When I was a freshmen in high school we had to read Catcher In The Rye by, well you know who it's by. I must admit, I didn't care for the book. I cared for it even less when my teacher gave us a little bit of her interpretation of the book. Here is a taste:So Holden Caulfield is the name of the main character, right?
Okay well, Holden sounds a lot like 'hold on'. And caul means the head covering embryo kind of thing of a fetus. And well, field means field.
Okay so then Holden Caulfield's name really means:
Hold on the field of fetus head coverings
or
Hold on to youth
Hmm. I thought that was crap. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that's what everyone with any kind of IQ thinks. But if that's the case, or if that's the logic they use to get to that conclusion, I'm glad to be in the same class as Forrest Gump.
All this to say that I finished reading Franny and Zooey today. The other day one of the freshmen I'm TAing told me it was a good book, and I believe he said it would change my life.
I don't think that it changed my life. But I did like it more than The Catcher. I liked the first twenty pages and then the last, hmm, ten.
Me and Forrest are best buddies.
3 comments:
Ugh. That theory! I thought my English teacher was the only one! It is total crap. Salinger used the name for another character who died in WWII so maybe that could be used to advanced the name symbol thing, but I use it as a way to advance the idea that he really just like the name and that it sounded suitbly WASP-y and that English teachers feel the need to find symbols everywhere. See you in Situation of the Writer.
if a student ever tells me something will change my life, they get an automatic F. and a beating.
I agree ... I mean ... i wasn't in LOVE with Catcher in Rye like other people. But I was already 27 when I read it. A friend said that if I read it when I was sixteen I would have underlined passages and re-read it many times. I wonder?
I liked Franny and Zoe so much more.
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