Breaking The Code To The Catcher In The Rye discussion

The Game Page2
I think that Holden sees games as being rigged by phoney. People may believe they are playing by the rules but they don't know the game is set up to have winners and losers. A casino, if you will.
"Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football game with Saxon Hall. The game with Saxon Hall was supposed to be a very big deal around Pencey. It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win. I remember around three o'clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell up on top of Thomsen Hill, right next to this crazy cannon that was in the Revolutionary War and all. You could see the whole field from there, and you could see the two teams bashing each other all over the place. You couldn't see the grandstand too hot, but you could hear them all yelling, deep and terrific on the Pencey side, because practically the whole school except me was there, and scrawny and faggy on the Saxon Hall side, because the visiting team hardly ever brought many people with them."

Holden makes football sound like a war you were suppose to sacrifice yourself for. So how is football like war?

"The theory and practice of war and football are divided into strategy and tactics, the division in the gridiron game being not as sharp as in battle, since on the gridiron one is at all times in contact with the enemy.
But while the strategy and tactics of football and warfare come closer and closer together the further they are followed, war and the game differ in the outset in certain fundamental elements that must always be kept in mind. And football, fortunately, is devoid of no end of the complications of the war game, such as the supply train, lines of communication, etc. A football game endures through one hour of actual play, a battle from dawn to darkness, with the possibilities of renewal on the morrow, and through several succeeding days. A consideration of the terrain in war presents many abstruse problems, such as the advantageous disposition of varying numbers of troops.

From:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0559...

If you look up Thomsen you will find Fred Thomsen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Tho... He was coach
"In 1933, Thomsen's Razorbacks had the best record in the Southwest Conference, but Arkansas had to forfeit their first conference championship because Thomsen played Heinie Schleuter, an ineligible athlete." If you read Ring Lardner, (page 18) who Holden says it's his favorite writer, you will see that Lardner likes to write satire about the corruption of professional sports.

Holden goes to Spencer's house and lies when he agrees with Spencer that "life is a game that must be played according to the rules." But Holden's real thoughts are, "Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right--I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game" Page 8

On page 4, he says that he is up on that stupid hill referring to Thomsen Hill. "I only had on my reversible and no gloves or anything. The week before that, somebody'd stolen my camel's-hair coat right out of my room, with my furlined gloves right in the pocket and all. Pencey was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these very wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has--I'm not kidding. Anyway, I kept standing next to that crazy cannon, looking down at the game and freezing my ass off. Only, I wasn't watching the game too much."

Saxon Hall is the name of the visiting team. I thought this was interesting in light of WW1 and WW2:

House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (German: Haus Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha) is a German dynasty, the line of the Saxon House of Wettin that ruled the Ernestine duchies including the duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of...

The House of Windsor is the royal house of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms. It was founded by King George V by royal proclamation on 17 July 1917, when he changed the name of the British Royal Family from the German Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (a branch of the House of Wettin) to the English Windsor, due to the anti-German sentiment in the British Empire during World War I.[1] The most prominent member of the House of Windsor is its head, Queen Elizabeth II, who is the reigning monarch of 16 Commonwealth realms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of...

All the sudden England is distancing herself from Germany.

I wonder if the "crazy cannon" has anything to do with The Revolutionary War. Well sure it does but what do you think it is in light of WW2? Do you think it is crazy because of how we became allies of England, when we fought a revolution against them. Or is it crazy how many presidents are related to the House of Windsor? What is going on at this game?

I think this is enough to ponder for right now. If you can find other places in the book that you think talks about life being a game but not necessarily an honest or fair game please leave a comment.

"To this crazy cannon that was in the Revolutionary War."
Page 2

I wanted to know if there was perhaps a version of the Revolutionary War that was different and perhaps even "crazy" to the one that I was taught in school. Well today I found the rest of the story.

http://mtwsfh.blogspot.com/2007/12/li...

This will tell you that the first person to die in the Revolutionary War was really a slave. That there were treaties that the founding father's made with the Indians that they never intended to make good on. That our founding father's wouldn't have been wealthy without slavery and slavery was being abolished in England and it's colonies. Was this the real reason for the Revolutionary War?

Cosmic, just going back to your first post to fill in some background/trivia from recent reading material (that looks like it might be relevant to your point):

I Is An Other; The Secret life of Metaphor and How It Shapes The Way We See The World

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

"States of war, in fact, tend to rally the metaphorical troops - and most of these metaphors have to do with football.

There are around 1700 sports metaphors in common use. One study of the figurative language deployed during the Gulf War identified fifty-nine different football metaphors alone. Diplomats "fumbled" relations with Saddam Hussein before he attacked Kuwait. Opponents of the war "sat on the sidelines" as air strikes "kicked off" hostilities. President George H.W. Bush "huddled" with advisors while his generals worked out a "ground game" for the army's advance. General Normal Schwarzkopf told his troops "Iraq has won the toss and elected to receive."...

...Comedian George Carlin remarked on the martial nature of football metaphors in his famous routine comparing gridiron clashes with baseball games:

In football, the object is for the quarterback, otherwise known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy, in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack which punches holes in the forward wall of the enemies' defensive line. ....

Metaphorical choices are no laughing matter, especially in politics....."

Interestingly enough, the first (American) football game seems to be attributed to a match between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869.

Sheila wrote: "Cosmic, just going back to your first post to fill in some background/trivia from recent reading material (that looks like it might be relevant to your point):

I Is An Other; The Secret life of Me..."

Thank you for your comment. This is totally relevant! I had not heard of this book. Thank you for recommending it, I definitely want to read it.

The connection between football or ball games and war are fantastic!

Salinger loved Ring Lardner books. They have a lot of wit in them. In You Know Me Al he reveals how games are set up to create winners and losers.
I have read this one and it is very funny if you are a sports (baseball fan).
You Know Me Al: A Busher's Letters

Sheila wrote: "Cosmic, just going back to your first post to fill in some background/trivia from recent reading material (that looks like it might be relevant to your point):

I Is An Other; The Secret life of Me..."

I was reading a book Creativity for Critical Thinkers. He mentions another association that related to what you were saying about sports and war. He was talking about sport team names.

"Right now there are at best, only two or three types of names: predatory animals (Hawks, Tigers, etc), maybe; warlike attitudes (Avengers, Spartans, etc.)" and weather like "Tornadoes".

We have the same types of names used for airplanes and missions.

We also have numbers for the individuals, in both war and sports. We have metals or awards, see: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Thanks for making me think of different associations.

If we really wanna go there, if we extrapolate on the relationship between football-as-metaphorical war (WWII in particular), combined with with what you mentioned about the name Saxon Hall (really a telling name choice), then the passage you cited gets really kind of exciting to me:

"Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football game with Saxon Hall. The game with Saxon Hall was supposed to be a very big deal around Pencey. It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win."

Pency as the decendents of Penn - Americans; and Saxon Hall as the Germans, then its kind of easy to perceive this "football game" as a total do-or-die situation for the people involved in it.

"I remember around three o'clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell up on top of Thomsen Hill, right next to this crazy cannon that was in the Revolutionary War and all. You could see the whole field from there, and you could see the two teams bashing each other all over the place."

What would be a "crazy cannon" (canon) of the Revolutionary War? The definitve slogan for the war? The one that comes to mind immediately would be "all men are created equal".... especially interesting in light of your source about a slave being the first to die (if that's indeed true - I don't know much about the details of that war). Inequality among the masses (of humanity?) continues to this day.

"You couldn't see the grandstand too hot, but you could hear them all yelling, deep and terrific on the Pencey side, because practically the whole school except me was there, and scrawny and faggy on the Saxon Hall side, because the visiting team hardly ever brought many people with them."

Holden is now in a position to look down on the field and watch the game as a lone disinterested observer, not caught up in the excitement of the "battle" between the teams (although he's not entirely free either from the propaganda surrounding it, as he himself calls the Saxons "scrawny and faggy"). What he's describing is home field advantage and the importance of support for the "home" team, the ones who feel they have the most to lose. I do find it interesting that he can't actually "see" those who are screaming their support....

That's all. I think I'm just saying out loud a lot of the connections you've already made. :)

Sheila wrote: "If we really wanna go there, if we extrapolate on the relationship between football-as-metaphorical war (WWII in particular), combined with with what you mentioned about the name Saxon Hall (really..."

I went back to the link I made about the first Revolutionary War victim being a slave. He was a black sailor.

"1770: THIRTEEN COLONIES. According to John Adams, who would become the second president of the United States, "a motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes and mulattoes, Irish Teagues and outlandish jack tarrs," were harassing a British sentry. He calls for help, but the soldiers who come to his rescue are driven back by the mob. The "rabble" grows to about fifty people armed with rocks and sticks. The crowd are warned to desist but continue to throw rocks at the British soldiers. Eventually, the soldiers open fire on the mob killing five. The first to die is a black sailor, Crispus Attucks. Several British soldiers are ultimately convicted of manslaughter.

Attucks is often said to be the first person to die in the American Revolution. The irony of a black man being the first person to die in a revolution which had the primary purpose of maintaining slavery seems to have escaped notice. In 1888, the City of Boston erected a rather florid statue to Attucks on Boston Common, again without a hint of irony."

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispu...

When you read down the page that I will link at the bottom of post you will see that despite all the propaganda we have been taught it looks like our founding fathers may have been protecting their right to own slaves.

"With more than two centuries of propaganda, brainwashing and masturbatory invention on the subject of the American Revolution, it is all but impossible to find reference in the United States, outside scholarly works, to the fact that throughout the 1760s and 1770s, there was a growing movement to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire, including the Thirteen Colonies. The abolition campaign reached a climactic point on June 22, 1772 when Lord Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice of Britain, handed down an epoch-making decision in the case of the "Negro slave known as James Somerset", against the man who purported to own him, Charles Steuart of Virginia."

There is a lot more here but it gives you a taste.

http://mtwsfh.blogspot.com/2007/12/li...


I remember the slogan for Revolution is http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert...

If you look at the picture of liberty holding beside her a faeces. This is the same word that we get fascists from. I talk more about this

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1...

What a strange freedom?
I keep thinking about how Benjamin Franklin's son fought on the side of the Loyalists. He was captured by the revolutionaries http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willia...

I wondered why he would remain a Loyalists? Fighting against his father's interest? Perhaps he knew what the real issues were? Maybe he thought it was a war for slavery? And he was an abolitionist? I don't know but it definitely was bold of him.