In talking to two other members in my group some new ideas were brought to my head and I learned several new things which I was not really clear on when I read the book at first. We discussed many of the episodes that Holden went through and by doing this I understood more than just my own point of view. I had originally thought that Holden really liked Jane Gallagher as a girlfriend but one of my group members made me think a little bit more about it. They told me that it was not really that he wanted her to be his girlfriend but that he did not like the thought of her and Stradlatter being together. It made me think and even though I disagree I still considered what my group member was saying.

One of the major topics that we talked about was the part were the prostitute came up into Holdens room and it ended up that Holden never did anything with her except talk. All of the people in my group thought that something was going to happen because of the way that Holden was talking about it. He really made it sound like he wanted it to happen so bad. We then went on to talk about how Holden was telling all of this after it had happened and he could have been lying about a few of the thoughts that he was having. Maybe Holden was too afraid to do anything with the girl, or maybe there never was a prostitute at all. There is so much to consider that it was really interesting to hear what another person had to say about it. We then talked about how Old Maurice came into Holdenís room that night with the prostitute and wanted five more dollars. We all shared our feelings as to what we would have done if we were Holden and more importantly we talked about how we felt bad for Holden and how it almost felt as if he was so helpless. The way that he talked about that situation was the main reason why the reader would take away such a thought. He was saying how he was so nervous and scared and had no idea at all as to what he was going to do. I almost even felt his pain when Old Maurice hit him. My group disagreed with me and said that it was Holdens own fault for asking for the prostitute, they had no sympathy.

We then talked about the personality of Holden, that really helped me a lot because it was good to examine something like that in group work. It was hard to understand the character and one of my group members said that he was a very shy and timid boy but the way that he would describe and lie about things when he was talking in the book gave everyone of the readers the impression that he was all tough and would stick up for himself and say just about anything to anyone. In the discussion one of the major topics that came up more than once was the fact that many of the episodes could have been fake. It was really odd to think about because never before have I sat down and read a book and then talked about it and everything that was said had to be second guessed.

As good as the book is in my mind and the mind of all my group members we talked about somethings that we would have wanted to be changed in the first half of the book. One major thing is that we would really like to know the truth and find out if everything that is being said is really true. Next we would have really like the character of Holden to be described to us by another person in the book. The only idea that you get of the character is that he a person who thinks of himself as somewhat good looking and a few other good things, there is really no bad mentioned in the book except for the times when Holden is talking about the other characters.

Some of the major things that we liked in the book was the way that it was in the style of the older show ìWonder Yearsî. That show is very enjoyable to all of us because every event that happens you get a small explanation from the main character. It is nice because there is never one point in the story that you do not really know what he or she is thinking. The other thing that we liked about the first half of the book is the way that all of the episodes were somewhat interesting and even if nothing ended up happening at the end of the chapter you were always reading it thinking that a larger event would happen.

The final thing that we talked about is the way that the language in the book was not really good at all. We all said way should we be able to read this stuff but get in trouble if we do say it , it made no sense to us and none of the group members really appreciated that.