| Essay, Research Paper
10 Quotes and Responses from The Catcher in the Rye
“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 kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
This statement actually caught my full attention. I like the way that he started this book off. It gave me a sense that the book was going to be very interesting and real. This is a very catchy statement that made me want to continue reading at my own willing and not to just be continuing so I can finish this assignment. It shows that the narrator is not going to start the book off by giving the reader boring details about his life. Instead, he is going to skip all of the usual details and jump to the real stories about his life that he finds and interesting, and that I also found very interesting.
“The more expensive the school is, the more crooks it has-I’m not kidding.”
I agree with this statement because people tend to assume that if the school is very expensive, then the crime rate will be lower. Although they think that way, they are making the wrong assumption because they have crooks too. Not only do they have crooks, but they also have high-class crooks. The only difference is that the crooks at more expensive schools may get away with the crime because they have an advantage that crooks in other schools do not have. They have money and they can use the money to bribe people so their reputations are not messed up.
“Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hotshots are, then it’s a game, all right-I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.”
Holden feels that in order for life to be a game one must be a hot-shot. He feels that if people are not considered to be hot-shots, then those people are not participating in this so-called game of life. If they are just regular ordinary people, then they are not going through life as if it was a game.
This time I have to disagree with Holden. I personally feel that life is a game that everyone must learn to play whether they are hot-shots or not. I think that it is actually easier for a hot-shot to play the game because he or she will usually have followers or admirers and these admirers make it easy for the hot-shot to make a move in this game.
“I guess he thought it was all right to do because it was only me that was in the room. I didn’t care, except that it’s pretty disgusting to watch somebody pick their nose.”
Holden says that he did not care if the man was picking in his nose, but I think that he would actually prefer that the man stop because it is very disgusting to watch somebody pick their nose. Especially when they are holding a serious conversation because the picking of the nose draws the listener’s attention away from the conversation.
“I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.”
I think that Holden is wrong because I’m actually the most terrific liar one has ever seen in his or her life. Holden lies to people depending upon who they are and how they approach him. He finds interest in lying to people because he finds their responses to his lies quite amusing. I do not think he should have told the reader that he was such a terrific liar. I think the reader would probably have figured that our for her or himself.
“You don’t always have to get too sexy to get to know a girl.”
This statement shows Holden’s sensitive side. I think he wanted the readers to know that he was not like a lot of other men out there who tend to think that the only way to get to know a girl is to get sexy. Holden seems as if he would prefer to analyze girls instead of having sexual intercourse with them.
“Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.”
Money is not always a great thing to have. Either somebody has too much money and they end up doing the wrong thing with it, or he or she does not have enough money and they end up doing the wrong thing to get it. Which results in people feeling blue and depressed no matter which way it goes.
“I mean how do you know what you’re going to do till you do it?”
I was very happy when I got to this quote because people are always asking me what am I going to do and I respond by asking them “how am I supposed to know, I haven’t done it yet?” Everybody thinks that I’m trying to get smart with them when I respond like that, but I’m not. I thought that I was the only person who thought like that, but when Holden asked the question then I smiled because I knew that there were other people before my time that asked the same question and had a little sense in their heads. Not that people who ask me what I’m going to do have no sense in their heads, it’s just that I realize that there are others who see it from the same perspective that I do.
“I was the only one left in the tomb then. I sort of liked it, in a way. It was so nice an peaceful. Then all of a sudden, you‘d never guess what I saw on the wall.”
Being in the tomb may have given him a little peace because he was away from all the drama. Although he did feel peaceful, it only lasted for a second because as soon as he looked up he saw something written on the wall that he could not stand. This probably proved to him that all good things must come to an end even if it’s the littlest thing in the world like being alone in peace. It also proved to him that he could never find a real peaceful place.
“Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
I think in this last statement he was realizing that after he had just finished telling the readers about all these experiences and people, he was beginning to miss all of the people in the story.
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