Reading Response 10/20

Holden Caulfield reminds me of the main
character Sam.

         

   In a short novel Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin, which is a third person narrative point of view that revolves around the protagonist Sam makes the reader feel a range of emotions. This novel reflects on the reality of modern society and culture on young and upcoming people who has a lot of things ahead of them. In this case Sam a writer who is a graduate from NYU explores New York and Florida jumping through relationships to relationships. Throughout the story there are sad moments, happy moments, and just random moments., a lot of random moments, for example one paragraph came up randomly and if it hadn’t existed the story would be flowing through just the same, the narrator mentioned, “Someone said something to Sam about Columbus, Ohio. Sam thanked the person and walked to Joseph and said he was going to hang out with his friend from Sarasota” (80). The narrator seems to add the smallest detail in Sam’s experience throughout the book regardless the relevance of it and this adds on the realism of how random things could happen in real life without having relevance. Sam reminds me of Holden Caulfield from the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Both Sam and Holden are both reckless young men in similar ways; Holden dropped out from four schools and walked around in New York City homeless, meeting connecting with people to people. On the other Sam isn’t stable when it comes to relationships so when he moved to New York City he went around people to people looking for meaning in life. Both characters are reckless with Holden getting in trouble and getting into a scuffle in an elevator and Sam getting caught shoplifting at American Apparel and an electronic store twice and going to jail on both times, both character responded to these incidents as if they were an everyday event and pretended as it never happened. The narrator made it seem as if Sam was a masochist, he doesn’t think about the consequences. He wanted a headphones so he stole a $40 one and when the judge mentioned that since he had no prior arrest he’s free to go with 1 day of community service he mentioned that he did have a prior arrest.