The way teenagers act and talk is always changing. From generation to generation it becomes harder to understand the new slang. In young adult books authors use teen slang to connect with certain age group in a certain period as J.D. Salinger did with The Catcher in the Rye. Which is a story about a teenager named Holden who gets kicked out of school and then wanders around New York for a few days. Some of the language used in the book is confusing to the next generation of teenagers. Which leads to the question is Holden Caulfield still an authentic teen character? I think that Holden is an authentic teenage character because he goes through real teen experiences, has to deal with dark times, and he has to face the emotional truths.
Holden
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Although he doesn’t feed into any more than just stating his feelings usually there still is deeper emotional meaning to it. In some spots in the book it is merely Holden saying he was feeling depressed, but in other spots you see him try to connect to anyone in order to just talk to someone or try to cover his feelings with alcohol and random conversations. At one point Holden is in a cab and he starts asking questions such as: “by any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over” and this might be an actual concern of his but I see it more as a way to reach out to somebody who’s older and might something more figured out than Holden does at seventeen (60)?. Sometimes as a teenager when you don’t have someone to talk to you lose sight of what is really happening because you can’t vent to sort it out and Holden finally starts to vent to his sister Phoebe and he says, “I kept talking about Pencey” and he probably couldn’t stop at this point (168). Teenagers go through tough times and that’s when they need someone to vent to and Holden finally does this and it shows how he is an authentic teenage