Phoebe collage

This collage represents Holden's little sister Phoebe. The faces of different girls are meant to collectively represent Phoebe's physical appearance because "she has this sort of red hair" (67), and that's what kind of hair all the girls pictured have. The photo of the man holding the young girl on his shoulders represents the happy big brother-little sister relationship Phoebe and Holden have. The word "reading" and the image of the stack of books represent Phoebe's affinity for reading and writing--"You never saw a kid with so many notebooks" (160). Phoebe also is very passionate, and this is what the image of the person holding a suitcase stands for; it references the scene where Phoebe packs her bags and decides to go with Holden out West. The words "fresh," "life," "bouncy," and "energy" are meant to stand for Phoebe's energetic, fresh affect. An example of this liveliness is when Holden talks about how she talks out loud to The 39 Steps, which is "her favorite" (67). Most everyone likes her: "She killed Allie, too. I mean he liked her, too....she still kills everybody--everybody with any sense, anyway" (68). And of course, Phoebe is intelligent: "You never saw a little kid so pretty and smart in your whole life" (67). This is complemented by the picture of the person lying in bed, thinking, which is meant to represent how Phoebe sits in bed and contemplates things when Holden comes to visit her.

Overall, Phoebe is a splendid character, and she has many vivid attributes whose essences are difficult to capture in one collage.

Dear Holden, this is something you would like about the world I live in.

My grandparents on my mom's side, Alan and Marsha, are very intelligent. My grandfather is my favorite relative, and one of my favorite people. Alan is a World War II veteran, and he retired a few years ago from being a top designer at Tiffany's. He is very cute, and he has a few passionate interests. Alan wears a hat every day--like you and your hunting hat. Usually it's a fedora, but sometimes he wears his grey beret. He also dresses very classy, unlike everyone else today—he always wears a button-down shirt and khakis, and unless it's summertime, he wears a vest and/or sweaters. He wears thick glasses and a neatly trimmed, medium-length beard. Actually, he doesn't really have a chin: something is off with his jaw. Anyway, he keeps up his appearance, even though his skin cancer recently acted up again. He loves gardening and is very deliberate about his dahlias. Every day he walks down the street to get the paper, and he misses his dog, Misty, very much, since she died several months ago. He used to feed Misty a hard-boiled egg every day with her supper. His jokes have always been the same, the purple cow joke or “boi-oi-oing”, the Mars bars song, his lack of hair on the top of his head. He is very much set in his ways—just like you, Holden.

My grandmother Marsha, his wife, had a stroke four years ago. Alan has been taking care of her ever since. She's still fully functional, don't get me wrong, she walks and talks and cooks and everything. But certain things are not so normal--most of her moments are "senior moments," and she's not supposed to bend over because that could mess up the blood clot in her brain, but she bends over anyway. Alan has been there to stop her from bending over, and to stay by her side. He was the one who came home from a walk to find her lying inert after having her stroke. He lost about twenty pounds from the stress and worrying about Marsha in the days after the stroke, but he never let his emotions get in the way of his rationality, and I think you would like that about him, Holden.
Another thing about Alan that you would like is how fascinated he is with history. When he was in his twenties and in Europe during the war, he collected newspapers with interesting headlines that he thought might be even more interesting later on. So he saved them, and now, 60+ years later, he still has them, and they’re amazing. I think you would appreciate that because you like to read about historical things -- you "read a lot of classical books...and I read a lot of war books" (18). He has newspapers with incredible historic headlines in all different languages—French, German, you name it. He shows them to me almost every time we come over to their house. Most of them are about battles and leaders I’ve never really heard of, and you probably haven’t either, but some of them are really amazing—“Hitler Dead” or “Roosevelt est mort” (in French).

Alan reminds me of Phoebe a lot. He’s sincere and smart, witty and quick-thinking--which are all attributes that you appreciate. Phoebe and Alan are your and my favorite relatives, respectively. I think they have a lot in common, and I think you would like Alan about as much as I do.

Where do the ducks go?

I chose this painting to represent Holden's curiosity about where the ducks go in the wintertime. When Holden is in stressful situations that make him nervous or depressed, he tends to wonder about the ducks. Holden is distracted by the thought of it while he's talking to Spencer. He asks a cab driver in New York on page 60, when he's lost and has just gotten to the city: "You know those ducks in that little lagoon right near Central Park South?...By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over?" When Holden is thinking about Jane, and he's wandering about New York, he gets in another cab. "New York's terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night....It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed" (81). Holden then proceeds to ask that cab driver about the ducks, and they get into a long conversation about it, but the cabbie doesn't understand. In a way, Holden is asking about himself--where should he go? The world is cold and inhospitable to him, a sort of lasting winter, freezing him out--in the midst of all this hostility, where is there for him to go? It is very important for Holden to find out where the ducks go, because then maybe he can figure out what he is supposed to do with his life.

Allie's glove

"You'd have liked [Allie]....He was terrifically intelligent....He was also the nicest, in a lot of ways. He never got mad at anybody" (38).



I chose this picture to represent Allie's baseball glove because Holden cares a lot about Allie, and he identifies with Allie, especially because Allie never got to grow up, and in many ways, Holden "still act[s] sometimes like [he] was only about twelve" (9). I chose to represent this symbol, which represents Allie among other things, because Holden thinks about Allie when he gets "very depressed" (99), and he depends on fantasies about childhood with Allie to bring him out of his misery, which is perhaps the most important thing for a person to have.

Soundtrack to the CITR Movie That Never Was

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_Q_fYuMZdA

Angel in the Snow, by Elliott Smith

I chose this song for the scene when Holden is thinking of throwing a snowball out the window but then decides against it. I think this song exemplifies Holden's respect for all things delicate--he respects girls ("When you're coming pretty close to doing it with a girl...she keeps telling you to stop....I stop. Most guys don't" (92). The girl Elliott Smith is singing about is delicate -- "all crushed out on the way you are" -- and in Holden's mind, Jane is a delicate girl, and so he cares for her, and it is important to him that she be respected: "I was so damn worried....If you knew Stradlater, you'd have been worried, too....He was unscrupulous" (40). He respects children, like Phoebe, and the girl he meets in the park ("I gave her a hand with [her skate]" [119]), as is evident in his dream of being the catcher in the rye: "I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field...I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff...that's the only thing I'd really like to be" (173). Also, obviously, the perfect snow is a very delicate thing, and it is another one of the few things Holden respects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WanOEidDWEQ

Talking to Mary, by Elliott Smith

Talking to Mary is a song about a girl who understands a man's problems, even though they might strike other people as weird or abnormal. "She sees behind that dirty look." This expression personifies Phoebe and Holden's relationship. On page 67 of Catcher in the Rye, Holden says, "I mean if you tell old Phoebe something, she knows exactly what the hell you're talking about." I would match this song to the scene in which Holden and Phoebe are talking in the middle of the night, because Phoebe knows intuitively that Holden got kicked out of school again, and she can tell that his problem is that he doesn't like anything or anyone: "She can hear what you're thinking/ Like you were saying it right out loud." This song would again be appropriate when Phoebe packs her bags and decides to go with Holden out West: "It was her that followed down every stupid turn that you took."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AsmXykRsHg

I Love the Unknown, by Clem Snide

I picked this song to be the soundtrack for the scene when Holden is walking through the snow to the train station so he can go to New York. "I decided I'd take a room in a hotel in New York--some very inexpensive hotel and all--and just take it easy till Wednesday" (51). Not many sheltered 16-year-olds decide to go wing it in a big city by themselves in the winter without much money, but that's all Holden wants to do: wing it. I think this song really describes Holden because he loves the unknown, and he pursues it, both consciously and subconsciously, in the way that he leaves school after school and is so impulsive in his ways. "I didn't have too much difficulty at Elkton Hills," he tells Spencer. "I didn't exactly flunk out or anything. I just quit, sort of" (13).

Dear Holden, this is something you would hate about the world I live in.

Something you would definitely hate about the world I live in is Apple. Apple is an electronics company that pretty much has a monopoly on the market. They manufacture phones, music players, computers, almost anything—except everything has an “I” in front of it, and everything is so super-popular that everyone forgets about the other companies. Everyone has an iBook, iMac, iPhone, iTouch—well, lots of people anyway. But you would definitely be considered weird if you didn’t have an iPod.
An iPod is a music player. It’s like a record player, but it’s tiny and metal and square, and it has a little screen, like a movie. On the screen you can pick which songs you want to hear, and the tiny metal square plays it for you. You can plug the iPod into the iHome, which plays the music into a room at a louder volume. It’s a little like being taken over by robots. Practically nobody can live without his or her iPod, and it has spanned a ton of replicas that are nowhere near as popular. Samsung, BlackBerry, and Sony—all other competitive electronics companies—have created tiny portable music players that are like the iPod, but they just can’t beat it. I think this would drive you insane, because the little guy can’t get a word in! And you like the underdog—James Castle was the underdog, for one.
Another weird thing about the iPod is that people feel the need to make it bigger, bigger, bigger! In the first place, the cool thing about the iPod was that it was small and you could carry it anywhere. Now everyone is interested in the iPad, which is a big piece of metal with a movie screen that does what you tell it to do when you tap it. You can watch movies, do research, talk to your friends, send electronic mail, listen to music, and other things right in your lap. It’s really odd.
The most annoying thing about the iPod, which pretty much sums up the rest of what I’ve described to you, Holden, is the fact that it eliminates the need for people to get up and search for things. Nobody goes out without checking his or her iPod or iPhone first to see which movies are playing, what time the museum’s open, or what a restaurant is serving that night. It’s like nobody even cares anymore unless their robotic little friend has fed them the information they seek.
Anyway, Holden, that’s just a little tidbit. Since you seem to like going out and finding your way and generally exploring, and you hate when one guy takes over and influences everybody, I think you would despise Apple and their iPods and iPhones.