Catcher In The Rye

In the novel, The Catcher in The Rye, the author J. D. Salinger generates/creates a period in the life of a young protagonist. J. D. Salinger’s novel explores the different practices of storytelling by utilizing a distinctively constructed character. In this essay, the main topics to be discussed is the narrative’s point of view, the style and genre that are relevant to characterization in Salinger’s novel.

A narrative point of view is the way a story is told. Authors have developed different ways to tell a story and in this novel, The Catcher in The Rye, the author uses the first-person narrator. We can distinguish this by the presence of the pronoun ‘I’, when the narrator says that “…you’ll probably want to know where I was born…” (The Catcher

Although it limits the point of view to what the narrator knows and experiences, or can find out by interaction with other characters. The first-person narrator makes the novel more personal because the reader is able to read the direct words of the character and is informed about their immediate emotions. There are various types of first-person narrators, but in this novel the narrator is the main character. Therefore, the narrative point of view is relevant to characterization in J. D. Salinger’s novel because in this novel the main character, Holden Caulfield, is the first-person narrator. The readers are informed about Holden’s innermost thoughts and feelings, but this may be mistakenly unreliable because he lacks insight into his own nature and self-knowledge. He is inaccurate in his judgements of himself and other characters in the novel. He also has a mass of contradictions about his life, religion and many other things. Example: he claims to be

The writers of novels have more freedom than poets, as styles vary from authors and how they choose to write. The text is dominated by the use of dialogue and the setting is secondary and not always described in detail. Thus, the style is relevant to characterization in the novel. J. D. Salinger’s style is colloquial, humorous and intimate. Holden, the narrator and main character in the novel’s language is typical for an adolescent. Holden’s language takes on a particular understanding in the way that he addresses the reader as ‘you’ and this is his way of keeping the reader interested in his thoughts and experiences. Holden’s speech involves slang, exaggeration and plenty of swearing, like most adolescents “… I asked her how come she could date a show-off bastard like Al Pike …” (The Catcher in The Rye- Chapter: 18; Page: 146). J. D. Salinger makes a considerable use of italics to repeat the spoken word in writing. Holden’s speech is Standard English, but if he meets the working class people their dialect and accent will unveil their social status. J. D. Salinger’s whole novel is dominated by dialogue. Some features of J. D. Salinger’s writing are the idiosyncratic use of dialogue; allusions to other literary texts, in order for the reader to know more about the themes and issues on the novel and the use of connotation and figurative language. In the closing passage (The