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‘You must let suffering speak, if you want to hear the truth’ (Cornel West). How audibly, and to what effect, does suffering speak in The Catcher in the Rye and Reservation Blues? $54.56
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‘You must let suffering speak, if you want to hear the truth’ (Cornel West). How audibly, and to what effect, does suffering speak in The Catcher in the Rye and Reservation Blues?
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Course
American Literature
Institution
Loughborough University (LU)
Book
The Catcher in the Rye
Salinger’s work as a whole highlights the traumatic effect of the death of a family member, and the difficulties of existing in a society which you feel alienated from. Alexie’s characters audibly express the suffering they experience as a result of poverty and racial oppression. Both texts di...
‘You must let suffering speak, if you want to hear the truth’ (Cornel West). How audibly, and
to what effect, does suffering speak in The Catcher in the Rye and Reservation Blues?
Sherman Alexie’s Reservation Blues and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, both
‘let suffering speak’ in a variety of ways throughout their novels. They accomplish this by
allowing their protagonists to either briefly imply, or explicitly describe the causes of their
trauma. Salinger’s work as a whole highlights the traumatic effect of the death of a family
member, and the difficulties of existing in a society which you feel alienated from. Alexie’s
characters audibly express the suffering they experience as a result of poverty and racial
oppression. Both texts discuss the suffering that occurs due to parental absence and other
people’s violation of their personal moralistic codes.
The continuous suffering that Holden Caulfield experiences due to the tragic death of
his younger brother Allie is often drawn attention to throughout his narrative. Allie died aged
eleven of leukaemia when Holden was ‘only thirteen’, which Holden reacts to by breaking
‘all the windows in the garage’ as a way to express his grief, permanently damaging his right
hand in the process (pp. 40-1).1 As Takeuchi notes, ‘this act of grief and anger is associated
with Allie’s left-handedness, as it entitles Holden to his brothers ‘left-handed fielder’s mitt’’. 2
The manner in which Holden bluntly and matter-of-factly states ‘He’s dead now.’, and his
detailing of the exact place and date of Allie’s death suggests a forced sense of acceptance at
his loss (p. 40). Holden mentions Allie’s name thirty-eight times throughout his narrative,
highlighting how conscious Holden is of his deceased brother and his need to discuss him.
1
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (England: Penguin Books, 2010) pp. 40-1. All subsequent quotations will
be referenced with a page number in parentheses immediately following the quote.
2
Yasuhiro Takeuchi, ‘The Burning Carousel and the Carnivalesque: Subversion and Transcendence at the close
of The Catcher in the Rye’, Studies in the Novel, 34 (3) (fall 2002), p. 326.
1
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