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Holden's Use Of Rhetorical Strategies In Catcher In The Rye

554 Words3 Pages

In the novel, Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist Holden is forced to face with the reality of growing up though he is trying to hold on to his innocence of childhood. Salinger uses many rhetorical strategies to reveal how Holden deals with being faced with the adult word. Whenever Holden is verbally confronted with not facing his adult problems he always denies it, he gets very defensive in his words. “ Yes I do. Yes I do. Sure I do. Don’t say that. Why the Hell you say that?” (Salinger 8) Holden constantly feels the need to verbally reassure himself. This is because he really doesn't know what he feels and he is at this moment going through a breakdown. He is also in front of his younger sister who has so much innocence so he must keep confirming the positive and not ruin her innocence by telling her what is really going on. …show more content…

He is too focused thinking about a boy named James castle. James Castle committed suicide in Holden's sweater. “Instead of taking back what he said, he jumped out the window” (Salenger 42). Holden states this in the most simple way possible. Even though he knew this person and they were acquaintances, he states his death more like a story he heard about a stranger rather than a person he knew. “He was dead” (Salinger 49). Holden refuses to let emotion into this story because he doesn’t know how to deal and or react to it. The fact that he was wearing Holden’s sweater when he committed suicide also confuses him. “He had on the turtleneck sweater i’d lent him” (Salinger 51). Holden states this so simply as well because he refuses to actually think of why it had to be his sweater. The fact that he wore the sweater while committing suicide ties holden to this problem, and makes Holden even more confused and so when thinking about it he doesn’t go into any deep

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His brother’s death however was not his only literal encounter with death. The second death was that of James Castle, Holden’s Classmate at Elkton Hills School. He jumped out of the window when he was mercilessly bullied by some classmates of his and ended up dying. “He was dead, and his teeth, and blood, were all over the place. He had on this turtleneck sweater I 'd lent him” (Salinger 2010 : 92), although Holden didn 't know James well enough his death still left a mark on him.

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