have felt as though no one ever took him seriously and realized his actions left him with no solid academic standing. Since Holden is essentially a failure at school with no serious friendships, he attempts to solidify some communication in asking for approval by stating "if you want to know the truth." Holden wants people to believe him so he speaks to seek approval (Costello, 1990). Again, Salinger creates this speech pattern as believable for a common teenager, yet it also seems to belong individually to Holden.The Catcher in the Rye gained much of its notoriety for the language used in it, particularly the crude words (Gwynn, 1958). Like most colloquial uses of body parts, accidents of birth, or religious connotations, Holden does not strictly make use of words in reference to their original meaning. The word "hell" is a staple of Holden's vocabulary, and he uses it often with both positive and negative connotations. In one instance, he tells us he had a "helluva time," when he and Phoebe sneaked away and had a good time shopping for shoes downtown. Other statements include "pretty as hell," "playful as hell," or "hot as hell."Holden's perception that situations were anything but normal in some relation to the extremes of the usage of "hell" is applied to both positive and negative situations. In each use of the word, Holden uses "hell" as a way to expresses the confusion of adolescence and his own regular use of it illustrates his own extreme sensitivity as a character (Gwynn, 1958).As Holden's experiences change, so does his use of crude language. When he is caught up in his own antics and is enraged, "sonuvabitch" and "bastard" frequently find their way into his vocabulary. However, when he addresses the reader as a narrator, Holden rarely, if ever, slips into his habitual use of swearing (Costello, 1990). "Sonuvabitch" is reserved for his extreme anger, as when he kept calling Stradlater a "moron sonuvabitch" for the boy's oste...
