like it.

In class discussion/theory:

In class we talked about how to design an assignment after letting your pupils read a book. In class you can react on the book they have read by sharing your enthusiasm and theirs. You can talk about parts of the story and ask them what they liked and what they didn’t like. You also can ask them what they thought was unclear in the story, what they thought the important elements were and which patterns they see. By reacting on the book you can either do this individually or in a cooperative activity. It is better to do this in a cooperative way because everybody knows something but there’s nobody who knows everything. So it is better to let the pupils discuss the book together in groups. There are some questions you have to avoid during the discussion in class. Never ask the question “Why?”, don’t ask for summaries and what does the author mean? You don’t want to know this. It is not interesting and you don’t know why an author wrote the book in the way he did. During the discussion you have to keep the conversation going. You have to bring the pupils back to the text by asking them; “ How do you know that?”. You can also ask them; “ What surprised or shocked you?”. Or particular questions like; “What if…”. I thought the assignment tips were quite interesting to know. Now I can use this in my classes.

After we talked about designing an assignment we talked about Erikson’s identity and role confusion. There are a several kind of types in the identity versus role confusions stage;

-       Moratorium

-       Foreclosure

-       Negative identity

-       False identity

-       Narcissism

Moratorium is when somebody is stuck in this phase. In the worst case this can lead to schizophrenia.

Foreclosure is that someone gets in this stage too earl because of pressure from parents or when a parent dies a child feels like he or she has to fulfill the task of the mum or dad.

Negative Identity is when somebody defines his of herself as what he or she is not. They focus on the negative things. He or she is the opposite of the things around them. This doesn’t necessarily have to be negative.

False identity is when someone has gender problems.

And the last one is Narcissism. Here you have primary and secondary narcissism. Primary narcissism is when somebody loves him or herself. And secondary narcissism is when he or she only starts to feel good about him or herself when they have a 1000 friends on Facebook or when they get at least 500 messages a day. They have no self-esteem what so ever.

After we spoke about all this theory we had to fill in a form about the books we have read and then discuss this with each other. We agreed on the fact that we all didn’t like the book. At the question; “What did you like about the book?”, we all answered; “Nothing!”. We all didn’t like the first person perspective style in which the book was written. And we all thought that the point of the story was very unclear. The patterns we saw were; same language Holden uses and depression. And if we link the theory with the book we could say that Holden is in the moratorium phase, the negative identity and in the secondary narcissism. Holden is tries to relate to different identities. He changes it every time he meets someone else or new. He also has a negative identity because he only focuses on the negative things. For example, everybody is a phony and you can tell he is depressed. Last but not least Holden is very insecure and has very little self-esteem. You can tell this because when Stradlater asks him to do him a favour by doing his homework, he does this for Stradlater.

After talking about “ The Catcher in the rye” someone asked why this book is so popular because nobody liked the book. We were told that in 1951 when it was written the book was a breakthrough. It is a memory of a certain time. The way they spoke then is different than we talk now. Holden has to call this girl at home hoping that her mum or dad won’t pick up the phone. Pupils now can’t imagine what this feels like. So we could use this book for history class as well to talk about that time.

We also talked about the two other books and linked the types of identity versus role confusion to them as well. Looking at “The Catcher in the rye” and “The Wasp factory”, they are both controversial which “The story of Tracey Beaker” is not.

Age suitability:

In the class discussion we had, we thought the book is suitable for children of 14-16 years old. When I looked it up on the internet they say that the age suitability is indeed 14 years old. I ended up at a website called “Common sense”. They have a part where they tell parents what they need to know about the book. I think that’s great because parents know their children best. Not every child at that age is at the same stage so parents can decide wether their child is ready for reading this book. On the Common sense website they tell parents about the swearing, that the book is about a rebellious teen, that there are sexual references and people smoking and drinking. But also that parents must see the point of this book, which is a compassionate tale of a child adrift in the world (Perle, 2013).

Holden shows how a boy in puberty can act. The Puberty is a stage that can start between 9 and 12 years. Boys usually complete puberty between 16-17 (Wikipedia, 2013). The behaviour Holden shows in the book can be related to the behaviour of a boy in his puberties. During puberty, hormones and chemicals are released into the body, which can result in psychological changes. These may include; Mood swings, tiredness, sadness, irritability, anger, anxiety, self-consciousness, sexual desires/arousals (Lohmann, 2013). This is why this book is a great book for boys at the age of 14 who are in the midst of their puberty because they can relate to Holden.

Bibliografie

Lohmann, R. (2013, October 12). Share care. October 12, 2013, van Share care: http://www.sharecare.com/health/endocrine-system/psychological-changes-boys-during-puberty

Miles, E. (2012). Literature 1. English and American short stories , p10.

Perle, L. (2013, October 12). Common sense. October 12, 2013, van Common sense: http://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/the-catcher-in-the-rye

Wikipedia. (2013, October 12). Wikipedia. October 12, 2013, van Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puberty