Compare And Contrast Holden And The Catcher In The Rye

One large decision an author makes when in development of a novel comes when he or she must choose what point of view the novel shall be. Point of view is normally the position in which a narrator is, in relation to the story being told. In the novels Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, and The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the point of view contributes to how we see and understand each story, as well as strengthening and or weakening a reader's understanding of the story and plot. In the two novels we meet narrators, Melinda Sorindo (Speak), and Holden Caulfield (Catcher), and get to view the books events through their eyes. Melinda and Holden, as the narrators and main characters, are both utilized as the lenses through which we see

Using these characters as the point of which we view the story has high, and low points in relation to the telling of the stories, and they can sometimes strengthen as well as weaken a the text. A noticeable strength in Catcher regarding the use of Holden as a narrative tool, is exhibited in the beginning of the book as he goes through the remainder of the day at school. During this time we get to learn a lot about Holden as we are being showed his thoughts and innermost feelings about his school and personal life, which allows the reader to connect to him, as they learn so much about him. However, a weakness of using Holden's voice in the text is the fact that we are sometimes only presented with pieces of information that we would learn much more of if the novel had a third person point of view. We can see this happening when Holden talks about his parents, whom we never meet in the novel, as we realize that we have no information as to what they look like or how they act since there was no direct interaction between Holden and his parents within the novel. However, this lack of information has no effect of the overall outcome of the story, and may only simply annoy some

A great strength that comes when using Melinda's voice as the main voice, can be seen through out the whole book. Through Melinda we get a clear view of what the overall conflict is, and this strengthens the text and makes it easier to understand in a readers eyes. In Speak it is much easier to point of Melinda's conflict then it is to point of Holden's, because Melinda conveyed the conflict to us so well. Conversely, a weak point of using Melinda's point of view in the text is that when she does not want to hear something, we do not get to hear it. This is shown at the beginning of the story when she referred to Andy Evans as "It," therefore without ding from us some valuable information. This all leads us to the fact that her voice helps to make the story all the more interesting as it withholds information, forcing us to think more about it. The story also has a clear conflict that helps us to figure out some of the withheld