Reading Response #6 - The Catcher in the Rye

In chapter five Stradlater leaves for his date with a woman named Jane Gallagher. A woman that Holden knows from the past and seems to very protective of Jane. Stradlater asks Holden to write his paper for him because he didn’t have time to write it with his date. Stradlater says simply that the paper had to be able a description of a room or house or something fairly simple. But of course Holden being his own kind of person wrote about a baseball glove that his brother used to write all sorts of quotes, moments, poems, all over it. When Stradlater comes back from his date he immediately reads the paper that he had Holden write for him. He was pissed to see that Holden refused to write what he said to write about and simply says “No wonder your being expelled you can’t even write a simple paper right.”  Stradlater is a mega hypocrite for saying this to Holden: for one Stradlater can’t even write his own paper. Stradlater throws a huge tantrum and rips his notebook up while insulting Holden. This fighting leads to Holden getting bullied to the ground and punched in the nose. Holden bleeding out from his nose leads Stradlater worried that he will get in trouble for hurting Holden; which is ironic because I figured he would have been worried that he actually hurt him not that he would get in trouble for it. I’m very excited to see what happens when Holden actually leaves after winter break.

Drafting Paper - Could video gaming cause people to become more violent?

In my essay I am going to debate if video games are making people more violent.  Most video games nowadays are massively bloody and gory and unfortunately a massive portion of young boys play these games. Could these games cause the young boys to develop a violent adulthood? Also I’m going to talk about the different kinds of video games like PC games, console games, portable electronic games, etc. In my paper I’m going to talk about American events such as Columbine, the incident at the movie theatre and other events and debate if video games were the purpose of these massacres. Talking about video games will be fairly easy for me because I am almost constantly playing something on my phone like angry birds or at home playing Call of Duty.

Reading Response #5 - The Catcher in the Rye

Holden lives in Ossenburg Hall at Pencey Prep and has a roommate named Stradlater; fairly handsome man who is said to be “Good with the ladies.” On the other hand an annoying, pimply fellow by the name of Ackley lives down the hall and bothers Holden as he loves to read alone. Ackley bothers the crap out of Holden the entire third chapter after Holden repeatedly tells him to shut up. For some awkward and weird reason Holden keeps talking about this red hat he has on that has a beak on it. I’m wondering what the hat has to do with any part of this book, or if it’s a metaphor for something else in his life? Close to the end of the third chapter, Stradlater comes into the apartment talking about this girl he met at the football game; her name was Jane Gallagher. Holden apparently knows her from the past as he is eager to go say hello but also scared almost as if he has some secret crush on her. Stradlater is a man with broad shoulders and good hygiene so he doesn’t seem to have trouble with the ladies, this makes Holden very nervous as he gives girls “the time” quite often. “Up home we wear a hat like that to shoot deer in, for Chrissake,” Ackley said. “That’s a deer shooting hat.” “Like hell it is.” I took it off and looked at it. I sort of closed one eye, like I was taking aim at it. “This is a people shooting hat,” I said. “I shoot people in this hat.” Holden says this about this red hat with a beak on it, like I said before, this makes me think like what does the hat actually mean to him? Could  it be a symbol for something in his life that he can’t let go of?