Jennifer Wu's learning notes

The Catcher in the Rye

This is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage angst and alienation. It has been translated into almost all of the world's major languages.

The hero-narrator The Catcher in the Rye of is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.

Famous quote

“ The mark of immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one”

(不成熟的人希望為某種理由英勇的死去；而成熟的人，是他願意為某種理由謙卑地活著)

•noble adj.

having or showing high moral qualities or character

Ex. It was a noble effort to achieve a peaceful settlement to the conflict.

The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents

•Bildungsroman 成長教育小說  *bildungs (German) = education

→ novel of formation, novel of education, or coming-of-age story which is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age),and in which character change is thus extremely important.

→ Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh, James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

•Problem novel 社會問題小說

→ work of fiction in which a prevailing social problem, such as gender, race, or class

prejudice, is dramatized through its effect on the characters of a novel

→ Charles Dickens’ Bleak House

•Initiation and Quest啟蒙探索小說            

→ It is a fiction in which the protagonist (the most important character in the

work) undergoes an experience that is life-changing, and usually that character is a young person who gains a measure of maturity from the experience.

→ Alice Munro's The Found Boat

•Fantasy/ Adventure(genre)幻想/冒險小說

→ It is a genre of fiction in which an adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, forms the main storyline

→ C.S. Lweis’s Earthsea , J. M. Barrie ‘s Peter Pan

•Detective Fiction 懸疑推理小說

→ is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a

   detective - either professional or amateur - investigates a crime, often murder.

→ Steen Steensen Blicher ‘s The Rector of Veilbye

The Great Gatsby famous quote:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

(This quote engraved on the tomb stone of Fitzgerald and his wife.)

→These words conclude the novel and find Nick returning to the theme of the significance of the past to dreams of the future, here represented by the green light. He focuses on the struggle of human beings to achieve their goals by both transcending and re-creating the past. Yet humans prove themselves unable to move beyond the past: in the metaphoric language used here, the current draws them backward as they row forward toward the green light. This past functions as the source of their ideas about the future and they cannot escape it as they continue to struggle to transform their dreams into reality. While they never lose their optimism, they expend all of their energy in pursuit of a goal that moves ever farther away. This apt metaphor characterizes both Gatsby’s struggle and the American dream itself. Nick’s words register neither blind approval nor cynical disillusionment but rather the respectful melancholy that he ultimately brings to his study of Gatsby’s life.

The Secret Garden (written by Frances Hodgson Burnett)

　HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. ’Where, you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.’ Orphaned and sent to live with her uncle in his austere manor on the moors, Mary Lennox is a lonely and unhappy child. A meeting with Dickon, her servant’s brother begins her adventure and it is through their friendship and her relationship with her troubled hypochondriac cousin Colin that she begins to learn about herself. Their lives all begin to change when a Robin shows Mary the door to a mysterious secret garden.

Miss Potter

Miss Potter is a 2006 film directed by Chris Noonan. It is a biopic(名人傳記片) of children's author and illustrator Beatrix Potter, and combines stories from her own life with animated sequences featuring characters from her stories, such as Peter Rabbit.

Quote: There's something delicious about writing those first few words of a story. You can never quite tell where they will take you. Mine took me here, where I belong.

•be exempt from

not having to obey a rule or to do something that is usually necessary

Ex. Nonprofit organizations are exempt from taxes.

•scorn n.

a strong feeling that someone or something is of little or no worth and deserves no respect

Ex. These countries deserve our respect, not the scorn of a politician.

•prey n.

an animal that is hunted and killed for food by another animal

Ex. A hawk hovered in the air before swooping on its prey.

•foul adj.

extremely unpleasant

Ex. Why are you in such a foul mood this morning?

describes speech or other language that is offensive, rude, or shocking

Ex. There's too much foul language on TV these days.

•hail n.

small hard balls of ice that fall from the sky like rain

•a hail of sth

a lot of similar things or remarks, thrown or shouted at someone at the same time

Ex. The prime minister was greeted with a hail of insults as she arrived at the students' union.

•temperament n.

the part of your character that affects your moods and the way you behave

•promising adj.

Something that is promising shows signs that it is going to be successful or enjoyable

Ex. They won the award for the most promising new band of the year.

→ Opposite: unpromising

莎莎金玉良言:

1. 才情不能複製，但須有模有樣像個樣

2.踏出第一步不容易