Mr. Antolini

In this blog, I want to discuss the following passage found on page 184.

“Holden… One short, faintly stuffy, pedagogical question. Don’t you think there’s a time and place for everything? Don’t you think that if someone starts out to tell you about his father’s farm, he should stick to his guns, then get around to telling you about his uncle’s brace? Or, if his uncle’s brace was such a provocative subject, shouldn’t he have selected it in the first place as his subject- not the farm?” (Salinger 184).

In this chapter, Holden talks about one of his classmates going off topic in a speech. He said his classmate’s speech was very interesting and it was better than the rest of the class member’s speeches. His teacher still failed him, though, because he went off topic. Holden did not realize why he was failed. He thought he should have been given a better grade than everyone else in that class. I thought this was very interesting. It seems as if his classmate’s speech was spoken in the same way as Holden thinks. Holden will start thinking about a certain topic, and I will read a page about something that has nothing to do with anything else. It is still highly interesting, but it is off topic. He will then switch to a completely different, random topic that is slightly attached to the previous and give grave detail about it. I find it interesting, but it is not necessary to make the story. This is the same way that his classmate gave his speech. I find it ironic that he liked his speech so much. It was very interesting to me to see how he felt about it and to see how everything tied together. I assume that he would get along with this classmate of his a little, but he has probably never tried to make a friendship with him. Mr. Antolini caught this as well, I think. He realizes that Holden has a unique way of thinking, and instead of treating him differently, he works with him and finds it interesting.

Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 2001. Print.