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Title: The Catcher in the Rye
Author: J.D. Salinger
Date Written: Late 1940s–early 1950s
Date Read: 6.24.04
Main characters:

* Holden Caufield- narrator, main character, son of wealthy New York family, adolescent foibles get worse
* Phoebe-sister of Holden, more mature and intelligent than her age, well respected by Holden
* Mr. Antolini- English teacher who tries to save Holden

Themes:

* Hatred of phoniness
* Alienation within society that is increasingly sacrificing values for the sake of society
* Difficulty of adolescence

Symbols:

* Hunting hat-uniqueness
* Ducks in the pond-curiosity of youth, willingness to encounter
* “catcher�?-catching kids before they reach “adulthood�?
* museum of Natural History-world Holden wishes to live in, unchanging

Memorable Quotations:

* “Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.�?
* “That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all�?
* “I have a feeling that you’re riding for some kind of terrible fall…�?

Summary:

Holden Caufield begins by saying that he doesn’t intend for the novel to serve as his life story. He only tells of what occurred last Christmas in the coarse of only five days. In this story, Holden seems to be a typical adolescent until the story grows gradually more complex. One gets the feeling that Holden is mentally insane and is self destructive. He is unusually depressive and does things so spontaneously. He keeps repeating phrases such as “that kills me�? and “…really�? and uses words such as “phony�? a lot. He is a failure at school and yet his parents are rich and are extremely worried about him. In the end however, Holden refuses to tell what happened next and how he got sick. In the end, he states that it’s amazing how you can miss people who are gone.

Other:

Holden never addresses his emotions directly, and never attempted to discover the source of his troubles. He really needs people to love him but his wall of bitterness towards others prevents him from having many successes in bonding. He depends on his alienation, but it destroys him. Holden consistently contradicts himself.

Book: The Bonesetter’s Daughter
Author: Amy Tan
Setting: before, during, and after WWII in a small village near Beijin to modern-day San Francisco
Protagonist: Ruth Luyi Young, the daughter of Liu LuLing
Themes: The clash between Chinese and American cultures, depression and paranoia, finding one’s past through memories and written documents

This story is written in four parts with two main stories.
One is the story of Ruth, an American-born Chinese woman, a ghostwriter for self-help books, in a relationship with a white man, stepmother to his two teenaged daughters, and finally, daughter of LuLing, who Ruth fears is becoming demented. Ruth begins to realize what her mother’s memory loss means to both of them: for her mother, an increased need for attention, for Ruth, disappearing stories that could help Ruth understand her family and render a feeling that she is part of a larger story.

The second major story is that of LuLing, which Ruth discovers in the form of documents LuLing had given her several years earlier, written in Chinese, LuLing’s attempt to hold on to fading memories of her life in China. This story within a story–LuLing’s life in a village called Immortal Heart; the secrets passed on by her nursemaid Precious Auntie (who, we learn, is also her mother); a cave where bones are mined that may be the teeth of Peking Man; tales of ghosts and curses–parallels in many ways the present-day issues confronting Ruth: an inability to speak up to her partner and his two daughters; why she remains a ghostwriter, without a voice of her own; an increasingly problematic and confusing relationship with her mother. Answers to both women’s puzzles and problems unfold as LuLing’s story is translated in its entirety, providing answers through memory and words that could not be spoken, only recorded.