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.