“Rule number five. Reading is close reading, gentlemen. The Catcher in the Rye was published on July 16, 1951, by Little, Brown. On July 16, 1779, one hundred seventy-two years earlier, Continental Army general Anthony Wayne attacked what was thought to be an impregnable British position in the palisades of Stony Point, New York. The attack was successful, and the victory so unexpected and brazen that it earned the general the nickname Mad Anthony Wayne. Honors sophomores, look at this list of phrases on the handout. All of them come from Holden.”

The Xerox, typed on Oglesby’s Selectric, read as follows:

kills me . . . I’m not too crazy . . . you have to be a madman . . . chuckling like a madman . . . serious as hell . . . mad about history . . . it drives me crazy . . . it makes me so depressed I go crazy . . . I wasn’t too crazy about him . . . it drove him mad . . . you’re nuts I swear to God . . . he was madly in love with himself . . . they’re crazy about themselves . . . like you’re dying to do them a favor . . . it was still coming down like a madman . . . it looked pretty as hell . . . he was mad about himself . . . smoking like a madman . . . say no or I’ll drop dead . . . I almost wished I was dead . . . I damn near broke my crazy neck . . . I was probably the only normal bastard in the whole place . . . I apologized like a madman . . . Girls can drive you crazy . . . old Marty was murder . . . the girls nearly committed suicide . . . that killed me . . . if you want to say stay alive, you have to say that stuff . . . I felt like jumping out the window . . . if you think I was dying to see him, you’re crazy . . . that was cutting her throat over her too . . . I didn’t break my neck looking for him . . . I swear to God I’m a madman . . .

“So what does this tell us about Mr. Caulfield?” Oglesby flicked his nose with his knuckle and twirled Diviner across his chest. “Anyone besides Malone? Fine, go ahead.”

Dan sat up from his normal slouch. “Holden isn’t sure if he’s crazy or if the world is crazy and driving him crazy, and the whole time he’s thinking about killing himself.”

Rick let out a short whistle. “Jesus, Malone, you’re killing me.”

Oglesby nodded. “Correct. His language throughout the book betrays this. This is the problem the modern-day hero faces. They question the value of the heroic act itself. And if the answer is that action doesn’t matter, then self-negation, suicide, is an alternative. Next year in Mrs. Felice’s class, you’ll read Hamlet, and this is the central question. What’s a sane response to an insane world?”

“But what if Holden is crazy and the world is not?” Rob offered.

“Then he’s unreliable as a narrator, no? But he admits it. This”—Oglesby waved the handout—“is not just Holden talking in slang. He’s not sure.”