Catcher In The Rye Dialectical Journal

CHAPTER ONE

The Short Boy and the Ringleader

A short fat boy sat with his legs crossed on the blacktop. His bookbag was leaning up against a tall fence that seperated school grounds from a small, dense forest. His attention was almost entirely consumed by a plump snail slowly creeping closer to the woods. Periodically he would poke the snail with a stick and watch it stop suddenly, regain its confidence, then continue to the woods. Apart from observing the little creature, the short boy would also occasionally return to the book open in his lap. It was Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye, and the boy loved it. Scribbled in black pen on the cover of the novel was the name of the short and fat boy: “Barty Hodson.” Barty was not particularly

And, within seconds, he found himself balanced precariously atop the green metal box. Terrified to take another step in fear of falling through the black plastic lid into the trash, Barty tried first to reach for the book without going further over the dumpster. Alas, his arms were far too short to reach even half the distance. With a deep breath, Barty took a step onto the lid, his eyes clenched shut. At first, there was no noise. Just the sound of Barty’s beating heart. But then, to his absolute horror, there was the sound of splintering plastic, and Barty found himself falling into a--far more vacant than expected--smelly crevice of black bags and old pizza boxes. Apart from the familiar odor of trash, there was a foreign scent too. It was sweet but rotten; putrid; foul. Barty snorted in harshly, making a face of disgust. It was not a pleasant scent. Upon glancing around the dumpster, Barty lit up with delight. There was his book. Sitting pristinely--or in as good of shape as it was previously--on a large, lumpy black bag near the left side of the box. Sticking out of the black bag was a shoe--and attached to the shoe was a long black shoe lace, which trailed out of the dumpster into the open air, where Barty knew it was dangling in the