Continuing Observations - Word Watcher/Effective Language

Throughout Chapters 10-16...

• I have noticed that Holden’s self-delusion and unreliability as a narrator continue to grow. When he enters the Lavender Room, he depicts himself as a wise,beyond-his-years, playboy. However, but because the waiter refuses to serve him alcohol, and because the girls laugh at his advances, we doubt that Holden’s self-description is accurate. Holden rationalizes the girls’ dismissal of him by saying that they are "silly tourist hicks." Holden likes to imagine that he is a mature individual who perceptively sees all the hidden details around him, but in actuality he’s just a kid. Once again, Holden’s inability to understand the world around him--or, perhaps, his unwillingness to acknowledge the world around him, reveals his profound isolation with his surroundings.

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move.... Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you."

This excerpt, in which Holden explains why he loves the Museum of Natural History, is located in Chapter 16. As he's killing time before his date with Sally, Holden decides to walk from Central Park to the Museum of Natural History. Along the way, he remembers in detail his school trips to the museum. Holden has already demonstrated throughout the novel that he fears and does not know how to deal with conflict, confusion, and change. through this effective use of language, the museum somehow presents him with a vision of life he can understand; as the museum is frozen, silent, and always the same.

Moreover, it is significant that in the final sentence Holden uses the second-person pronoun “you” instead of the first-person “me.” It seems to be an attempt to distance himself from the continuous process of change. However, the impossibility of such a fantasy is the tragedy of Holden’s situation; because rather than face the challenges around him, he retreats to a fantasy world of his own. When he actually gets to the museum, he decides not to go in; because this would disturb his imaginative construction by making it encounter the real world. Clearly through his tone, word-choice, and metaphoric language, Holden wants life to remain frozen like the display cases in the museum.


Jenna S.