The repetition of phrases like that killed me, he really was, I'm not kidding, and I really did got very repetitive and monotonous. After almost every single thing that Holden said he would add those unnecessary phrases. It is understandable that the author wanted to create a voice for Holden and wanted to add realism to his character, but it gets quite annoying pretty quickly. It makes Holden seem less educated and makes him seem almost silly. It also makes the reader start to get annoyed by Holden.
The first person point of view and unique way of following Holden's train of thought provided the reader with a great perspective into Holden's mind. Sometimes Holden would ramble on about something for a couple of pages without a topic. He would digress from one subject to another and it provided great amounts of detail into what Holden does and why he does it. A good example of how much Holden digress at times is when he said: "You'd like her. I mean if you tell old Phoebe something, she knows exactly what the hell you're talking about. I mean you can even take her anywhere with you. If you take her to a lousy movie, for instance, she knows it's a lousy movie. If you take her to a pretty good movie, she knows it's a pretty good movie. D.B. and I took her to see this French movie, The Baker's Wife, with Raimu in it. " (page 53).
J. D. Salinger portrayal of setting and time period seems very accurate and very well complemented by the dialogue and other occurrences that happen in the book. This is best exemplified by when he sits next to the women on the and says: " ˜We can smoke til they start screaming at us,' I said. She took a cigarette off me, and I gave her a light. " (pg 120) This is very representative of the time that this book is set in. During that time it was very casual to smoke and it wasn't that big of a taboo to smoke in public places. In addition to this Holden isn't even 18, but during this time it was socially acceptable.
