Monday's lesson notes

1. Holden’s choice to describe Allie’s baseball mitt for Stradlater’s essay and his description of his brother

·         Sadness/grief

o   We see this through Holden’s tone, turns to a more somber feeling but positive at the same time. This is one of the few occasions where we see Holden speaking positively about something or somebody.

o   “I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist…” – p. 34. Holden tells us what he did; as readers we have to deduce that he was overwhelmed with grief and sadness on this night.

·         Reminiscing on how his brother used to be a happy, intelligent kid

o   “…He was about fifty times as intelligent. He was terrifically intelligent” – p. 33

o   “But it wasn’t just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at people.” – p. 33

o   When we compare Holden’s very positive attitude to Allie with his very negative attitude to everybody else, we understand the strength of his grief and the power of his love for Allie.

·         Rage

o   By Holden smashing the windows, we can see that he loved his brother and he misses him

o   May create the feeling for the reader that he feels that life is unfair: why did a ‘good, intelligent’ kid like his brother have to die over someone else?-

·         Death/loss

o   Not something that should be taken lightly

o   The effect that one death can have on many different lives

o   Hurts to lose someone so important

o   Impacts on how Holden thinks and acts

 

2. Holden’s concerns about the ducks in Central Park – This is a motif, a symbol which will continue to appear throughout the novel.

- The ducks are forced to flee and Holden is trying to see what the ducks do as he is forced to flee. Page 11: “I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.” This when he is talking to Old Spencer and his mind wonders.

-  The ducks prove that some vanishings are only temporary. Traumatized and made aware of the fragility of life by his brother Allie’s death, Holden is terrified by the idea of change and disappearance.

- The ducks vanish every winter, but they return every spring, thus symbolizing change that isn’t permanent, but cyclical. However, at this point Holden is not focused on the cyclical nature of this. He is only focused on where the ducks go when the lagoon is frozen over and they are shut out.

- The action of the ice freezing over symbolizes that Holden, at this point, also feels that he is alone, shut out from home and any other place of safety. His question about where do the ducks go suggests that Holden really wants to ask where can he go, where is his safe place.

- Finally, the pond itself becomes a minor metaphor for the world as Holden sees it, because it is “partly frozen and partly not frozen.” The pond is in transition between two states, just as Holden is in transition between childhood and adulthood. One of the reasons Holden feels locked out is because he feels incapable and unwilling to make the transition from childhood to adulthood. We see this again when Holden, on a couple of occasions, tries to cross the street. He baulks at this because he feels that if he attempts to do this, he will disappear.

- Holden returns to this idea of the ducks on a number of occasions, for example in Chapter 9, when he asks the same question of the taxi drive in NY.

- This motif of the ducks suggests that Holden’s view of the world is that it can be a place which isolates those who do not belong in the way the others do.