close

J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye

 

The Catcher in the Rye 麥田捕手

The Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger. A controversial novel originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage angst and alienation. It has been translated into almost all of the world's major languages. Around 250,000 copies are sold each year with total sales of more than 65 million books. The novel's protagonist Holden Caulfield has become an icon for teenage rebellion. The novel also deals with complex issues of identity, belonging, loss, and connection.

                     Rye catcher.jpg         

 

J. D. Salinger:

Jerome David Salinger  was an American writer who won acclaim early in life. He led a very private life for more than a half-century. He published his final original work in 1965 and gave his last interview in 1980.

Salinger was raised in Manhattan and began writing short stories while in secondary school. Several were published in Story magazine in the early 1940s before he began serving in World War II. In 1948, his critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" appeared in The New Yorker magazine, which became home to much of his later work. In 1951, his novel The Catcher in the Rye was an immediate popular success. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonist Holden Caulfield was influential, especially among adolescent readers. The novel remains widely read and controversial, selling around 250,000 copies a year.

JD Salinger.jpg

J. D. Salinger

 

Holden’s Red Hunting Hat:

The red hunting hat is one of the most recognizable symbols from twentieth-century American literature. It is inseparable from our image of Holden, with good reason: it is a symbol of his uniqueness and individuality. The hat is outlandish, and it shows that Holden desires to be different from everyone around him. At the same time, he is very self-conscious about the hat—he always mentions when he is wearing it, and he often doesn’t wear it if he is going to be around people he knows. The presence of the hat, therefore, mirrors the central conflict in the book: Holden’s need for isolation versus his need for companionship.

 

Young adult problem novel:

The young adult problem novel deals with an adolescent's first confrontation with a social, or personal problem. The term was first used this way in the late 1960s with reference to contemporary works like The Outsiders, a coming-of-age novel by S. E. Hinton, first published in 1967. The adolescent problem novel is rather loosely defined. Rose Mary Honnold in The Teen Reader's Advisor defines them as dealing more with characters from lower-class families and their problems and as using "grittier", more realistic language, including dialects, profanity, and poor grammar, when it fits the character and setting.

 

I was too yellow not to join

* yellow 膽小的;卑鄙的

 

boxer 四角內褲

"Comin' Thro' the Rye" :

"Comin' Thro' the Rye" is a poem written in 1782 by Robert Burns. It is well known as a traditional children's song, with the words put to the melody of the Scottish Minstrel Common' Frae The Town. This is a variant of the tune to which Auld Lang Syne is usually sung—the melodic shape is almost identical, the difference lying in the tempo and rhythm.

 

Robert Burns:

Robert Burns, also known as Rabbie Burns, the Bard of Ayrshire and various other names and epithets, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a light Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these writings his political or civil commentary is often at its bluntest.

 Robert Burns使用蘇格蘭方言創作

PG 1063Burns Naysmithcrop.jpg

Robert Burns

 

crazy cliff

* crazy 危險的

 

The Catcher in the Rye 書裡只出現一次  "the catcher in the rye" → chapter 22 p191

 

To Kill a Mockingbird:

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.

Cover of the book showing title in white letters against a black background in a banner above a painting of a portion of a tree against a red background

 

 

mockingbird 知更鳥 → some one who is weak

mockingbird

 

In To Kill a Mockingbird, the mockingbird has been used as a metaphor for innocence.

 

Harper Lee—  one-book literary wonder

Nelle Harper Lee, better known by her pen name Harper Lee, was an American novelist widely known for To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960. Immediately successful, it won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature. Though Lee had only published this single book, in 2007 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature.

HarperLee 2007Nov05.jpg

Harper Lee

 

simile 明喻

A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two things through the explicit use of connecting words (such as like, as, so, than, or various verbs such as resemble). Although similes and metaphors are sometimes considered to be interchangeable, similes acknowledge the imperfections and limitations of the comparative relationship to a greater extent than metaphors. Metaphors are subtler and therefore rhetorically stronger in that metaphors equate two things rather than simply compare them. Similes also safeguard the author against outrageous, incomplete, or unfair comparison. Generally, metaphor is the stronger and more encompassing of the two forms of rhetorical analogies. While similes are mainly used in forms of poetry that compare the inanimate and the living, there are also terms in which similes and personifications are used for humorous purposes and comparison.

 

metaphor 隱喻

A metaphor is a figure of speech that identifies something as being the same as some unrelated thing for rhetorical effect, thus highlighting the similarities between the two. While a simile compares two items, a metaphor directly equates them, and does not use "like" or "as" as does a simile. One of the most commonly cited examples of a metaphor in English literature is the "All the world's a stage" monologue from As You Like It:

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances[...]

—William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2/7

 

se-: away; separate

For example: segregation, segregation

segregation school →  收單一性別的學校 (或是種族隔離)

 

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one. "

 It sounds here like Mr. Antolini might be worried that Holden’s going to commit suicide. But what’s Holden’s “cause”? He wants to be the catcher in the rye—to protect the innocence of youth. If Holden did manage to turn himself away from the rest of the [adult] world, as a kind of recluse, maybe he would “die nobly.”

 

Wilhelm Steke:

Wilhelm Stekel was an Austrian physician and psychologist, who became one of Sigmund Freud's earliest followers, and was once described as "Freud's most distinguished pupil." According to Ernest Jones, "Stekel may be accorded the honour, together with Freud, of having founded the first psycho-analytic society"; while he also described him as "a naturally gifted psychologist with an unusual flair for detecting repressed material." He later had a falling-out with Freud, who announced in November 1912 that "Stekel is going his own way". His works are translated and published in many languages.

Wilhelm Stekel

 

 

Douglas MacArthur:

Douglas MacArthur was an American five-star general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the Philippines Campaign, which made him and his father Arthur MacArthur, Jr., the first father and son to be awarded the medal. He was one of only five men ever to rise to the rank of General of the Army in the US Army, and the only man ever to become a field marshal in the Philippine Army.

MacArthur in khaki trousers and open necked shirt with five-star-rank badges on the collar. He is wearing his field marshal's cap and smoking a corncob pipe.

Douglas MacArthur

 

What is the significance of the name Holden Caulfield?

Holden is "hold on to everything in him and children--and you-- that is not corrupt and tainted with evil and ugliness, and death but Beauty, Truth, heart, innocence, and life (especially in light of his brother Alie's death)." 

 

Please hold→  接電話時

arrow
arrow
    全站熱搜

    u10311232 發表在 痞客邦 留言(0) 人氣()