Christina Bonvicin
April 26, 2009
The Catcher in the Rye
I’m a reader. I do consider myself to be a reader, though books, as of late, have not held my interest long. I’ve read Nora Roberts, James Patterson, J.K. Rowling, Stephanie Meyer, and many other random authors. For some reason, The Catcher in the Rye isn’t my kind of book. The pace is slow and boring all throughout the beginning and middle. Personally I think the beginning is the most important part of a book. It’s the exposition, gets the main character, at least, set up so his or her story can be told. When the beginning is boring, my mind automatically goes “Oh God, here we go,” and settles into auto-pilot for the next however many minutes I’d be reading for. It’s really not fun, especially when it’s a book I have to read for school. Then I know I’m just set up for failure from the beginning. Just because of how tear-worthy boring the book was from the beginning.
That’s not the only thing. Once you do start reading the book you start to see things. Like how the main character and narrator, Holden Caulfield, likes hardly anything or anyone. He doesn’t like people that are bores and who are superficial. He doesn’t like phonies, either, nor people who are insecure. He doesn’t like too many people. Like his sister, Phoebe, says in chapter 22: “You don’t like anything that’s happening.” This was after Holden talked about Pencey Prep, his school, and the things that went on there. Phoebe challenged Holden to find one thing that he liked a lot, and then one thing that he would like to be. Holden didn’t even answer the question about what he would like to do with his life, he just rambled on about lawyers.
Personally, I think the things he likes are his family, which really aren’t things but people, and his deceased brother’s baseball glove. And this one girl, Jane Gallagher, who again isn‘t a thing but a person. He hasn’t seen the girl in a couple of years, but yet when his roommate at his school, Stradlater, says he has a date with her after the school’s football game, Holden suddenly is thinking about her all the time, in between the random topics of his mind.
Which is probably another reason why I can’t stand the book. Holden rambles. And he rambles randomly. He reminds me of myself. I hate when that happens. I’d like to think I’m not as bad as he is, but I know I can be worse. When I’m in the mood I can drone on and on about the most pointless of topics. When I’m in the mood, of course. But Holden seems to always be in the mood to ramble. I guess it’s logical for J. D. Salinger to have written it that way, as it is a first person point of view, so you are seeing things through the narrator’s mind, how it would happen in his mind. Doesn’t make it any less annoying though. Not at all.
Oh, and another thing. What I really do not like about this book is how he’s always taking about how fine a girl is or how cute she looks or who’s giving whom “the time.” In a teenage guy’s point of view I should have expected as much, but it’s still rather annoying because I’m a girl and I don’t want to hear about it. I love romance. There’s nothing romantic with someone talking about sex and how sexy people are. There really isn‘t. It‘s disturbing to read, since I’ve never read a book like this. I don’t even want to hear about it in real life, so why would I want to read it in a book? I don’t know which is worse, reading about it or listening to it. Both are equally as disturbing and really shouldn’t happen. But again, like I said, the book was written in a male teenager’s mind, so there really was nothing less I could expect.
In the end, I really did not like this book. I have an extremely short attention span, as Holden seemed to have, and all the rambling that was going on in the book quickly lost my attention. And the book failed to recapture my attention, even when Holden got sick. I suppose that makes me seem cruel, but the book was just too boring for my attention span. Not even for me, for my attention span and I just couldn’t see liking the random ramblings of Holden Caulfield’s mind.
Focus on...
--- grammar.
--- my thoughts and ideas vs. your own.
--- flow / ramble of the piece.
Apr 27, 2009
Apr 10, 2009
March to the Beat of Your Own Funeral
Christina Bonvicin
April 10, 2009
The Death of a Salesman
In Act II of The Death of a Salesman, Charley says “The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell” (p.97). I don’t quite believe this to be true. People have a lot of things in the world: for example, his or her dignity. No one can take away a person’s dignity unless that person lets them. You can’t very well sell your dignity either, which obviously chops the truthfulness of the quote to pieces. If all someone had in the world was what they could sell, there would be a lot of limitations in the world. Cars would have never been invented, because no one would think they would sell. This small thing in itself would completely alter the world as we know it. Not even thinking of the past, but thinking strictly of today’s world and economy. If I was a grocery store clerk, does that mean that all I have are the things that the store has? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. These examples go to show that Charley wasn’t thinking of the future when he said what he did, he was only thinking of how poor a salesman Willy had ended up in the late stages of his life.
Willy had the classic “American Dream.” He wanted to be successful and liked, to own his own house. To live comfortably and be able to support his family, that is what Willy wanted. And he wanted to do it the easiest way possible. To him, that was being a salesman. His hopes and dreams didn’t work out the way he wanted them to. He slowly lost touch with the world he lived in until he was part of two worlds, that he flitted between on a whim: the real world and the world of his past, when Biff and Happy were still young. The stress of his un-paying job and the bills that continued to pile up were the reasons behind the split in Willy’s reality. Though, like Alexis pointed out, Willy could possibly have a mental illness, though at the time was most likely unable to be identified. In either case, Willy is still a victim of his mind, where it be his fault or not.
Willy went about his hopes and dreams the wrong way. He wanted the easy way out. He didn’t want to go hard manual labor. He wanted to sell. This was his mistake. Maybe if he had become a carpenter, like Biff wanted to be a carpenter so he could whistle without being stared at, maybe he would have had a better life. He wouldn’t live in the city so much, but in the suburbs, having his own house and a good life. But Willy took the easy way out. And with that he took away his hopes and dreams himself. I can’t blame Willy for wanting to be respected. It’s in human nature to want to be respected and accepted by everyone. It’s just not logical though. Yes, Willy could have been respected, if he had gone about it the right way. Everyone has different paths that they can take in life. Willy took the one that he thought was right, but it wasn’t right for him or his family.
Many people still die the death of a salesman. It doesn’t take much to die the death of a salesman. Not in my eyes. Gatsby from The Great Gatsby died the death of a salesman too. When you die the death of a salesman, you die alone. Gatsby was shot when he was alone in his house. Willy died in a car accident he caused himself. Hardly anyone showed up to either of their funerals. As Linda says in the requiem “Why didn’t anyone come? … But where are all the people he knew?” When you die the death of a salesman, you die alone. The only people who care, who are touched by the loss, are the friends and family of the deceased. Gatsby and Willy are marching to the fictional beat of the dying salesman tune, as are many people who were very much alive and very much alone.
Focus On:
--- my ideas vs. your ideas.
--- grammar and structure.
--- ramble-ness vs. not rambly enough.
April 10, 2009
The Death of a Salesman
In Act II of The Death of a Salesman, Charley says “The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell” (p.97). I don’t quite believe this to be true. People have a lot of things in the world: for example, his or her dignity. No one can take away a person’s dignity unless that person lets them. You can’t very well sell your dignity either, which obviously chops the truthfulness of the quote to pieces. If all someone had in the world was what they could sell, there would be a lot of limitations in the world. Cars would have never been invented, because no one would think they would sell. This small thing in itself would completely alter the world as we know it. Not even thinking of the past, but thinking strictly of today’s world and economy. If I was a grocery store clerk, does that mean that all I have are the things that the store has? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. These examples go to show that Charley wasn’t thinking of the future when he said what he did, he was only thinking of how poor a salesman Willy had ended up in the late stages of his life.
Willy had the classic “American Dream.” He wanted to be successful and liked, to own his own house. To live comfortably and be able to support his family, that is what Willy wanted. And he wanted to do it the easiest way possible. To him, that was being a salesman. His hopes and dreams didn’t work out the way he wanted them to. He slowly lost touch with the world he lived in until he was part of two worlds, that he flitted between on a whim: the real world and the world of his past, when Biff and Happy were still young. The stress of his un-paying job and the bills that continued to pile up were the reasons behind the split in Willy’s reality. Though, like Alexis pointed out, Willy could possibly have a mental illness, though at the time was most likely unable to be identified. In either case, Willy is still a victim of his mind, where it be his fault or not.
Willy went about his hopes and dreams the wrong way. He wanted the easy way out. He didn’t want to go hard manual labor. He wanted to sell. This was his mistake. Maybe if he had become a carpenter, like Biff wanted to be a carpenter so he could whistle without being stared at, maybe he would have had a better life. He wouldn’t live in the city so much, but in the suburbs, having his own house and a good life. But Willy took the easy way out. And with that he took away his hopes and dreams himself. I can’t blame Willy for wanting to be respected. It’s in human nature to want to be respected and accepted by everyone. It’s just not logical though. Yes, Willy could have been respected, if he had gone about it the right way. Everyone has different paths that they can take in life. Willy took the one that he thought was right, but it wasn’t right for him or his family.
Many people still die the death of a salesman. It doesn’t take much to die the death of a salesman. Not in my eyes. Gatsby from The Great Gatsby died the death of a salesman too. When you die the death of a salesman, you die alone. Gatsby was shot when he was alone in his house. Willy died in a car accident he caused himself. Hardly anyone showed up to either of their funerals. As Linda says in the requiem “Why didn’t anyone come? … But where are all the people he knew?” When you die the death of a salesman, you die alone. The only people who care, who are touched by the loss, are the friends and family of the deceased. Gatsby and Willy are marching to the fictional beat of the dying salesman tune, as are many people who were very much alive and very much alone.
Focus On:
--- my ideas vs. your ideas.
--- grammar and structure.
--- ramble-ness vs. not rambly enough.
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