“Giving kids clothes and food is one thing but it is much more important to teach them that other people besides themselves are important, and that the best thing they can do with their lives is to use them in the service of other people.” - Dolores Huerta

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

ALL THAT DAVID COPPERFIELD KIND OF CRAP

All the David Copperfield kind of crap refers to the fact that Dickens relates the entire life of Copperfield, giving a complete backstory, providing information of no value to the reader. The information is solely for the fact of recounting the man's life. As stated in the wiki article on David Copperfield, this writing was never meant to be published, rather it was only an autobiographical text meant only for Dickens' eyes.
J.D. Salinger attempts to distinguish his style from Dickens by attempting to exclude minute background information to his characters. He focuses more on building the character through his actions and words, his thoughts and excludes the background. Dickens takes time to build the plot, he goes step by step, scene by scene, almost as if writing in episodes. Salinger, and Holden Caulfield himself, want to distance the character from Dickens because he doesn't want to be about all that over-decorated, boring, and personal, crap. Holden attempts to avoid oversharing, and doesn't care to focus on the things that have already occurred.

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