Holden Caulfield's Novel 'Joking About Death Makes You Funnier !'

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Hughes 1 Annaliesa Hughes Mrs. Goddard ENG2D June 10/18 Joking About Death Makes You Funnier! “Gallows humour”, or joking about a grim situation as a way to cope with it, is known to be funny; J.D. Salinger was obviously very aware of this while writing his novel, The Catcher In The Rye, as his writing is full of it. His use of humour greatly affected the tone and overall meaning of the novel in a positive way. Holden Caulfield’s sense of humour gives observations about the world around him, brings the reader closer to him, and makes what would be a very heavy plot enjoyable to read. Despite Holden’s pain, the novel is a fun and pleasant read, because the darker themes are usually masked by humour. For example, when Holden is being confronted about his expulsion, the text reads, “He put my goddamn paper down then, and looked at me like he’d just beaten the hell out of me in ping-pong or something”(12). When he compares his failure to losing a game of ping-pong, it makes the reader believe that the situation isn’t as serious as it really is. …show more content…

When Holden continuously jokes about his situation, it makes the reader more attached to him, as they relate to his struggles. For example, when he says, I think if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it’ll say ‘Holden Caulfield’ on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it’ll say ‘Fuck

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