The Catcher and the Rye was written in first person by a teenage boy named Holden Caufield. The novel was very unique, not that it was written in first person, but how it was written in first person. The entire novel goes through a period of a few days after Holden gets kicked out of his school. During this time period the readers hear observations about people, and a random collection of stories from Holden's past and present. There is no basic summary of the book, because there is no plot or storyline. I do believe, however, that The Catcher and the Rye has a point to it and a lesson to be learned from reading the novel.

Holden is the middle sibling and his parents aren't even mentioned a great deal in the book. Holden does seem to care for his parents, because he waits to tell them about his expulsion from school because he knows his mother is a nervous person and won't take the news very well. Holden's mom became nervous when her youngest child, Allie, passed away. Holden talks about Allie a lot and wonders what would've been different if he had spent some more time with her. He also mentions his big brother D.B a lot. He seems to think D.B was a failure, yet he isn't shaping his life from his brother's mistakes, seeing that this is the fourth school Holden has gotten kicked out of.

I don't think that Holdens' character is unintelligent or a failure. I believe that he was misguided as a child and that he needs to hit rock bottom before he can start up a new and improved life. This is the lesson of the novel. 'When you get knocked off course, keep falling off until you can't fall any farther. This way, everything bad has already happened and all of your mistakes have been made, so when you start back on the course, there is nothing left that could go wrong.'

**I think that grading should be an even balance between my actual ideas and how they are conveyed (content, development and style) and the grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary that is used in the paper (conventions). I don't think that what you have to say is important without the use of proper conventions and vice versa (a paper with blande ideas that had no effort put into it shouldn't be considered a good paper because it was written with appropriate commas and subject verb agreement.)

The Death of a Salesman

Miller's play, The Death of a Salesman, opens up a different world during the 1920's. Back then, success meant that you had a steady job, with an impressing salary, and were very well liked. Being a salesman was a very respectable job that most people were anxious to have. The main character Willy Loman is a salesman, and so is his brother Charlie. Uncle Charlie says that someone is only as good as what they can sell. I disagree with this opinion because Willy Loman is a great salesman, yet in his old age, he has yet to make a substantial amount of money, he doesn't own his own home, and he eventually gets fired from a job that he has committed his entire life too. Willy is a very unhappy person and he even falls into episodes of dimensia because of the stress that has been put on him from his job.

Willy had aspirations when he was younger. He had hoped to move to Alaska and maybe strike gold, but he didn't follow his dreams. That is where he went wrong. He wanted to be respected by everyone so he made a career choice that could get him that respect. However, there was a problem. Willy Loman didn't have the self-respect he needed to obtain respect from others. He always second guessed himself and was very critical of himself. Willy always thought that the buyers were making fun of him and he was very paranoid. No one in his business respected him because he didn't know how to respect himself, but his family saw past that and they all admired him; for the most part.

Willy saw himself as a failure, so he pushed his sons to succeed. I think that he pushed his sons too far because they were both forced into a job that they wouldn't be interested in or happy with. His eldest son, Happy, would do anything for his father, because he respected him fully. Biff, on the other hand, caught his father cheating on his mother in Boston, and lost all respect for him from that day on.

Willy died the death of a salesman. The stress of his job (or the stress of loosing his job) caused him to have these crazy dellusions. During one of his episodes he got into a car accident and was killed. No one showed up at his funeral except for his wife, Biff, Happy, Uncle Charlie, and his son Bernard. I think that the moral of this story is "no matter what your job is, or how much money you make, if you enjoy what you are doing, then happiness is yours."