The Catcher in the Rye: Conscience

Being the narrator of the story, Holden's conscience is revealed through his thoughts and the situations that he experiences throughout the novel. He ha a very strange conscience because he doesn't necessarily feel bad about failing out of school multiple times, or judgin people, or cursing all the time, but he is very conflicted when I comes to his thoughts about sexuality, and his actions with girls. He obviously has a strange conscience if he was willing to pay to have a whore come to his room, but then conflicted enough to pay her to simply sit and talk with him. He says, "Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away." Holden's style seems to be quite impulsive. He makes decisions and takes actions and then analyzes those thoughts an actions later. Possibly, that might just be the way this book seems because Holden is writings retrospectively about himself. Though sex and girls aren't the only things that Holden had as struggle with, he thinks about them quite a lot. I think this is because he also thinks of Jane Gallagher often, and he is attracted to her, so the two are obviously connected.

The Catcher in the Rye: Detail

Holden pays great attention to detail, as seen in the way he describes both things and people. He notices and talks about the most trivial things, often connecting them back to a past memory or some other anecdote. This is the reason for the somewhat random stream of thoughts that make up this novel. Holden's thoughts jump from one topic to another once he has perceived a detail that sparks another thought, sometimes returning to the original train of thought and sometimes not. For example, while thinking about Jane Gallagher, Holden begins, "I remember this one afternoon..." and leaps into a story of he and Jane. Holden's attention to detail is very helpful, coming from the standpoint of the reader, because his thoughts and perceptions are the narration of the novel. Therefore, whatever Holden notices about a person is the information the reader knows about that character. For example, apparently, "She was a funny girl, old Jane. I wouldn't exactly describe her as strictly beautiful. She knocked me out though. She was sort of muckle-mouthed..." This also reveals something of Holden's character as well, as an honest and attentive person.

The Catcher in the Rye: Jane Gallagher

I'm starting to realize why Holden was so mad at his roommate for joking about having sex with Jane Gallagher; he is in love with her. Or he likes her very much, at least. According to Holden, he and Jane had spent a summer in Maine together  and had grown very close. Holden says, "She was the only one, outside my family, that I ever showed Allie's baseball mitt to, with al the poems written on it." This seems like quite a big deal because I'm sure this mitt means a lot to Holden. It had belonged to his brother, whom he loved very muc judging by the way and frequency of how he talks about him.  Holden brings up the mitt quite a lot too, showing it's importance. He thinks about Jane more than either one of them though; and this makes sense because she is a living being that he can really interact with. It seems strange; however, that after close the two seem to be after that summer, Holden wouldn't simply go say hello to her in the lobby before she and Stradlater went on their date. In his thoughts, he say they were best friends, and possibly even more. He sees and knows so much about her, but he is too hy to go speak with her? This makes me curious about their relationhip. They might have had a falling out or maybe just haven't spoken in a while. The rest of the book will hopefully reveal this mystery.

Dover Beach

Mathew Arnold takes an interesting approach and four stanzas in order to get his point of the poem Dover Beach across. The prior three stanzas are necessary to the main idea though. Arnold begins by describing three bodies of water, the English Channel, Aegean Sea, and Sea of Faith. The description of the English Channel brings forth the idea of sorrow and "human misery", which is continued with a comparison to the Aegean Sea, emphasizing the eternal quality of this human misery. The Sea of Faith is then used to express the decrease in faith, "but now I only hear it's melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, refresting." This poem is very depressing up to this point, but takes a sharp turn in the fourth stanza. The entire poem is about the tragedies and miserable qualities of life. However, Arnold presents a solution to this problem. "Ah, love, let us be true to kne another! For the world.." He says that despite the horrible qualities of this world, they, he and his lover, can face them together.

GO HOOSIERS!

Sorting Laundry

Of all the poems form this unit, this poem seemed the easiest to comprehend. Elisavietta Ritche begins the poem by comparing laundry with her relationship with her lover. She says, "Folding clothes, I think of folding you intk my life." This makes perfect sense to me. Developing a relationship is much like folding someone into your life. They become part of that life, folded and entangled in everything. The extended metaphor continues to compare various pieces of clothing with aspects of the relationship. "Pillowcases, despite so many washings" expresses the fact that the couple has been together for a while. "So many shirts and skirt and pants recycling week after week, head over heels" says that the couple is still very much in love. However, despite the current healthy state of the relationship, thinking about anything too much can allow someone to find a flaw. This speaker thinks back on an old relationship in which she apparently was left by her lover and then with a sharp change in mood if the poem expresses, "if you were to leave me... A mountain of in sorted wash could not fill the empty side of the bed."

I taste a liqueur never brewed

I am familiar with Emily Dickensin's poems being a little strange, but this one seemed particularly confusing upon reading it for the first time. However, after analyzing the poem more, Dickenson's way of describing the intoxicating feeling that nature can bring is very clever. She says, "Inebriate of air I am", literally meaning drunk off if the air and figuratively meaning the whimsical state that natures beauty brings her mind. I can personally relate to this "Inebriatstion". I went in summer field studies this last summer, an I know that there is no feeling like the high that such pure beauty can bring. Seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time or witnessing the awesome view after climing a mountain is simply indescribable. The aspen of the Seraphs and saints in her poem is also very interesting, especially that the approve of her drunken state, "Till Seraphs swing their snowy hats and Saint to windows run". However, this makes perfect sense. She is appreciating Gods gift of nature, so the Saints look down in approval.

The Convergence of the Twain

Thomas Hardy's The Convergence of the Twain is a very different take on the familiar tragic tale of the Titanic. Instead of the common view of sympathy for all those passengers that suffered the ultimate price for their ticket in the magnificent voyage, he takes a much more aversive view. Twain's view is that in fact, the ship decided her own fate when she was created ultimately in human vain. The poem states, "The immanent Will tht stirs and urges everything prepared a sinister mate." He is saying that the Titanic's fate, from the moment she was created, was destined to crash into the iceberg. To me, this essentially means that the ship had it coming, along with all of the passengers. This seems really harsh, especially considering the horrible occurance that was the sinking of the Titanic. However, he also makes a good point. The "vaingloriousness" mentioned in the poem was definitely present. The ship wa created as extravagant as possible, with the intention to only impress the world. In the end, this led to her downfall.