Discussing the theme ’phoniness’

Discuss the theme ’phoniness’, with close reference to three characters or incidents.

In the novel The Catcher in the Rye there is a term used several times through the course of the novel; ‘phoney’ or ‘phoniness’, and the person who uses these words is the main character; Holden Caulfield. He is an adolescent boy who enjoys the company of honest and loyal people such as people Holden thinks he can trust. He despises generally adulthood but above all false identities, people that always follow the mainstream.

Having Holden generally not favouring mainstream living many examples and quotations were easily found and selected. The first three examples are citations mentioned early in the novel by Holden. The fourth quote is found further on in the novel.

Holden speaks to Mr Spencer about him leaving Elkton Hills and its reasons. He doesn’t directly tell Mr Spencer why he left the school but simply shows his thoughts about the school; -“One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. (…) For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life.”

At one time Holden talks about this religious guy who is never ashamed to get down on his knees and pray to God, according to Holden this is fake, phoney
-“He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car. That killed me. I can just see the big phoney bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs.”

On one occasion Holden describes a relationship to a friend, but even that is ‘phoney’. –“He was at least a pretty friendly guy, Stradlater. It was partly a phoney kind of friendly, but at least he always said hello to Ackley and all.” Here we can see that Holden is very vague with his term ‘phoney’ and that he comments a lot of different things to be phoney. In comparison to these examples this quotation is found deeper in the novel.
Holden explains more deeply on his feelings on his use of the term ‘Phoney’.
“-‘You ought to go to a boys’ school sometime. Try it sometime,’ I said. ‘It’s full of phonies and all you do is study, so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam clicks.” Holden here criticizes more on why he believes certain people are phoney. He directs his term ‘phoney’ towards the stereotypical lifestyle and the people who live that way.

These four quotes show different aspects of how and where the term ‘phoney’ could be used. Together they all expose a term usable in a large array of situations. Although the term easily used, it can be murder trying to fully understand the use of ‘phoney’ in a sentence.
If you look the word ‘phoney’ up in a dictionary you’ll find the word ‘humbug’, ‘bluff’ and ‘fake’. But in the novel it can be hard to understand Holden’s meaning with his term. In the beginning you almost get the feeling that he uses the word with the meaning ‘embarrassing’ and ‘silly’. Later in the novel it was more like an annoying sense, when he mentions ‘phoniness’.

By: Frida, Johanna, & Marco

Describe three characters encountered by Holden during his time in New York and explain their importabce to the novel.

Along the novel Holden Caulfield comes upon some people which affect him in different ways. He meets among others his younger sister Phoebe, his ex-girlfriend Sally and Sunny the prostitute. They all stand for particular stages in his adolescence. They influence Holden through his journey into the adult life, which he doesn’t want to be a part of. Phoebe reminds him of the innocence of childhood which he admires greatly. Sunny stands for sexuality that Holden doesn’t want to accept. Sally stands for forethought in contrast to Holden’s impulsivity.

Phoebe Caulfield is Holden’s younger sister and the one that supports Holden when he’s feeling down. Phoebe is the one in the novel that stands for innocence, something that Holden wants to protect from adults and their phoniness. Holden sees that he is in a mission to be the Catcher in the Rye, to save the young kids from fall over the edge into adulthood, and who is the best one to save first, if not his sister?
A clear example of this is when he tells her to go in the merry-go-round when they are in Central Park. Even though both he and she know that Phoebe is too old for riding the carousel, Holden does not only let her, he is the one that insist about getting in the carousel.
Phoebe is also the one that forces Holden into adulthood, telling him that he must let go of his boy dreams, to grow up and be a man.
Sally Hayes is a very good-looking girl that Holden has known for a very long time. Sally is a smart girl, even if Holden thinks the opposite. He thinks that she is an imbecile because she tries to be logical and cautious. She makes him confront the reality, which is that he can’t live in Neverneverland forever and ever and that he has to grow up. He proposes Sally to follow with him far away, and with the money he has still left from his journey in New York, they will live together, and when they run out of money, they will get a job. He doesn’t see any problems with this, according to him, brilliant idea. Sally, on the other hand, thinks Holden’s idea is immature, childish, and irresponsible, something she would never do. They start
arguing and both go their ways.
Sunny the prostitute is the one that stands for Holden’s unreachable sexuality. The sex that
Sunny stands for is the sex when you meet someone you haven’t met before, “just does it”, and never meet again. This is according to Holden the worst form of sex that you can
experience.
The sex Holden strives after is the more sensual and social kind of sex. The reason why he doesn’t want to make love to Sunny is because not only he has just met her, but she is
unsocial and vulgar. One thing you can notice is how he keeps mentioning things about Sunny’s childish behavior and looks, at one time he says “She was very nervous, for a
prostitute…I think it was because she was young as hell. She was around my age.” He also talks about the childish way Sunny speaks. The childish way she acts and looks may be one of
the reasons of why he does not want to sleep with her. I believe that Holden refuses to take away her innocence, even though she is a prostitute.

Holden is heavily affected by the people he meets in New York, and his life takes a turning point after this weekend. Phoebe, Sally, and Sunny, all try to force Holden into adulthood in their different ways. Holden realizes that he can’t always be the catcher in the rye, the children have to grow up and there is nothing he can do to stop them from falling down the cliff into the adulthood.

High school student Robert Ackley commits suicide

Took his life in dining hall with fork

Robert Ackley, a high school student at Pensey Prepatory school, died yesterday morning on the way to a hospital. Witnesses say that Ackley stabbed himself in the throat several times with his fork during breakfast.
Ackley had always been a bit of a loner according to fellow student Ward Stradlater. He also said that Ackley was frequently bullied by the seniors; a statement that the principal says is untrue. According to him, the school has never had a problem with bullies.
Ackley’s relationship with his family was also a troubled one. His mother died of leukemia when he was only 4. His father then succumbed to drinking alcohol and abusing the children.
During the breakfast Ackley had gotten several vicious comments from other students relating a letter from his father. Stradlater said that Ackley broke down in tears and then started laughing through his tears. Apparently he then stabbed his left hand once before stabbing himself in the throat. Witnesses were shocked at the sight and the students who sat next to him are still not talking.
The staff was very slow at reacting; the process getting the students away from the dining hall was painfully slow. Calling the hospital was also far too delayed and an investigation has been started to see whether the staff did anything wrong.
It is known that Ackley was one of the last people to talk to Holden Caulfield, a student that was dismissed from the school last week. The faculty has discussed whether anything he said to Ackley before he left had any impact on the tragic event. They have reached no conclusion as of today.
A ceremony to honor his memory will be held next Thursday in the school chapel. Ackley’s brother said that it is an open service; everyone who knew him can come and pay their respects.

The impact characters in the book had on Holden

Throughout the novel, Holden meets several people that are significant to the plot and within this essay we will examine three of them. We will look at the person we believe had the most significant impact on Holden and therefore also the novel, Phoebe, the prostitute who exposed his reluctance to give up his innocence, Sunny as well as the young child that sang Comin Thro’ The Rye.
Holden’s sister, Phoebe Caulfield, is in the 4th grade and is therefore 10 years old. Holden loves her and doesn’t want to lead her in this same life as he has. In one way it is also apparent that Phoebe is more mature than Holden even though she is far younger. She notes that he barely likes anything that he sees. She sees that the things he likes are things frozen in time, people he hasn’t seen lose their innocence. For example his younger brother Allie who died of leukaemia at a young age and Jane, a girl he used to date and still thinks about. She is also the one who in the end makes him realize that he has to let some of his innocence go. “All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she’d fall off the goddam horse, but I didn’t say or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab to the gold ring you have to let them do it and not say anything. If the fall off, they fall off, but it’s bad if you say anything to them.” Here it shows some growth of his character, he used to want to save all the children from adulthood and such but we believe this quotation shows that he too realized that growth is necessary.
However not all of the characters in the book were as benevolent as Phoebe. The prostitute he bought some time with was not. The way we see it she just exposed Holden’s confusion about sex to himself as well which is apparent in his thoughts just after she took her dress “I certainly felt peculiar when she did that. I mean she did it so sudden and all. I know you’re supposed to feel pretty sexy when somebody gets up and pulls their dress over their head, but I didn’t. Sexy was about the last thing I was feeling. I felt much more depressed than sexy.”. As she started doing some more direct advances on him he began to make up crazy lies about why he couldn’t do it. We see it as quite likely that the lies were as much for him as for her. He didn’t want to admit to himself that he couldn’t give up that part of him and so he hid himself behind the curtain of lies he often uses throughout the book.
In contrast of the feelings Sunny induced in Holden, he saw a young child walking down the street with his parents, singing. That image was one of the first things in the novel that truly appealed to Holden. He could relate to the child as being one of the people he wanted to save from the cruelty of adulthood. We argue that the child is important to the novel as it shows the “old” Holden’s way of thinking nicely. The innocence and even ignorance of the child walking in the street appealed to him and probably also inspired him to be the catcher in the rye.
For those reason we feel that the singing child represents the “old” Holden in the same way we feel that Phoebe represents the new one. Sunny helped Holden in a way as she made his confusion apparent to him as well and therefore started his transition towards the Holden we see in the end of the book. A more mature Holden that has started accepting the fact that you can not stay innocent forever, you have to grow up sometime.

//Pontus & Kosma

Jerome David Salinger Committed Suicide
The famous author was just going to speak out when he shot himself in the head.

J.D Salinger, the famous author, was just going to a news conference to talk about his book ”The Catcher in the Rye” for the first time – When he commits suicide in his car in the age of 92.
Jerome David Salinger was one of our times
most mysterious authors. His life was a secret.
For decades have newspaper and fans everywhere tried to get a reach of him. Everyone wanted to talk with him about his famous book ”The Cather in the Rye”. Finally the glad tidings came. J.D Salinger was going to talk.

To good to be true?
Jerome David Salinger never showed up.
The tragical news arrived to the waiting people 3 hours after his death. J.D Salinger have shot himself. An eyewitness heard a loud sound from the car infront of him and then the car lost the control totaly. The eyewitness called the cops immediately who arrives. Thanks to Salinger's wallet they could indentify him.

Mysterious Life
Salinger is and will presumably remain a secret. After his hit with ”The Catcher in the Rye” 1951 has he been hiding himself from the society.
- A very unsociable person, says one of his neighbors in the small city Cornish, New Hampshire.
He didn't want to talk about it and didn't either.
Lots of rumors have passed round, some about his love life, some about if he identify himself with the character Holden Caulfield but most rumors have focused on the question, is he still writing?

We'll never know
When the criminal investigators searched Jerome David Salinger's house they found...Nothing.
The house was empty and that points on that he has planned this suicide for a long time.
No one in his neighborhood have seen any actions around the house.
- I havn't seen anything at all, it's always calm and restful around there, says another one of his neighbors.
Jerome David Salinger, 92 years old took his secrets with him to the end. He is and will remain a secret.

/ RebeckaG

Holden’s relationships with different characters.

In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield travels to New York and comes across different kinds of persons which he acts in various behaviours against. How can it come that he acts this way? What is the difference between all these individuals? We have chosen three different characters which Holden runs into during his journey.

Ernst Mother
When Holden is on the train to New York he meets an elder good-looking lady which starts a conversation with him. When their conversation escalates he get to know that she is the mother of his classmate Ernst Morrow which he doesn’t like at all. “Her son was doubtless the biggest bastard that ever went to Pencey, in the whole crumby history of the school. He was always going down the corridor. After he’d had a shower, snapping his soggy old wet towel at people’s asses” [s.48].
Instead of telling her the truth about Ernst behaviour when she asks, he chose to talk positive about him, for her benefit only. He says things that he knows a mother wants to hear and we think that this is because of the fact that he wants the conversation to keep on going and at the same time he doesn’t want her to get sad.
She asks him about his name and he answers Rudolf Schmidt which is the janitor of his dorm instead of telling her his real name. We think that he does this because he doesn’t want Ernst to know that he has talked to his mother but also because he doesn’t want to be a part of a conflict or being a part of anything at all, really. He seems like a guy that doesn’t want the sun to shine on him. The meeting with Ernst mother let us know that he’s a nice guy. This time he lied to make another individual feel good, a female individual.

The elevator guy and the hooker
After a long night in New York he decides to go back to his hotel room. In the elevator the elevator guy starts to talk with him and asks him how old he is. Twenty-two says Holden and that’s a big lie. The elevator guy offers him a hooker for five bucks a throw and Holden agrees to this. He went to his room to fresh himself up, combs his hair and checks his breath, just for the girl. The hooker arrives to his hotel room and she wants to get going right away and she pulls her dress over her head. [S.85-86] “I certainly felt peculiar when she did that. I mean she did it so sudden and all. I know you are supposed to feel pretty sexy when somebody gets up and pulls their dress over their head, but I didn’t. Sexy was about the last thing I was feeling. I felt much more depressed than sexy” Why was he feeling depressed? Maybe because she didn’t mean something to him, it was just right on and that wasn’t what he was looking for.
The girl still wants to get going but Holden tries to start a conversation instead. When the failure hits him he decides that this was a stupid idea and he wants to pay her the five bucks and then let her go. Instead of accepting his five bucks she starts to get irritating. It’s ten that he’s supposed to pay. She walks away with five and later on she comes back with her pimp. They demand ten. With a crackly voice Holden explains that it really was five. It ends with Holden getting a big smack and a couple of argues later Holden surrender and pays.
His relationship with the girl is easy to read off. He wants a feeling, something else than just pure sex. He tries to talk with the girl who doesn’t respond to his will. He chickens out. He just can’t do it. So instead of doing something nasty he pays her and let her go without her having to do anything. By reading about his relationships with the girl and the guy we can see that he is much friendlier against the girl even if she doesn’t behave that good against him. Against the pimp he’s very upright and he’s not willing to give up, not until he gets smacked and the man gets more aggressive.

Sally
Sally is a girl that Holden has a meeting with. In a conversation Holden says that he wants them to run away and leave everything behind. She turns down his offer and it ends with Holden saying [s.120] “You give me a royal pain in the ass, if you want to know the truth”.
She starts to cry and Holden gets scared and “apologizes like a madman”.
He’s afraid of Sally’s father, if she was going to tell him about what he said to her. Then, suddenly, he starts to laugh. She gets even angrier and he starts to apologize a little bit more than earlier. She turned down his offer and then he say, in the book, that he wasn’t supposed to go with her even if she would have said yes. He also keeps calling himself a madman.
How can we read of this? He starts with being nice against her and then he says something stupid and in the next minute he is overnice and apologizes EVEN though he doesn’t regret what he said. Maybe it is because she was crying, maybe because she was a girl.

Summary
In the whole book Holden acts on a different particular way against all different individuals.
All these characters play an important role; they help us to understand how he is working. It seems like he has multiple personalities. Against some of the characters, like Ernst mother, he does everything to make her happy. Talks with her and lies to make her feel good about her son even though he could decide not to talk about Ernst at all. With the hooker he just wanted to be nice, with Sally to. When things went wrong he let them have right. He bends down for them. He apologizes to Sally and pays the prostitute. All these characters we’ve mention in this paragraph until now is females. How was it about the brothel-keeper? He didn’t just give up them. For a while it seemed like he never would but at last, he didn’t have a choice.

How can it come that he acts on this different ways? We can guess about his childhood that we don’t know that much about. A dead brother, a little sister, a big brother and his parents. Perhaps a dad that didn’t care about him and that ends up with him not being so tolerate and loving against grown ups and males. However it is, we are pretty sure that he looks at children and women as something better and more sensitive than men. On the other hand, don’t all men do that?


Veronica & Rebecka (:

Lawyer found murded

might have been victim to serial killer

By Sara Karlsson

Phoebe Caulfield was found in her apartment in London yesterday.
She had missed an important meeting when she did not show up for work yesterday and when her colleague called her home she didn’t answer. “It is not like Phoebe so of course we were worried” says Melinda Bass, her friend and colleague who found her. Bass decided to go to Caulfield’s apartment to see if something was wrong, and when the door was open she understood that something was seriously wrong. She found Caulfield in the living room. She had a plastic bag over her head and she had been stabbed several times over the chest.
This is the third brutal murder of highly educated women in London only the last three weeks. Even though the murders don’t look the same the Police think that there might be a connection.
“I can’t say too much yet, but we have found evidence that could support that statement” says Martin Hill from the London Police. They have no suspect yet, the killer did not leave any fingerprints and none of the neighbours had heard anything suspicious. Martin Hill says that they think the victim might have known the killer. There was no sign off a break in; she must have let him or her in herself.
Phoebe had lived alone ever since her husband died under tragical circumstances five years ago. They had no children and Phoebe had dedicated her life to her work the last five years. She has been involved in many cases with highly violent criminals, one of her colleagues says. This can be a dangerous job, he continues.
Martin Hill from the Police says that they have not excluded that. “We are considering every option right now. Our highest priority is to catch who ever did this. ”

The Catcher in the Rye - Holdens favourite teachers

You get in contact with two teachers whilst reading the novel. One is Mr Spencer, the history teacher at Pencey prep. school. The other is Mr Antolini, Holden’s English teacher at his old school, Elkton Hills. Both are highly significant to the novel in the way that his relationships with them are about the only good ones he has to any adults in the book.

Mr Spencer is, as I have written earlier, Holden’s old History teacher. He cares about Holden and sympathizes with him in his situation. He gives him advice and tries to make him realize how important school is. Mr Spencer was one of the few adults that Holden really respected, despite his age and position as a teacher.
Holden comes to him to say good bye before he takes off from the school. At that time, Mr Spencer tries to make Holden fully understand the importance of education.
“I’d like to put some sense in that head of yours, boy. I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to help you, if I can.” page. 13
Holden ignores all of his attempts to shake some sense in him and lies to him, just to calm him down. He leaves Mr Spencer just as ignorant as he was before he came, and that is the last time he is mentioned in the novel.

Mr Antolini is an old English teacher of Holdens. Holden likes him because he is clever, young and sympathetic. Their relationship goes way back in time and they often meet up to play tennis together.
In the novel, Holden goes to Mr Antolini to have somewhere too spend the night and for guidance and advice. Holden arrives in the middle of the night and has a coffee together with his old teacher. During the conversation, Mr Antolini attempts to convince Holden of the value of an intellectual mind. He argues that without an education you are not able to contribute something valuable and lasting to the world. He gives Holden a note which says:
“The mark of immature man is that he wants to die nobly fore a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” page. 169
Holden disregards all endeavors Mr Antolini makes to persuade him. Their relation ends abruptly when Holden is woken by Mr Antolinis hand, gently stroking his head. He sees this as a sexual approach and quickly leaves the apartment, feeling disgusted and uncomfortable.
“Boy, I was shaking like a madman. I was sweating too. When something perverty like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard.” page. 174

The parallels between Mr Spencer and Mr Antolini are distinct throughout the novel. They are both former teachers of Holdens, which he has a special relationship to. He respects and admires them both, but in different ways. Holden’s relation with Mr Spencer is more cultured and adult while the one he has to Mr Antolini is more of a friend to friend relation. In both cases they care about Holden and wish him the best. They try to teach him about adulthood and the fact that Holden needs to find his place in the society. Holden ignores most of their arguments but at some level, he still appreciates their concerns and devotion.

Throughout the novel, these characters play an important role in Holden’s life and the way he behaves. They have both affected Holden’s view of life and though it is uncertain if he will ever meet any of them again, they will always have a certain place in his memory.

By Joel & Jonathan

Young Holden dead in accident

Lived a troublesome life

At the age of 20, Holden Caulfield was found dead outside his apartment in New York. He died immediately after being run over by a car.

Where he was going nobody knows, but he was on his bicycle just outside his apartment when the car hit him.

“I didn’t see him coming until it was too late. I swear I didn’t see him coming” said the shocked driver just minutes after the accident.

Holden was born in New York and his both parents are still alive. His sister, Phoebe Caulfield is studying at Harvard Law School.

Holden had a troublesome youth and never graduated from any school. He was expelled from four schools before he gave up education and started working as a mailman.

“He was misunderstood. He would have gone far if he’d been given the chance. He sure had brains.” said his sister Phoebe about his school years.

“He didn’t like school. No, he really didn’t care for education.” claims Robert Ackley, the only person he kept in touch with from the schools he went to. Robert went to Pencey with Holden.

His parents gave up Holden’s education after the fourth time he got kicked out, and he went away to live in another part of the country for a while.

“He said he had to get away from the city and find himself. It was as if he was hoping for God to tell him what he was meant to be. Foolish boy.” his father says with a sad smile.

“God? The boy didn’t really believe in God. He just wanted to get some peace and quite until he was ready to make a serious try in life.” claims his mother.

He stayed away for almost a year before he came back to New York, but the time away did not seem to have helped him. He still didn’t know what he wanted to do, and stayed at home all days until his parents decided to do something about his laziness. They got him a job as a mailman, and that is where his life ended.

“He was just hanging around all day; we thought that a job might do him good. Maybe it would take him somewhere.” says his mother with tears in her eyes.

The job did not take him anywhere; Holden Caulfield’s life ended before his life changed to the better.

News Article, #12

TEENAGE GIRL, KILLED BY DIET PILLS.
Sally Hayes, 17, death caused by popular pill, Acutrim.

Sally Hayes, a healthy athletic
girl, died Thursday night at Nyack Hospital NY. Cause of death; a cardiac arrest caused by the popular diet pill Acutrim.
Now doctors want to warn other girls from making the same mistake.

It was on Thursday evening young Sally Hayes was found lifeless in her bed by her maid, Paula. She looked like a sleeping
angel, Paula says.

Sally was according to her mother, Linda Hayes, an intelligent young
woman with her head on her shoulders. A top a student with high ambitions and very interested in culture. She adored the theater and was a very beautiful girl.
“Nothing in the world can give me my baby back”, Mrs. Hayes says. The family is in deep grief.

Mrs. Hayes can’t understand the sudden loss of her daughter. They’d both tried the diet pill with assurance from the pharmacist that they were completely safe. “Sally just wished to fit into her prom dress, that’s all she wanted” according to Linda Hayes with tears in her eyes.

Now Dr Albright sends out a warning to all teenage girls.
“A lot of pharmacists don’t tell clients about the lethal dose of Phenylpropanolamine and Ephedrine that these kinds of pills contain. Both are substances which are supposed to increase the blood pressure and the digestive system. This may cause, and highly increase, the risk for a stroke or cardiac arrest. ”

The family is planning to sue the pharmacist, and Acutrim INK,
for an unknown 7 figure allowance.

#11

Young woman found dead in central N.Y
Woman found murdered in Central Park, New York

It was on Saturday morning when a pair of joggers saw something suspicious shoot out from a bush in the south part of Central Park. What they saw was ms. Pheobe Caulfield’s foot. Police came to the place and started a technical check in the proximity of the murder scene. A postmortem showed that ms. Caulfield had been murdered but the police doesn’t want to go in to that any further.

Ms. Caulfield lived in New York City in most of her life, but she left the city for a few years, to go to school in a adjacent state. She returned to New York three years ago, when she had graduate from school. She started to work as a volunteer at a children’s hospital. Since five months back she worked as a receptionist at a big company in New York City. According to ms. Caulfield’s friends she was a tender but secretive person. She found it difficult to open up and lean on people. In her spare time she liked to disport with friends and she also played basket-ball.

In the time of writing the police didn’t have anyone caught but they do have some people who are suspected. The police is anxious about solving this case, because otherwise people cannot feel safe in lagre parks.

Ms. Pheobe Caulfield died only 24 years old and she leaves behind a boyfriend and her parents and her brother.

News article #10

Brutal murder of famous Phoebe Caulfield, 67

The famous life of a female ironclad - success, disappearance, death

By X
News you didn´t know
Phoebe Caulfield, 67, a known character in books, was yesterday shot at a big celebrity party by her archenemy Hermione Grangos.
“She was going to ruin my career!” Grangos screamed right after the murder.

The Cinderella story of Phoebe Caulfield begun fifty years ago when the book The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger came into the bookstores. People all over the world fell in love with the wise and goal-oriented girl that never wanted trouble.
“She was very pleasant to write about” Salinger said in an interview a few months after the book was released. He meant that Phoebe had “these things in her personality that many people miss and want to have”.

It did not take long after the world first had got to know Phoebe Caulfield before she got another job request, this time in a tragic fairytale named Phoebe meets Mr Rabbit.
“It is so much feelings in this book and even though I have never meet Mr Rabbit in real life it feels like we have been friends forever” Phoebe said crying a week before the book was released.
The under covered message in this book is that you can be friend with anyone, no matter race or sexual bent. It became very obvious that Phoebe took the message to her heart and that it made her grow to the strong woman she became.

After this Phoebe refused to take other jobs in a period of forty years. Not even her closest family and friends knew why and she did not want to talk about it herself.

While the career was put aside, Phoebe gave birth to two children.
“Old Phoebe is a wise girl; she knows when to end and when to come back” Her older brother Holden Caulfield said in a interview a few years after Phoebe had disappeared from the spotlights.

It did not seem like she was ever coming back until J.K. Bowling, the famous author of Marry Potter, in late December last year revealed that Phoebe was going to be the woman trying to marry Potter in her new book.
“Phoebe was absolutely perfect for the book, I have always wanted Potter to meet someone older than himself and people were getting tired of Hermione, the girl who have tried to marry Potter in the most recent three books” Bowling said three day before the murder of Phoebe.

Both critics and future readers rejoiced about this news – everyone had been looking forward to see Phoebe enter a book again. That is to say, everyone except Hermione Grangos. She was prepared for another entrée in the new book and in her blog she wrote:
“I have never been this prepared, I have even brew a love potion, so if it doesn´t work I will kill myself, hihi.”

Now we will never know how Phoebe would have done in the book, because Bowling refused to copy it up when she heard about the tragic murder of Phoebe. People have taken this very hard and Holden said to us:
“This were supposed to be her final glory, she had been looking forward to it for so long. I can not believe that this sunovabitch Grangos killed her. But even though she did not finish her last work she will always be my hero, my poor old Phoebe.

News article #9

Tragedy in school: Boy dead!

Jumped from roof of well known school

By: Emma Westerlund

The well known Pencey Prep school was last Wednesday seriously shattered when one of the students, Robert Ackley, 17, took his own life by jumping from the roof of the school.

It was around 7 p.m. when the headmaster at Pencey, mr. Thurmer, first got the call about an emergency at the schoolyard. There a big part of the school’s students were gathered along with most of the staff. All eyes were directed against one single boy standing on the roof at the highest point of the dorm building. The police were summoned, but before they could reach the location, Robert Ackley had without saying as much as a word taken the final step out over the edge. After falling twelve meter, he hit the ground and died immediately from a crushed skull and several other serious injuries.

The time of death was clocked to 7.17 p.m. and the school stood shocked after the loss of a student. “It is absolutely horrible that something like this happens at our school or anywhere for that case”, Headmaster Thurmer commented and continued “This came like a bolt from the blue and nothing in the world could have prepared us for this terrible loss”.

The opinions among Robert’s fellow students upon this matter varied on the contrary a lot. “Ackley was always a very strange guy and in the end he was almost completely isolated, except for those times he yelled at people in the corridors and created scenes”, says Robert’s roommate at Pencey, Herb Gale. “At first we suspected that he took drugs or something like that, but then we figured he just wasn’t the type”, Herb adds.

Today it is still unclear if Robert Ackley really did take drugs and there are many question marks concerning his reasons for the suicide. Was he depressed and could no longer find the strength to carry on, or did he have some other hidden reasons for doing what he did? We can do no more than speculate and it is possible that no one will ever know about mr. Ackley’s intentions. The only thing we know for sure is that he died 7.17 p.m. the 16th of November and that he will always be missed by his family, friends and everyone else that loved him.

News article #8

World famous author, 89, dies

The creator of ”The Catcher in the Rye”

By Joel Bertilsson

Jerome David Salinger, 89, passed away Sunday morning at his home in Cornish, due to a stroke.
Salinger, which withdrew himself from public exposure years ago, was found dead in his bed early on the Sunday morning. The death was due to natural causes and no crime is suspected, the local police reports.
Salinger was mostly known as the author of ”The Catcher in the Rye”. This widely known, bestselling novel was published in 1951 and has sold more than 65 million copies.

Salinger was born and raised on Manhattan, New York. His family was Jewish and he only had one sibling, his sister Doris. He left the home early for various schools to get away from his overprotecting parents.
During the early 1940s Salinger began to write short stories. Many of these were later published in different newspapers and magazines.

In 1945 he was sent to Germany to serve in World War II. There he met a French girl named Sylvia, who he later married. The marriage only lasted a couple of months and Salinger returned to the United States.
The marriage with Sylvia was only the first out of three. In 1955 he married the Radcliff student Claire Douglas. They had two kids, Margret and Matt, and their marriage lasted eleven years.
22 years after the break up with Douglas, he got married again. This time with the 40 years younger nurse, Colleen O’Neill.

After the publishing of “The Catcher in the Rye” Salinger withdrew himself, more and more, from public exposure. In an attempt to get away from obtrusive journalists and media he moved to Cornish, New Hampshire. This proofed to have the opposite effect and the fascination over Salinger only grew.
The last work Salinger ever published was “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An introduction”. This book, which contained two short stories, was released in 1963 and only sold in a few hundred thousand copies.

After 1963 he only attended a few interviews before he went underground. Despite this, “The Catcher in the Rye” kept selling around 250000 copies a year and it still is. Even though Salinger is now dead, his work is more alive than ever.

News article #7

Youngster dead in horrible car crash

Date lives to tell the story

By Jonathan Wäng
Torsbergsgymnasiet, Bollnäs

Student, Ward Stradlater and girlfriend, Jane Gallagher, were on their way home from the movie theatre last Friday night when the wet and slippery road forced them off a cliff. Ward died instantly but Jane is now lying at Pennsylvania hospital, being treated for serious injuries. Although she is tired and still shaken by the incident, she is ready to share their story.

Ward Stradlater, a senior at Pencey prep. School in Agerstown, Pennsylvania, had taken his date to the movies in Agerstown and they were just on their way back home when he lost control of the car in the slippery weather. They slid of a cliff and fell approximately 30ft before hitting the rocky ground.

“When I woke up gain, Ward was lying there, all bloody, not responding to anything I said or did.” A snivelling Jane recalls.
According to the ambulance staff Mr Stradlater probably died at the impact.
“I didn’t do too badly actually. A broken arm and two broken ribs, a number of cuts and bruises, but at least it won’t affect my dancing all too much.” Ms Gallagher points out. She practises ballet and takes it all very seriously.
“I practise two hours every day, no matter what.” Jane smiles proudly. “Well fine, this might make me skip a few hours.” She continues laughing.
Jane smiles a lot of the time through the conversation and you can easily tell how full of life she normally is. But there is also a tear in the eye most of the time, a tear which obviously represents the death of a fine young man.
“I wouldn’t say I loved him or anything, we had only just started going out. But it’s a terrible loss and I know I’ll miss him a lot.” Ms Gallagher says with tear gently rolling down her cheeks.

Ward Stradlater was a very athletic young man who liked to stay in shape. He was also very handsome and attractive, and Ms Gallagher was not the only girl that would like to go out with him.
“It is a pity that someone so promising had to leave us so soon.” His principal, Dr Thurmer replies.
“You know, he was one of the men that could really make it in life. But then again, we have a lot of them here at Pencey preparation school.”
The loss of Mr Stradlater will affect many. But if we see it from the bright side, Jane Gallagher still lives. It could have been much worse.

About the theme 'phoniness'.

A big theme in The Catcher in the Rye is Holden’s feelings about what he calls phoniness. The majority of the people Holden describes are phoney. His meaning of phoniness mostly relates to the adult world. He means that when you’re an adult you’re fake and mendacious, you’ve lost the freedom of childhood and youth and you’re just living after the “rules”. Get employed, find a life partner, get married, have kids, a big house and a nice car, get old and then be dead with a lot of flowers on your grave. When you read the book, you can get the feeling of Holden having a problem realizing he’ll soon be an adult too, that he doesn’t want to accept it.

Besides the adults, some of the teenagers that are mentioned in the book are described as phonies too. One example is Ward Stradlater, Holden’s room mate at Pencey preparatory school. Stradlater is this good looking and popular guy whose thoughts always are directed to the girls. He seems to be adapting to the girl he is dating at the time, trying to impress them with style and materialism. While Holden wants to know about the girl’s interests and personalities, Stradlater only cares about what he gets out of it. He never really seems to have any deep feelings for the girls. This is shown with this quotation.

“’Who’s your date?’ I asked him. ‘Fitzgerald?’
‘Hell, no! I told ya, I’m through with that pig.’
‘Yeah? Give her to me, boy. No kidding. She’s my type.’
‘Take her. … She’s too old for you.’” (page 34).

Another example of what Holden describes as phoney is that the school, Pencey prep, serves steaks only on Saturdays. This just because a lot of the student’s parents visit them at Sundays and wonder what they had for dinner last night. Then the students will tell them that they got steak and this is supposed to give their parents a good feeling about the school.

”We always had the same meal on Saturday nights at Pencey. It was supposed to be a big deal, because they gave you steak. I’ll bet a thousand bucks the reason they did that was because a lot of guys’ parents came up to school on Sunday, and old Thurmer probably figured everybody’s mother would ask their darling boy what he had for dinner last night, and he’d say, ‘Steak’.” (page 39).

The part in the book when Holden and his friend Sally are at the theatre, and Sally talks with a guy she knows, are yet another instance of Holden’s thoughts about phoniness.

“Then he and old Sally started talking about a lot of people they both knew. It was the phoniest conversation you ever heard in your life. They both kept thinking of places as fast as they could, then they’d think of somebody that lived there and mentioned their name. I was all set to puke when it was time to go sit down again. I really was. And then, when the next act was over, they continued their goddam boring conversation. They kept thinking of more places and more names of people that lived there. The worst part was, the jerk had one of those very phoney, Ivy League voices, one of those very tired, snobby voices. He sounded just like a girl.” (page 133-134).

Holden seems to be judging people as phonies quite easily. Whenever he feels that somebody are a bit superficial and simple-minded, he judges them as phonies.

Maybe Holden’s got the wrong opinion about people. He doesn’t really seems to accept the fact that everybody isn’t thinking the way he does. It doesn’t look like he gives people many chances to show off their personalities, he’s almost stuck at his first impression of them.

For whom is this worst, Holden or the people around him?

By: Leona and Kajsa

The encounterings

Describe three characters encountered by Holden during his time in New York and explain their importance in the novel.

During the two days Holden spends in New York he meets different people that affects him and shows different sides of him. The people that he meets in this period of time are important to him, because he’s going through a critical time in his life. We chose to describe him encountering three different women; a nun, a prostitute and a girl in a bar. These three women are important to his inner monologue and his different perspectives. We can see that they affect the way the novel turns and for Holden they are stereotypes for people he sees every day.

When in a bar, Holden meets three girls and one in particular catches his attention. The girl’s name is Bernice and the first thing he notices is her good looks, but also her shallowness and addiction to the glamorous world of celebrities. Even though he, because of this, thinks that she’s silly and “phony” he makes an effort to get to know her and put up a serious conversation. This proves a certain level of maturity and a will to become close to people that aren’t fitting into his model of acceptance.
When he is dancing with Bernice he partly falls in love her, because of her dancing skills. In a way this shows that he’s capable of liking certain parts of people even though he doesn’t like the rest. A quotation that mirrors this is: “That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you half fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.” – page 65

Another female that affects his time in New York is a prostitute at a hotel. Her name is Sunny, and at his first night in the city he orders her up to his room to have sexual intercourse with her. The problem is that when she arrives, he is not able to go through with it. Instead he wants to talk and get to know her, and this shows that he has a deeply rooted respect for women and a strong moral. “She was depressing. Her green dress hanging in the closet and all. And besides, I don’t think I could ever do it with somebody that sits in a stupid movie all day long.” – page 87
This quotation shows us that Holden might not be ready to have sex, so he starts finding faults in her instead of admitting that he’s not able to do it. He doesn’t believe that you should have sex with someone that you don’t love.

The morning after his encountering with the prostitute he meets two nuns in a breakfast bar. The conversation he starts with them exposes a good side of Holden. He respects them and admires their work and in somehow he sees them as some kinds of Catchers in Rye, which he, in his heart, wishes to be as well. “’I thought if you were taking up a collection’ I told her, ‘I could make a small contribution. You could keep the money for when you do take up a collection.’” – page 99

However, after looking at these three confrontations, we can see distinguishing changes in the behaviour of Holden and this alters the book very much. As a reader you get a deeper understanding for his actions and reactions, and because of this we think that these events are significant for the novel.

By Liselotte and Emma

The Catcher in the Rye

Describe and compare the two schoolteachers who appear in the novel, Mr Spencer and Mr Antolini. How do their relationships with Holden differ?

One of the main themes in The Catcher in the Rye is Holden’s view on adults. He finds most of them to be phonies, but there are a few that he is willing to reconsider. Two of the main persons are Mr Spencer and Mr Antolini. Their relationships with Holden differ a lot. The age difference between Mr Antolini and Mr Spencer could contribute to their separate ways of dealing with him.

Mr Spencer is the history teacher at Holden’s present school (that he have just got expelled from), Pencey Prep. His relationship with Holden is “student-teacher” kind of like. It is not really friendship, like friendship between classmates, but it is not strictly student-teacher either since Mr Spencer is the only teacher that seems to care for Holden and trying to understand him. Holden, on the other hand, tries to maintain the distance and shows when he meets in Mr Spencer in the beginning of the book.

“[…] he was really stooped over, and he had a very terrible posture, and in class, whenever he dropped a piece of chalk at the blackboard, some guy in the first row always had to get up and pick it up and hand it to him. That’s just awful, in my opinion.”

“[…] everything smelled like Vicks Nose Drops. It was pretty depressing. I’m not to crazy about sick people, anyway. […] old Spencer had on this very sad, ratty old bathrobe that he was probably born in or something. I don’t much like seeing old guys in their pyjamas and bathrobes anyway.”

Holden holds a grudge against Mr Spencer which is shown early in the book when he is taking the distance from old, sick people (in this case Mr Spencer). Since you do not get a very good overview their relationship prior to Holden’s appearance at Mr Spencer’s house, this could also mean that he is trying to keep an emotional distance. We have our own theory about this; we actually think that Holden likes Mr Spencer a bit and acts like so the goodbyes won’t be as hard.

Mr Antolini is practically the total opposite of Mr Spencer. He worked as Holden’s old English teacher back when he was at Elkton Hills. Mr Antolini and Holden’s relationship is much more friendship like than Holden’s and Mr Spencer’s. Holden is relying on him and even call him when he is in trouble.

“He was about the best teacher I ever had, Mr Antolini. He was a pretty young guy, not much older than my brother D.B., and you could kid around with him without loosing your respect for him.”

Holden and Mr Antolini’s relationship take a drastic turn when Holden gets to sleep in Mr Antolini’s house and wakes up when Mr Antolini is petting his head in the middle of the night. Holden finds it offensive and decides to leave the house as fast as possible.

“[…] I felt something on my head, some guy’s hand. Boy, it really scared the hell out of me. What is was, it was Mr Antolini’s hand. […] ‘What’re ya doing, anyway?’ I said over again. […] ‘How ‘bout keeping your voice down? I’m simply sitting here - ’
‘I have to go, anyway,’ I said – boy, I was nervous! I started putting on my damn pants in the dark. I could hardly get them on I was so damn nervous. I know more damn perverts, at school and all, than anybody you ever met.”

After this scenario, Holden tries to keep (if possible) an even greater distance towards adults and after this many more adults mentioned in the book. The only ones he talks to from here on are children, such as Phoebe and some children at the museum. Mr Spencer and Mr Antolini are never mentioned again and feels like Mr Antolini sank to Mr Spencer’s “level”. Their experiences have probably taught them different things of dealing with children. Mr Spencer, who is a lot older than Mr Antolini, has probably come in contact with more children and would probably therefore be more experienced in dealing with children in Holden’s situation whereas Mr Antolini is not as experienced in that area. We think that it is a bit unfair that Mr Antolini teat Holden the way he does when Holden shows that kind of trust. An adult should show respect and understanding for a teenager in need.

Phoebe Caulfield, age 14, died of TBC.

Brothers Words: You’ll be missed.


Phoebe Caulfield died at the age of 14 due to long time suffering from the (some times) fatal illness tuberculoses.

Young Miss Caulfield died last Saturday after suffering from the illness for months. The doctors couldn’t do anything. Even though they made several attempts to save her, they were unsuccessful all times. Mr and Mrs Caulfield arranged for a quick funeral.

Her brother Holden was the one holding the speech
“Phoebe Caulfield was extremely loved” Those were the first words.

Phoebe Caulfield was a lively little girl. She loved the merry-go-round and she adored her brothers DB and Holden. She was also very good in school, which was shown by the numerous of teachers and students attending the funeral. “Look around you Phoebs. You’ll be missed. You’ll be dearly missed” Holden spoke the words with such strength that he nearly yelled.

Holden spoke very dearly of his late sister and he mentioned her intelligence and her kindness (“even though she was a much better student than I was, she were always there for me, supporting me when no one else was”).

He finished with the words “Allie, you take good care of her. Don’t let her disappear”. Allie was her third brother who died in the 1940’s.

Before the lowering of the casket, Holden placed a LP called ‘Little Shirley Beans’ in it with her. He was later on asked why, whereupon he answered: “Because I thought she’d like it” and with that, he left the funeral with his parents and brother.

Holden's relationship with two of his teachers.

MR SPENCER AND MR ANTOLINI
Description, Comparing and Relationship with Holden.

The Catcher in the rye is a famous novel written by J.D Salinger, and in this novel he introduces us to many strong and different characters. Two interesting characters in the novel are Holden’s two teachers, Mr Spencer and Mr Antolini. Mr Spencer is introduced to us readers in the beginning (chapter. 2), while Mr Antolini takes his part towards the end (chapter. 24) of the novel. In this blog we’re going to compare the differences and similarities between the two of them and their relationship with the main character, Holden. We’re also going to describe them.

Mr Spencer is Holden’s history teacher at the school, Pencey Prep, and the only one that seems to care when Holden is expelled. His physical condition is lousy, even during ‘normal’ circumstances due to age, but now it’s worse because he has the grippe. Yet his mind is not affected by the different faults he’s suffering from. Mr Spencer and his wife didn’t have too much money, but weren’t poor either. This is expressed in the beginning when Mrs Spencer opens the door to Holden. Then Holden tells us;

‘They didn’t have a maid or anything, and they always opened the door themselves. They didn’t have too much dough.’

In contrast, Mr Antolini is quite wealthy man which is described in the beginning of chapter 24 where it says;

‘Mr and Mrs Antolini had this very swanky apartment over on Sutton Place, with two steps that you can go down to get in the living room, and a bar and all’.

Even though Mr Antolini is younger than Mr Spencer, his health isn’t perfect, he ruins it with smoking and heavy drinking. Holden’s first meeting with Mr Antolini was when he went to Elkton Hills, where Mr Antolini was his teacher in English.

Holden’s relationship with the two teachers is so different, and yet so alike. When it comes to the relationship between Holden and Mr Spencer, Holden likes this teacher but still describes him as a ‘phony’. One example of this is when he talks about Mr Spencer with his sister Phoebe;

‘Even the couple of nice teachers on the faculty, they were phonies too, I said. There was this old guy, Mr Spencer. (…) But you should have seen him when the headmaster, old Thurmer, came in the history class and sat down in the back of the room (…) Old Spencer’d practically kill himself chuckling and smiling and all, like as if Thurmer was a goddam prince or something.’

We think that since the teacher was this ‘bootlicker’, Holden looses respect for him. Holden himself is against authorities, this incident in the classroom made Holden want to puke and according to us he felt betrayed.

‘He was about the best teacher I ever had, Mr Antolini. He was a pretty young guy, not much older than my brother D.B., and you could kid around with him without losing respect for him.’

This is how Holden describes Mr Antolini before the night when he sleeps over at the Antolini’s. In the middle of the night Holden wakes up finding Mr Antolini patting him on the head. Holden finds this very awkward and quickly comes up with an excuse to leave the house in the middle of the night. Suddenly he thinks that Mr Antolini is a pervert. We think that Holden has a hard time dealing with the fact that Mr Antolini behaved so strange, he’s confused and don’t really know what to believe. Wheatear or not Mr Antolini was a pervert, this act had an impact on their relationship, and Holden felt betrayed once again.

These two men are described as two of the few adults Holden accepts. While other treats Holden as a rough-neck, these characters try to understand and help him. This similarity between the two teachers is the biggest one, maybe the only one, except that they both are teachers. They are different in both personalities, age and social class, which in a way must affect their relationship with Holden. Holden goes from describing the two teachers as great persons to start finding faults in them. We don’t know if Holden is fair in this judgement of these characters, since the only view we get is Holden’s. But we can imagine that he feels that they’re becoming too much of a ‘phony adult’ and that he don’t want to be influenced by them.

By Helena Johansson and Jenny Karlsson

“16 year old found dead in his room at pency prep”

New York times 10.04.2008

“16 year old found dead in his room at pency prep”

Roommate killed teenager because of jalousie

The 16 old New Yorker Holden Caulfield was
murdered on the night to Saturday. His roommate,
Ward Stradlater, strangled him with a red hunting hat. murder weapon

Caulfield was always a trouble maker in school
and he was just to leave an other one, pency prep,
as he got into a fight with his older and superior
roommate Stradlater. They were fighting over a
girl, Jane Gallagher. Holden had known Jane for quite a while and was now dating her, but her ex boyfriend who also was Holden’s roommate wasn’t very happy with that idea.
Jane told the police in her interrogation that she had never seen her ex boyfriend so angry like when she told him that she now was going out with Holden.. After their conversation he was already very upset but when Holden came home, just some hours after his girlfriend had left the place, Stradlater was about to over boil. He was already waiting for Holden. Ackley, a senior which lives in the room next door, says to the police that he heard a lot of screaming from the other room but he didn’t think that there was something special going on because Holden and his roommate were always fighting and screaming. They where especially fighting about girls. As the argue reach its peek Holden’s roommate took , after his own allocution, a red hunting hat and pressed it on Holden’s mouth and nose.” He was gasping for air but I was just so mad I couldn’t take that hat away”, Stradlater says to the police. “He was calling me for phonie and the whole thing with Jane just made me so angry”. After a few minutes Holden stopped struggling and slided to the floor. The roommate who now was well-aware of the situation cried out for help and Mr. Spencer, a teacher came. After his statement there was nothing anyone could have done for Holden. He didn’t have a pulse and the try to revive him failed miserable. Stradlater confesses the murder to the polis right away. He will speak in front of the court in three weeks and a decreased penalty is to expect because of the accusals age. An official interment of Holden Caulfield will take place the 14. of April.

News Article #6

Tragical accident, author Salinger dead

Found in well-hidden cottage

By Helena Johansson

Torsbergsgymnasiet, Bollnäs

J. D. Salinger, 89, mysterious author of The Catcher in the Rye, died Friday night on his way to hospital after an accident at home.
The theory of this accident seems to be that Salinger went up to have a night snack, tripped on his own pyjamas and fell down the stairs. Unfortunately he broke his neck and died immediately. He was found by his girlfriend in their cottage which was well-hidden from the public.

According to the Police of New Hampshire, no crime seems to have occurred.
“This is a tragedy. Such a simple death to one of the best authors I’ve ever worked with.” says the man behind the big company which first published The Catcher in the Rye.

The Catcher in the Rye was first published in 1951 and was seen as a revolt within its time. The book was at first banned in most schools because of its bad language and curses.
After the big wave of attention Salinger gained when his novel was published he refused interviews and have therefore not been seen much in media.

Salinger withdrew in 1953 and moved at the same time from New York to the small town Cornish, New Hampshire. The little town where Salinger lived was in total devotion for him. No-one ever told the curious journalists where his cottage was located and he could therefore live without disturbance just as he wanted.

Salinger was known for his writing about children and youth. He liked to socialize with younger people and had two children with his former wife Claire Douglas.
Jerome David Salinger had a various background with a half-Scottish, half-Irish mother and a Jewish father. He also had one older sister, Doris. They were a quite wealthy family.
Salinger really enjoyed acting when he went to school. He was often seen in different plays even though his father did not like the idea of his son becoming an actor.

I’d like to end with a famous quote form J. D.’s novel “What really knocks me out is a book, when you're all done reading it, you wished the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”

News Story #5

Controversial writer J. D. Salinger, 95, dies.

It shocked people all over the world.

By "BIG HANDS"

Jerome David Salinger, controversial writer, died Monday morning at St. Olav Hospital because of heart attack.

Salinger, 95, was taken by his friend to the St. Olav’s Hospital, after suddenly fall. He died at 06:39 a.m., the doctor said.

Salinger had a very long history of heart problems. He had 3 attacks in one year. After third, he died.

J. D. Salinger’s long career started in secondary school after he wrote his first short story. He was writing and publishing his stories from 1940 to 1965.

Then he went to the Valley Forge Military Academy. Afterwards he went into Army. He spent there 4 years.

He went out from army and he decided to marry. Firstly he married with Joyce Maynard. They were arguing so they decided to divorce. Finally he married with his second wife, Claire Douglas, at age of 36.

Then he wrote very controversial novel “The Cather in the Rye”. It was about rebel and conflict between adults and teenagers.

Salinger decided to leave U.S.A and he moved out to Scotland. He wanted to live in Glasgow, because he was football fan of Celtic Glasgow. He just loved it.

After that he went on his first football match. It was against Glasgow Rangers. He was very excited.

It was 80th minute of a match. Rangers scored. He was angry but on the other hand he was patient. Then there was 89th minute of that match, Celtic scored.

He was very happy. After that Artur Boruc, polish goalkeeper made tackle, but he missed the ball. The arbiter showed on the penalty area. He gave him the yellow card. Celtic’s fans were sad. They started to pray. Then arbiter blew, Ranger’s player ran, Celtic’s fans closed eyes, but Boruc caught ball, fans were happy that they will draw. But Boruc saw that opponent’s goalkeeper is in the middle of a football area, so he decided to kick ball as hard as he can. He scored. Salinger was so happy and he got heart attack.

Next heart attack was because of that Celtic won The Champions League.

There wasn’t reason that he got third heart attack.

He spent his last moments with his best friends.

A lot of people, from about 34 countries, wrote letters to his daughter about that bad event. They were very sad that they will not read Salinger’s new story. People decided to buy “The Cather in the Rye” to remember his best novel and his name.

News Story #4

"C'est la vie"
By Brian B.

25-12-1962

The famous 29 year old comedian, Holden Caulfield, was found dead in his top floor apartment by his housekeeper.
Several syringes were found in the room. Toxicology tests later showed that the young man had died of a morphine overdose. At first view police thought that it was an accidental death
Caulfield’s addiction to drugs was no secret. It had caused him three marriages and was about to end a forth one. He had also been diagnosed with depressive symptoms.

A note was found in Mr. Caulfield’s pocket.
“I have become what I hated the most. I feel like life isn’t worth living”
The note led the police to think that Mr. Caulfield’s death wasn’t accidental other than a suicide.

Jane Gallagher, Holden’s first wife (with whom he still had contact with), claimed that she had seen and talked to Caulfield hours before his death. She says that Holden was not acting like usual. He had been speaking all afternoon about one special day when he was sixteen in New York and then he said something about being the catcher in the rye. Ms. Gallagher stated that Holden for some reason never spoke of his past. Police found this information relevant to the investigation and believe that holden might have gotten a little too nostalgic, which lead to depression and at last to suicidal thoughts.

Holden leaves this world at the top of his carrier and we will surely see thousands of friends and fans at his funeral.

News story #3

World-famous author died in his own safe

By Kajsa Dalsten

04-09-2015. J.D. Salinger found dead in Cornish, New Hampshire. Investigators discovered his decaying corpse in his own safe among pieces of paper.

On Monday last week, the worldwide celebrated author Jerome David Salinger's death was declared. His body was found all rotten in his own safe.

"Bill"[1], a close friend to the American author had gone to visit him around 10 a.m. that day, and after no reply from calling out Salinger's name, he went inside all of the rooms in the house. As soon as he opened the door to Salinger’s office, the smell of death made him flinch. When he couldn’t find Salinger in the room, he reckoned he had to be inside the huge safe. Immediately he called the police and looked around in the office for hidden codes to the safe, with no result. When the police came around 25-30 minutes later, they had to call ILT[2] to get the safe open. The ILT arrived in a helicopter 15 minutes later and they opened the safe with a laser tool.

“I hadn’t heard from Jerome in seven to eight years, so I went to see him. I know he wants privacy and I thought that maybe he was busy writing a novel or something so I didn’t want to disturb him. I would never have guessed that he was dead”, said Bill after the safe had been opened.

Salinger’s body was lying on the floor in the safe with pieces of paper around him. After an investigation made by LE[3] on the pieces of paper, it was stated that it was Salinger’s own texts.

“We found a huge lump of paper in Salinger’s stomach which indicates that Salinger ate his own texts, maybe to stay alive. The paper is coming from the same factory as the pieces of paper that laid beside Salinger in the safe. Another theory to why he ate his own texts is that he didn’t want anyone to read them if he was found” said Lou Andrews, forensic doctor.

There was also a note from Salinger in the safe. It was dated 16-04-2007 and said:
“I’m locked up. I’d really need a catcher in the rye right now. Hope you got that one. Whoever finds me, make sure only my family and relatives can come to my funeral. That’s my final wish. Tell them I love them. My will is in my desk, in the second drawer to the right. If you find me before I pass: See you again. If not: Good bye.”

On top of the note was a pen with Salinger’s fingerprints on and there were no other fingerprints to be found at any place on the safe.

Jerome David Salinger was most famous for his novel The Catcher in the Rye, which was published in 1951. Even to this day, the book is very popular and many readers all over the world’ve been grieving the death of the author, according to The World's Best Book Magazine.

[1] The name Bill is fictitous, the friend wants to be anonymous.
[2] The Institute of Laser Tools
[3] The Laboratory of Evidence

(I couldn't use the footnotes from the text on the blog, it got all messed up. I had to make them myself)

News Aricle #2

The famous writer J. D. Salinger is dead

Killed by a drunk driver in southern France, police are still searching for well-known alcoholic.

By Eric Å IB07a

The famous writer J. D. Salinger, 89, is dead. He was killed in car accident in Provence, southern France, yesterday morning. He sat on a café eating breakfast, when suddenly a car came in high speed and hit him where he was sitting, and threw him across the street. Several eyewitnesses say that the driver escaped in his red, rusty king-cab, and a massive police operation is organized to catch the perpetrator, who is believed to be a by the police well-known alcoholic.

The death of Salinger has resulted in worldwide protests, only in New York City, approximate 10.000 persons has been on the streets, protesting against the drunken drivers that every day kills a lot of people, and the police inability to stop it. In many cities worldwide, voices are raised demanding a Nobel Prize for Salinger.

Salinger became worldwide famous when he in 1951 wrote The Catcher in the Rye, the story about 16 year old Holden Caulfield, who gets expelled from his school “Pencey Prep”. Then, he goes to New York for a few days, were he continues his struggle against materialism and the phony adults.

On the autumn of his life, Salinger lived in southern Germany, just outside München, were he was engaged with gardening, in which he was interested. Every spring, he went on a bus trip to Holland to see tulips. One of his other major interests was going to the horse-racing. Every Sunday he went to the horse-racing track to play. He seldom won anything, but as he used to say:”It’s not to win money that is the point with going to the horse track, but to see your friends loose all of theirs”.