How Salinger used Holden's voice to show his pain

In "Type of narration" , Booth picked up "Catcher in the Rye" for using self-conscious narrator. Holden Caulfield, protagonist of the novel, aged 14, starts to tell his story with an odd tone, as if he is tired of his circumstances. Even he seems to deny conventional story telling. “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy child hood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”- (the Catcher in the Rye, Ch1) Booth didn’t say that he’s not going to tell (in case we want Charles Dickens style) however, we can perceive clearly why Holden was chose to self-conscious once we open the text. He implies that some big accident happened which is related to his back ground. Reading further, we may guess, his mood is based on several events happened before that his attitude is influenced by his emotional status. The thing is that he is not normal. Currently he is staying in hospital and waiting D. B, his old brother to go back home with.

He even perceived you are listening to his story and he starts to remember what happened before. How his secret conversation should be provided further to explain his deep pain easily. This job must be a work for Salinger because readers may stop reading. His stories are too complex to understand. Salinger used insert to solve this problem. On uphill, Holden was watching foot ball alone. “I remember around three o’clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell up on top of Thomsen Hill, right next to this crazy cannon that was in the Revolutionary War. You could see the whole field from there, and you could see two teams bashing each other all over the place.”(Ch1)

However his action was not continued right after but stopped with inserting his past events. He blamed seniors’ privilege that is taking girls to watch game together. Additionally, he brings out one girl who once had conversation with him in the bus. After remembering her appearance, he thought of his fencing players who ostracized him that day. When he was isolated with watching foot ball, he naturally missed past and messed up by unpleasant persons around him. Salinger wanted certain phenomenon to show reader. Human’s mind, if especially when one is severely damaged by many results in a row, cannot respond well. “Anyway I kept standing next to that crazy cannon, looking down at the game and freezing my ass off.”(Ch1) Salinger finally continues to show Holden’s movement. Probably readers’ image about Holden watching foot ball is dimmed after long commentary.

By following this process, we may guess how miserable Holden was. He didn’t want to simply say he is sick emotionally because his sorrow is not just from one bad result but countless and complex. Absolutely, intensity of sadness differs from case to case and also not all of his painful memories are provided in the beginning. Salinger understood how bad it is when person is troubled with many events that can’t get out of unstable condition. He emphasized Holden’s state with popup images. He added what’s going on in Holden’s conscious between wandering on the uphill. At that moment regretful emotion was too strong that he couldn’t concentrate on one subject. This is Salinger’s brilliant ability because he made readers think of they are Holden. In this way, we can measure how bad it is and he tried alignment as if we became the novel’s narrator.