How does Salinger create a protagonist that we can empathize with?
Salinger creates a protagonist, Holden by using the first person in the opening paragraph, ‘..you’ll probably want to know where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like’. This instantly alerts the reader and makes them aware that he is going to talk about himself like a diary. These are usually contain dilemmas or problems occurred in life which were hard to deal with and therefore placed in a diary or report which make us, as the reader find out more about the problems he has occurred.
As he carries on he describes his parents as ‘touchy’, and would have ‘about two haemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.’ This gives us more insight into the protagonists’ parents and describes them as touchy, this may tell us that they like to keep theirselves to themselves which is painful like a haemorrhage as Holden describes. In addition, terminology from the lexical field of biology acknowledges the reader that Holden is quite clever as we go through chapters 1 to 5 this is ironic as he is failing and being kicked out of school.
Furthermore, we can see that Holden alienates himself from his peers and goes to see a teacher ‘”how’s Mr Spencer? He over his grippe yet?”’ this gives us more information and makes us inquisitive of why he has gone to see the teacher than at the game with his year group. Showing us that Holden excludes himself from his social class, this enables the reader to empathize with Holden and want him to socialise and create friends. He knows about Mr Spencer’s problems and this tells us that there is a close and significant relationship between Holden and Mr Spencer. As we later find out that he is Holden’s history teacher.
Salinger creates a recurrent colour of red throughout chapters 1-5, As Holden on his trip to New York buys a ‘…red hunting hat, with one of those very, very long peaks.’ And when he is writing Stradlater’s composition he describes his brother in depth and that ‘People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did, and he had very red hair’ this shows that the colour red theme is throughout the chapters 1-5 and that Holden associates red to, anger, aggressive behaviour and being tempered. However, we interpret the colour red as a sense of love, care and warmth. This is how Holden feels towards Allie.
Empathy is created when Holden details Allie’s death ‘He’s dead now. He got leukaemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 1946.’ The use of the short sentence emphasizes the impact the death had made on Holden. The cause explained and date of the death can Help us emphasize with Holden at the time of his age and being in another place than he is now in. this shows us that he tries to avoid his past and gives us a reason to his behaviour.
As he carries on he describes his parents as ‘touchy’, and would have ‘about two haemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.’ This gives us more insight into the protagonists’ parents and describes them as touchy, this may tell us that they like to keep theirselves to themselves which is painful like a haemorrhage as Holden describes. In addition, terminology from the lexical field of biology acknowledges the reader that Holden is quite clever as we go through chapters 1 to 5 this is ironic as he is failing and being kicked out of school.
Furthermore, we can see that Holden alienates himself from his peers and goes to see a teacher ‘”how’s Mr Spencer? He over his grippe yet?”’ this gives us more information and makes us inquisitive of why he has gone to see the teacher than at the game with his year group. Showing us that Holden excludes himself from his social class, this enables the reader to empathize with Holden and want him to socialise and create friends. He knows about Mr Spencer’s problems and this tells us that there is a close and significant relationship between Holden and Mr Spencer. As we later find out that he is Holden’s history teacher.
Salinger creates a recurrent colour of red throughout chapters 1-5, As Holden on his trip to New York buys a ‘…red hunting hat, with one of those very, very long peaks.’ And when he is writing Stradlater’s composition he describes his brother in depth and that ‘People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did, and he had very red hair’ this shows that the colour red theme is throughout the chapters 1-5 and that Holden associates red to, anger, aggressive behaviour and being tempered. However, we interpret the colour red as a sense of love, care and warmth. This is how Holden feels towards Allie.
Empathy is created when Holden details Allie’s death ‘He’s dead now. He got leukaemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 1946.’ The use of the short sentence emphasizes the impact the death had made on Holden. The cause explained and date of the death can Help us emphasize with Holden at the time of his age and being in another place than he is now in. this shows us that he tries to avoid his past and gives us a reason to his behaviour.