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This is also where the reader learns about Holder’s career in Pence Prep school.
Holder explains his relationship with his parents and how he has grown distant from them. Question: Why doesn’t Holder just suck it up and try a tiny bit? He could succeed if he had more of a optimistic attitude, why does he refuse himself this attitude? Chapter 2: “I’m just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don’t they? ” (15). This chapter introduces Mr.. Spencer, who seems to be the only person that Holder likes at this point. Mr.. Spencer tells him that life is a game and Holder must learn to play by its rules. But Holder, refuses this in his mind and makes up an excuse to leave.
This made me believe that if Holder won’t accept this simple fact, then he might be hopeless. Why doesn’t Holder take Mr.. Spence’s advice to heart, he obviously respects him? Chapter 3: “He was looking at this picture of this girl I used to go around with in New York, Sally Hayes. In this Chapter, the reader is introduced to Ackley. You also learn of what happens with him managing the fencing team. As Ackley is introduced, you begin to see why Holder hates the school and the people in it. Instead of Hinting Ackley to leave, why doesn’t Holder force him out of his dorm?
Chapter 4 “Jane Gallagher,’ I said. I even got up from the washbowl when he said that. I damn near dropped dead. ” (31 We learn more about Seedeater and Holder compares Seedeater to Ackley. We also learn of Jane Gallagher and how they had a relationship, but now Seedeater has a date with her, this makes Holder angry and sad. Holder continues to list the things that he hates in this chapter and it seems he hates everything. He can’t possibly hate everything, he is just telling himself he hates everything, why doesn’t he stop self destructing? Chapter 5: “l started to throw it.
At a car that was parked across the street. But changed my mind. The car looked so nice and white. Then started to throw it at a hydrant, but that looked to nice and white. ” Holder In this chapter, we learn about Allele, Holder’s little sister who died of leukemia. Holder still feels strongly for her and this could be the reason for the melancholy way that he is. Is Holder suffering from a mental illness? Chapter 6: “You never saw such gore in your life. … It partly scared me and it partly fascinated me. All that blood and all sort of made me look tough.
I’d only been in about two fights in my life, and I lost both of them. I’m not too tough. Lime a pacifist, if you want to know the truth. ” (45-46). Speak Kerr: When Seedeater comes back, he tells Holder that his composition about Allele was bad and it had nothing to do With the assignment. Considering that this was a very personal thing with Holder, this made him very hostile towards Seedeater. Holder asked Seedeater about his date and Seedeater wouldn’t tell him, this made Holder even more angry. Why doesn’t Holder use more than violence to convey his emotions?
Chapter 7: “When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down the goddamn corridor. I was sort of crying. Don’t know why. Put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak round to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddamn voice, ‘Sleep tight, way morons! ‘” (52). In this chapter, Holder decides, after not being able to fall asleep, to leave that night. He cry as he is leaving Pence. Holder’s frantic loneliness and constant lying further the implication that he is not well mentally or emotionally.
Why haven’t his parents seen this in him instead Of just sending him Off to all these prep schools? Chapter 8: “Then I started reading this timetable I had in my pocket. Just to stop lying. Once I get started, can go on for hours if I feel like it. No kidding. Hours. ” (58). Holder has a conversation with one of his classmates mother. He tells her lies about her son being the most popular kid in school and school president. He even lies about his name and why he is leaving early. This further shows his inability to tell the truth that he explained previously in the book.
Why does he continue to lie even though he hates this mother’s son? He could tell her what he thinks and get back; and yet, he makes her feel better and less stress even if she is going to be a little disappointed. He seems to have some good in him, why doesn’t he let it out more? Chapter 9: “Sometimes I can think of very crumby stuff I wouldn’t mind doing if the opportunity came up. I can even see how it might be quite a lot of fun, in a crumby way, and if you were both sort of drunk and all, to get a girl and squirt Water or something all over each other’s face. The thing is, though, don’t like the idea.
It stinks, if you analyze it. “(62). Holder decides to stay in a hotel in New York and sees other guests engaging sexually. In Holder’s reactions to the other guests in the hotel, whom he refers to as “perverts,” Holder reveals a great deal about his attitudes toward ex and toward what makes him uncomfortable about sexuality. Why is he so sexually awkward? Chapter 10: That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls.
Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can. Despite his independent nature, Holder demonstrates how badly he needs companionship. In these chapters especially, his thoughts are always of other people. He thinks about Phoebe, he repeatedly remembers Jane. This further begs, the question of his mental illness and sociopath nature. (yes its a question) Chapter 11: “l hate fist fights. I don’t mind getting hit so much – although I’m not crazy about it, naturally – but what scares me most in a fist fight is the guy’s face. I can’t stand looking at the other guy’s face, is my trouble.
It wouldn’t be so bad if you could both be blindfolded or something. It’s a funny kind of yellowness, when you come to think of it, but it’s yellowness, all right. I’m not kidding myself. ” (90). Significance: Holder decides that it is time to leave the hotel. As he walks out to the lobby, Holder starts to remember about Jane. His memories of Jane are especially touching because he describes a very deep emotional connection. Why does, even though he seems to not be around his parents or a lot of people his age, when he is alone, all he wants is a companion? When he has one, he pushes them away, why not stay?
Chapter 12: “He had a big damn mirror in front Of the piano, with this big spotlight on him, so that everybody could watch his face while he played. You could ‘t see his fingers while her played?just his big old face. Big deal. I’m not too sure what the name of the song was that he was playing when came in, but whatever it was, he was really stinking it up. He was putting all these dumb, show-off ripples in the high notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass. You should’ve heard the crowd though, when he was finished. You would have puked. (84). When he enters the Lavender Room, he depicts himself as a wise-beyond-his- years, debonair playboy. But because the waiter refuses to serve him alcohol, and because the girls laugh at his advances, we doubt that Holder’s self- description is accurate. Why does he hit on the girls, they are much too old for him? Chapter 13: She was a pretty spooky kid. Even with that little bitty voice she had, she could sort of scare you a little bit. If she’d been a big old prostitute, with a lot of makeup on her face and all, she wouldn’t have been half as spooky. ” (98).
Holder orders a prostitute because he is lonely and then when he is approached sexually, he turns her down, continuing to show his awkwardness with sex. Earlier in the book, he connected his thought towards random sex as being just fake and devoid of emotion. What he really wants is Jane. Why even after attempting to pay the prostitute, she didn’t want to leave it? Chapter 14: In the first place, I’m sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don’t care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth.
They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down. I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples. If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the Disciples, that poor bastard. ” (99). Holder reveals what he thinks of organized religion. As I get farther along in the story, I continue to see that Holder may be in fact, mentally unstable.
Why is the person who is the favorite in the bible the person who seems to be mentally unstable? Chapter 1 5: “Everything I had was bourgeois as hell. Even my fountain pen was bourgeois. He borrowed it off me all the time, but it was bourgeois Holder makes a date with Sally Hayes, a girl he used to know. After he leaves the hotel, he starts to reminisce about his parents. He worries that the news Of his expulsion will particularly distress his fragile mother, for whom he seems to care a great deal. Holder also gives money to some nuns, even after he reveals his ideas of organized religion, why did he do that?
Chapter 16: “Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that’s impossible, but it’s too bad anyway. ” (122). Holder is walking on the street and hears a little boy singing “If a body catch a body coming through the rye. ” This cheers him up quite a bit. This is his favorite poem, even though, he misunderstands the poem, he still takes meaning from it, which seems to be the only thing in the world that he has an affinity other than his sister, mother or Jane.
This is a somewhat uplifting chapter for Holder, why, even though he has been told he misunderstands the quote, does he still gets joy from it? Chapter 17: “Take most people, they’re crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they’re always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that’s even newer. Onto even like old cars. I mean they don’t even interest me. I’d rather have a goddamn horse. A horse is at least human, for God’s 31).
Holder takes Sally out on a date and it seems like he is having a good time, he is checking her out and finding her attractive. This is until they sit down after ice skating, he starts to rant and his pitch fluctuates as he talks about phonies. He eventually asks Sally to run away with him, but she refuses, this makes him even more agitated, which causes him to tell her she is a “pain in the assn. She starts crying so he leaves. Holder is becoming more and more apparently insane, but is this because f loneliness or an actual mental illness?
Chapter 18: “The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they’ll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don’t like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they’ll say he’s conceited. Even Smart girls do Holder’s off-kilter ramblings in Chapter 18 about being killed by an atom bomb sound like a frightened, threatened boy.