05/23/18

Today was an interesting class. We started by talking about the status of the main characters in the book. Three students from different groups were asked to go up and place each character on a scale where good fortune was at the top and bad fortune was on the bottom. Stradlater was placed at the top and Ackley was at the bottom. Holden was placed in the middle and Rivers told us that this is whats called the Goldilocks Complex. The Goldilocks Complex refers to Goldilocks from Goldilocks and three bears. As it pertains to this book this is Holden hanging around Stradlater and Ackley so he appears more normal than he is. By placing himself with someone ranked so low and someone so high it makes him perfectly in the middle. Rivers than directed our attention to a passage in the book where Holden becomes a lot more personal with us than we have ever read so far. After this, we discussed the romantic and modern aspects of Holden. My group came to the conclusion that Holden is more modern than romantic. We talked about the fact that he is messing up his life but in more of a modern way. see romantics believe that when you mess up that it is absolute. However, moderns see it as more of a grey area we decided that Holden's situation is more of a grey area because he hasn't screwed for his whole life. it was just a temporary screw up.