Writer's Block
This is my first blog post and I'm struggling with coming up with a topic. Students aren't the only ones who get writer's block. Teachers can certainly have it, too.
Not F451
Because this is a sample before you start blogging about Fahrenheit 451, I wanted to make sure this post has nothing to do with Fahrenheit 451. Confused? 😨Well, since you haven't received the books yet, anything I wrote would be a spoiler for you.
Inspiration
Since I am avoiding our new book, I thought it would be a good idea to post about a work that is still fresh in your minds, especially since we just had the midterm and many of you wrote your essays about it - Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. What else motivated me to make this decision? I had only to look outside at the freshly fallen snow Friday night and Saturday morning.
The Snowball
One of my favorite moments in the novel is when Holden makes a snowball and then decides not to throw it at several objects because they are perfectly coated in white (Salinger, 1991, p. 36). This is our first example in the text of Holden not wanting to corrupt the innocence of something, and it is a fairly obvious example. After all, snow is white and white represents innocence. My favorite part about when it snows is watching every object being coated and objects blending together so that they're no longer distinguishable. I love when it manages to stay like that for a few hours, and hate when the snow gets marred by the dirt that the plows and cars inevitably stir up. When you were younger, did you ever walk in the footprints your friend had created so that you wouldn't disturb any more snow than necessary? Then you've got a little bit of Holden Caulfield in you.
The Carousel
While the snowball very clearly represents Holden's calling to be the catcher in the rye with an inanimate object, the carousel represents the moment he begins to mature. The carousel is certainly an emblem of childhood; not many adults can be seen riding them, unless they are with their own children. Yet, for Holden, the carousel scene represents a transition. He goes from commenting about how the carousel still plays the same song it did when he was younger, but he distances himself by watching Phoebe ride and taking his place at the benches where the adults stand. When Phoebe reaches for the gold ring, Holden wants to shout out a warning and protect her, fulfilling his duties as the catcher. However, he stops himself (Salinger, 1991, p. 211), realizing that growing up is part of life. Carousels, amusement parks, carnivals, and circuses are often associated with childhood, yet authors and directors often incorporate them with other purposes in mind.
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| (images from Google images, searched through Creative Commons; Image 1) |
In The Great Gatsby, through the voice of Nick, Fitzgerald informs us that the only rules that apply at Gatsby's parties are those of an amusement park (Fitzgerald, 2004, p. 41), indicating that the only purpose is to have a good time. Yet his parties also scream corruption. He holds them to lure a married woman away from her husband and he serves alcohol during Prohibition. They promote temporary, generic relationships and end in car crashes.
The "master of suspense" Alfred Hitchcock incorporates a carousel in a pivotal scene towards the end of his film Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, 1951). The scene quickly devolves from fun to chaos as we shift from a child smiling while going around and around to the ride speeding up and two men trying to push one another off as the carousel careens out of control and bystanders start screaming.
Hitchcock and Salinger take our expectations of the carousel and turn them around on us so that we are disoriented and confused, like Holden is for much of the novel. Wow.
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| (images from Google images, searched through Creative Commons; Image 2) |
References
Hitchcock, A. (Director). (1951). Strangers on a Train. [Motion picture]. USA: Warner Brothers.
Fitzgerald, F. S. (2004). The great Gatsby. New York: Scribner.
Salinger, J.D. (1991). The catcher in the rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
