Bright Lights, Big City in High School

      You begin to wake up, struggling to open your eyes. As you lift your head up, you look around you in confusion trying to remember where you are. While your eyes begin to finally open up, a light so strong you felt your eyes were melting in their sockets appears. You do your best to cover your eyes, but you realize the light is all around you. Since you are still in a gaze, you try to think about what happened before you fell asleep. That’s when it hit you. All at once, like a tidal wave filled with voices and information, reality smacks you in the face. Its only 4^th period, meaning you still have most of this class, and 4 others before you leave this prison. You hear two voices, although you cannot seem to place a name with either of them. You decide the best thing to do is look around and take in your surroundings. After a second, searching for the noise became a bad decision. Your professor is literally right in your face, yelling at the top of his lungs. Your best friend Max is trying his best to defend you, but it seems you have broken the teacher’s last nerve. You come to the conclusion that the best way to describe this situation is as if tiny nuclear explosions were going on in literally every cell of your teacher’s body. After looking directly into his eyes and not saying a word, Mr. Gilbert kicks you out of the class.

      While on your way to the Dean’s office, you wonder if it’s worth even trying to come up with another excuse. However, since this is the 3^rd time this week and 2^nd time today being sent to his office for the same reason, you decide it’s probably best not to do so. When you arrive at his office, the Dean gives you the same speech he gave you during 1^st period. Then, you have a flash back to a month earlier. It’s you and all your friends during 8^th grade graduation discussing how much fun high school will be. So much for that plan you thought. After the speech as been given, the Dean gives you another warning and sends you on your way. You can already tell that today is going to suck a lot more than it already has. Plus, you will have to explain the now two calls in one day from the Dean to your parents. And, the best part, is that you realize you have another 4 more years here at the same school with all the same teachers. It will take some time, but you hope you will get the hang of this “adult” idea in school, like taking responsibility of your actions. Baby steps you say to yourself. Baby steps.

The Catcher In the Rye Reaction

    In The Catcher In the Rye, we the readers are presented with a character who seems to constantly struggle internally. As the novel progresses, Holden Caulfield becomes more and more lost in life as he fails out of school yet again. To make the situation worse, Holden has a difficult time socializing with people around him because they are to “phony” and conform to society. Therefore, as Holden moves forward, his true conflict within him becomes revealed; the struggle of socialization without alienation.

      Throughout the novel, Holden seems to be excluded from and victimized by the world around him. As he says to Mr. Spencer, he feels trapped on the other side of life, and he continually attempts to find his way in a world in which he feels he doesn't belong. As a result, Holden alienates himself from everyone around him as a protective mechanism. One example is this red hunting cap that he always wears which stands for his uniqueness compared to everyone else.

      This sense of alienation also has its problems for Holden as can be seen when Holden tries to rid himself of loneliness. Holden’s alienation drives him to have company like when he goes out on a date with Sally Hayes. At the same time however, Holden’s alienation causes him to rebound back to his former self, leading him to insult Sally causing her to leave the date.

      By changing his attitude so often when around different people, it is not surprising to see how Holden wants to be unique but at the same time struggles to do so, “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”, (Salinger 121). As a result, Holden fights every day to be unique and different leading him to isolate himself.