How does holden caulfield talk

Holden also tends to engage in hyperbole and generalization, both of which undermine his authority as a narrator and signify that he himself is unsure how to make sense of his life. Hyperbole is a form of overstatement that is not meant to be taken literally. Throughout the novel, he makes an observation, then immediately generalizes from it. He was the kind of guy that hates to answer you right away. His extreme self-consciousness and need to over-explain his thought processes underscore how troubled and confused Holden is.

It also keeps us aware that he is crafting his story for a certain effect, with limited success. Holden is not the only character in the novel with his own unique voice. Characters from lower-class backgrounds, like Maurice and the cab driver, Horwitz, speak with heavy regional accents and have poor grammar. He sort of did it a little bit too much. Holden also struggles with family and class expectations.

Like Salinger , his socioeconomic background is at least upper-middle class. His family and culture expect him to be reasonably successful at a prestigious prep school and move on to the Ivy League. Holden can't see himself in that role, so he seeks escape, but his plans are spontaneous fantasies that cannot work. First, he wants to run off with Sally Hayes and maybe get married.

This frightens the practical, unimaginative Sally, who is more interested in social status than she is in Holden.

Later, Holden decides to flee to the West where he will live as a deaf mute, ideal because he wouldn't have to talk with people. Holden is a romantic but a negative one.

His imagined ventures are escapes from reality rather than ascensions toward a goal. The one exception is a beautiful but hopeless dream. When asked by Phoebe what he would like to be, Holden rejects standard choices such as a lawyer or a scientist. Does Mr. Antolini really make a pass at Holden? Why does Holden run away from Pencey? Does Holden have sex with Sunny, the prostitute? What happens to Holden after his date with Sally Hayes and his meeting with Carl Luce both end badly?

What is the setting for The Catcher in the Rye? Does Holden have a mental illness? Holden's speech is also typical in his use of slang. One can catalogue over a hundred slang terms used by Holden, and every one of these is in widespread use. Although Holden's slang is rich and colorful, it, of course, being slang, often fails at precise communication. Thus, Holden's crap is used in seven different ways. It can mean foolishness, as 'all that David Copperfield kind of crap,' or messy matter, as 'I spilled some crap all over my gray flannel,' or merely miscellaneous matter, as 'I was putting on my galoshes and crap.

In the same way, to be 'killed' by something can mean that he was emotionally affected either favorably 'That story just about killed me. It nearly killed me. This use of killed is one of Holden's favorite slang expressions. Heiserman and Miller are, incidentally, certainly incorrect when they conclude: 'Holden always lets us know when he has insight into the absurdity of the endlessly absurd situations which make up the life of a sixteen-year-old by exclaiming, "It killed me.

The expression simply indicates a high degree of emotion-any kind. It is hazardous to conclude that any of Holden's slang has a precise and consistent meaning or function. These same critics fall into the same error when they conclude that Holden's use of the adjective old serves as 'a term of endearment'.

Holden appends this word to almost every character, real or fictional, mentioned in the novel, from the hated 'old Maurice' to 'old Peter Lorre,' to 'old Phoebe,' and even 'old Jesus. All we can conclude from Holden's slang is that it is typical teenage slang: versatile yet narrow, expressive yet unimaginative, imprecise, often crude, and always trite.

Holden has many favorite slang expressions which he overuses. In one place, he admits: ' Boy! I also say 'Boy! Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. But if Holden's slang shows the typically 'lousy vocabulary' of even the educated American teenager, this failing becomes even more obvious when we narrow our view to Holden's choice of adjectives and adverbs. The choice is indeed narrow, with a constant repetition of a few favorite words: lousy, pretty, crumby, terrific, quite, old, stupid-all used, as is the habit of teenage vernacular, with little regard to specific meaning.

Thus, most of the nouns which are called 'stupid' could not in any logical framework be called 'ignorant,' and, as we have seen, old before a proper noun has nothing to do with age. Another respect in which Holden was correct in accusing himself of having a 'lousy vocabulary' is discovered in the ease with which he falls into trite figures of speech. We have already seen that Holden's most common simile is the worn and meaningless 'as hell'; but his often-repeated 'like a madman' and 'like a bastard' are just about as unrelated to a literal meaning and are easily as unimaginative.

Even Holden's nonhabitual figures of speech are usually trite: 'sharp as a tack'; 'hot as a firecracker'; 'laughed like a hyena'; 'I know old Jane like a book'; 'drove off like a bat out of hell'; 'I began to feel like a horse's ass'; 'blind as a bat'; 'I know Central Park like the back of my hand. For example, when Holden piles one trite adjective upon another, a strong power of invective is often the result: He was a goddam stupid moron.

Get your dirty stinking moron knees off my chest. You're a dirty stupid sonuvabitch of a moron. And his limited vocabulary can also be used for good comic effect.

Holden's constant repetition of identical expressions in countless widely different situations is often hilariously funny. But all of the humor in Holden's vocabulary does not come from its un imaginative quality.

Quite the contrary, some of his figures of speech are entirely original; and these are inspired, dramatically effective, and terribly funny. As always, Salinger's Holden is basically typical, with a strong overlay of the individual: He started handling my exam paper like it was a turd or something.

He put my goddam paper down then and looked at me like he'd just beaten the hell out of me in ping-pong or something.

That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddam toilet seat. Old Marty was like dragging the Statue of Liberty around the floor. Another aspect in which Holden's language is typical is that it shows the general American characteristic of adaptability-apparently strengthened by his teenage lack of restraint.

It is very easy for Holden to turn nouns into adjectives, with the simple addition of a -y: 'perverry,' 'Christmasy,' 'vomity- looking,' 'whory-looking,' 'hoodlumy-looking,' 'show-offy,' 'flitty-looking,' 'dumpy-looking,' 'pimpy,' 'snobby,' 'fisty.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the adaptability of Holden's language is his ability to use nouns as adverbs: 'She sings it very Dixieland and whorehouse, and it doesn't sound at all mushy'. As we have seen, Holden shares, in general, the trite repetitive vocabulary which is the typical lot of his age group.

But as there are exceptions in his figures of speech, so are there exceptions in his vocabulary itself, in his word stock. An intelligent, well-read 'I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot' , and educated boy, Holden possesses, and can use when he wants to, many words which are many a cut above Basic English, including 'ostracized,' 'exhibitionist,' 'unscrupulous, 'conversationalist,' 'psychic,' 'bourgeois.