J.D. Salinger Connections

My connections towards the article how similar J.D. Salinger is to his fictional character, Holden Caulfield. As I read the article, J.D. had some of Holden's introverted traits and is not pleased by his world' renouned fame. He had hardly any connections to anybody outside of his hermit-like life. Nor did he stay at one school the entire time...he flunked out or ran away from a couple of schools. So with my connections, I can emphasize my image of Holden Caulfield inside of my head. I knew that he was an introverted and not very caring, but my connections between the author and the character made it stronger. It also gave it a more realistic feel since Salinger was similar to Holden. As for Salinger himself, I was able to learn more about his personal life and help me connect to him. At first I couln't connect anything with him since all I knew about him was his biography...not his personallity or peculiar lifestyle. Now that I know, I can easily connect towards him and understand his writing style in Catcher in the Rye.

This is the shirt design i made a long time ago for homecoming. We could just have SGA on the back....if you guys want something different i could make another one.

Connections to Holden...

A growing trend with Catcher in the Rye is how Holden is extremely disconnected with everyone. I think this is a result from losing his younger brother Allie. He was so close with him that when he passed away, he just lost touch with others. Holden can't trust anyone because he doesn't want to get hurt. I can connect with that because I became close with somebody only to break away. I used to care about my grandma, until I learned about what she did to my family when we needed help when I was not even 1 year old. It's sad for me because I don't have a real grandma that lives in the U.S.

Other people complain about how mean their parents are, or how unlucky they are. I see it as a bit annoying because I don't have any other family members that are close beside Bret and my parents. I can't trust anyone else in my family because of what she did. I made sure that I don't become to close to anyone because I have this gut feeling that the same thing will happen again. This was one of the reasons why I was temporarily introverted when I was younger...I hardly saw anyone else besides my close family outside of home and school. It seems like Holden is doing the same just to not get hurt. He mentioned that he wasn't close to his parents or older brother early in the book. By just inferring his behavior after Allie's death, he started to detach himself from his parents and stopped caring. I mean...if you lost your little brother who you loved so much wouldn't you get disconnected (I would)?

JD Salinger's Legacy...

The famous, but secretive, author has written both acclaimed and controversial novels. But after his last published story in the New Yorker, he hasn't been able to match the greatness of his previous stories. After his death last week, their is a lot of rumors of the possibility of the next great novels hidden in his house. I personally think that this is a huge step in our American literature. Nothing worth reading hasn't come out that took the nation by storm. Sure there has been a couple of novels, but most are lacking in taste...like the darn Twilight series. If Salinger's finished stories are published, I would read them since I'm quite tired of reading about sparkly vampires and and theories against religion. I bet I'm not the only one!

Anyways, I have a feeling that his finished novels will be worth reading and some not so much. Either way, the American literature will be changed if they do come out. It will finally be a possible step forward in our literature due to what is out now...brain-numbing books that require no thinking to solve. His books will challenge the readers since it's probably written in a older, more complicated style. Now we just have to wait to see if his collected, unpublished works will be published...