Syllabus for October 15-19
WHERE IS HOLDEN GOING? After his breif dalience with prostitution, we’ll watch Holden wax religiously and physically fight obscenity in the guise of Maurice the Pimp, try another stab at love (Romeo and Juliet pun intended) with Sally Hayes, search for meaning at a museum of natural history before finally getting to his (doomed) date with the unfortunate Sally. Where is Holden going? What does he seem to be in search of?
Monday
Breifly returning to Jane’s hand on the back of Holden’s neck in chapter 11. We will then return to our analysis of America during the 1950s to discuss Americans search for purpuse in post-world war Earth. We will watch a short educational film., “Shy Guy.”
HW: Review your annotations from chaptes 11-15. What patterns do you notice about the theme of morality and immorality, religion and politics? Tonight, write a journal for one of the prior chapters.
Tuesday
Meeting again in small research groups to discuss what you’ve found from last night’s homework. Then discussing chapters 14 and 15. What does Holden learn, if anything, from his fight with Maurice? Why does Holden give the nuns so much money?
HW: Read chapter 16.
Wednesday
Hamlet day. We will watch and read a few scenes from Shakespeare: Ophelia with her brother, Laertes, wherein he gives her advice about avoiding the Stradlaters in the world. In the subsequent scene, their father, Polonius, gives her advice about avoiding the Stradlaters in the world. And finally, the disparity between genders, wherein (in the more famous scene) Polonius gives advice to his son as he travels out into the world. What do we make of all this advice? Why does Shakespeare matter here, and why does Salinger (purposefully) insert the Bard into Holden’s world?
HW: Read chapter 17.
Thursday
Exploring the gender gap in the 1950s, and examining The Catcher in the Rye as a particularly patriarcal novel.
HW: Read chapter 18
Friday
The Radio City Rockettes’s Christmas spectacular and the main feature.
HW: Read chapters 19-21