Below is an example of how you can potentially write the assignment. As long as it reflects Salinger's writing style and some of Holden's attitudes, what you write and how you write it is up to you. Mandatory elements: first person narrative, and some repeated phrases or words to create "voice."
Please email your completed assignment before next class (our last class). I will post your work here so we can look at them next class.
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Introduction: In Chapter 5, we get to learn a bit about Holden's daily life at Pencey. He spends Saturday with Ackley and Mal Brossard, and they take a bus into the nearby town to watch a movie and eat fastfood. Holden comes back and has to finish a descriptive writing assignment for Stradlater. He writes about his dead brother's baseball glove. This chapter reveals Holden to be a basically "nice guy" with some emotional depth. You can tell he really misses his brother, and he shows a bit of kindness towards his roommates, even though he seems bitter and judgmental most of the time. He's a mixed up character. He really is.
I chose to adapt this chapter to KMLA because I thought it would be fun to explore similarities between Pencey life and KMLA life, in a modernized setting. All names and characters are intended to be fictional.
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Saturdays at KMLA are kinda random. You're supposed to bury your head in a damn book and study for the sake of studying itself, even if you don't have anything to study for. But that is actually pretty rare around here. It really is. Kids always think they gotta be studying something or the whole damn sky will fall down on them. They think a low SAT score means eating cup noodles in a subway station for the rest of their life. They really do. And yet they pretend to be studying a helluva lot more than they actually are. If you sneak around the 11th floor you'll sure as heck find most kids playing Fruit Ninja or reading goofy online comic books. Our dorm parent has mad stealth skills and totally catches you if you aren't careful. I'm real careful and always make sure my back is towards a wall. I'm pretty cautious that way.
Lunch on weekends is sometimes pretty good because not that many kids stay on campus. The school feels sorry for us kids who live too flippin far away to go home, and some kids only visit their parents once a semester. In my case, I could go home pretty easy, but I don't want to. My parents are total phonies. So I'm pretty happy to just stay here and eat more cheese-sticks than I'm supposed to, without a flippin 500 mile long line-up of kids. I once got penalty points for sticking a bunch of cheese-sticks in my pocket and smuggling them out of the cafeteria. Problem was, I forgot they were in there and they went through the wash. The laundry lady was pretty freakin mad cus they got oil and melted cheese on a bunch of kids' hanboks. I guess it was pretty mental of me to get greedy that way and not even eat them. I'm a total dork sometimes. I really am.
My ho-mate, Seungho, asked me if I wanted to go to the rest stop to eat chicken and scope ski bunnies headed to the resorts nearby. He's on the debating team and thinks everything he says is pretty damn brilliant. If you ask him a question and he doesn't know the answer, he'll just make some stuff up. I guess I do that to, but I'm no where near as good as Seungho is. He's all "silver tongued" as some of the teachers like to say. Lot's of girls like him cus he's real tall and wears an earring. He puts it on every time he leaves the school and it kind of reminds you he's not a total nerd. He actually used to smoke Marlboros but quit when he came to our school. At least that's what he says. But he's probably full of BS.
We arrive at the rest stop but the damn place is swamped with Chinese tourists, and there's no where to sit. There's not much else worth eating there so I suggest to Seungho that we hitchhike into Wonju. "Hitch-hike? You nuts? That's how kids get kidnapped." For a guy who wears an earring he can be a real chicken.
We end up taking a flippin taxi and that means I spend three quarters of the damn money my parents allow me to have every week. Luckily, we find a couple of freshman girls who also want to go into Wonju, so that lowers the price a bit. Seungho invites them to join us but they want to go do some volunteer work at a hospital or some jazz like that. They are still in the "goody-two-shoes phase" where they believe everything in the school motto and all. One of the girls is kinda funny looking, but the other is kinda cute. But you can tell she has no interest in talking to guys and would break down and cry if she even got an EOP violation. Me? I have so many penalty points for that I can't even keep count. Seungho kept telling these two girls they should be trying out for the debate team. Of course he has his earring on by now, and you'd swear these girls thought they were hanging out with whats-his-face from some boy band like Boyfriend. They ate up everything he said. They really did. When he whipped out his brand new iPhone 4S and asked to add them to his Facebook, the funny looking girl nearly wept tears of joy. I don't have Facebook or any of that crap. It's for phonies. And as for my phone, I threw it at a tree and it doesn't work anymore. My parents refuse to buy me another one, so I pretend I'm against technology. I sort of am, actually.
In Wonju, we head to the Lotteria. I only have 5,000 won left so I end up buying a damn kid's meal. It has a toy with it, so I guess that makes up for the twelve cold french fries I get. It's an Angry Bird and I think about this pretty girl in my History class who has a bunch of them hanging off her schoolbag. I think I might give it to her. Seungho offers me some of his fries but I tell him I want to cut down on carbs because soccer season is coming up. That's actually kind of true. I'm pretty good at kicking stuff, and I often pretend the ball is the face of whichever teacher is bugging on my nerves that week. Usually it's old Cho. He teaches math and I hate math. I guess if Cho taught me something I liked, such as Composition, I wouldn't dislike him as much. But since I hate math I can't help but hate just about any teacher that teaches it. I guess I should pretend the ball is math itself, but it's more fun to kick old Cho. The problem is I have too many penalty points and won't be allowed on any teams this spring. Schools always find ways to stop you from doing things you are actually good at. They really do.
After eating, Seungho suggests we call up some chicks he knows from Facebook. He's always trying to meet babes that way, thinking chicks want to meet him just because he's a genius at Korea's best high school and all. I decide I can't stand watching Seungho act awesome anymore and tell him I'm taking the bus back to school. He gets all whiny and heads off to a PC room to play Warcraft. He's bananas for all that video game jazz. I used to be, but for me "leveling up" on a game seems like leveling down in intelligence. In some ways, Seungho is a real nerd. But he sounds real smart and cool all the time. I really wish I could sound smarter and cooler than I actually am. But I can't.
I get back to the school and walk into my stinking dorm room. Damn Woohyuk is on my bed, again, talking on the phone with his mom. He's from Chejudo, and never goes home because it's too freakin far. His mom calls him all the time and he doesn't even seem to mind. He tells his mom every little detail about his life and she always wants to know what he ate for every meal. Why he does this on my bed, discussing kimbap, is beyond me. He says its because he can look out the window and see birds flying around, but I think its because his own damn bed is covered in calculus books and dirty underwear. He's a total pig. He really is. His idea of taking a shower is holding his head under the tap. So his hair always looks goofy and he's the total opposite of a guy like Seungho who carries a mirror in his bag. I always wonder what kind of woman will end up marrying a guy like Woohyuk who doesn't own a pair of socks without holes in them. Seeing a toe sticking out of a sock really drives me bonkers. Woohyuk should tell his mom he needs 50 new pairs of socks and a book that teaches him how to take a shower. The guy can memorize the entire Russian Revolution and tell you everything you'd ever want to know about Steve Jobs, but the whole "H20 + Soap = Smelling Nice" equation totally is too abstract for him. It really is. I'd like to tell him that Steve Jobs took a shower twice a day and wore socks with Mac logos on them. He probably did to. He totally did.
I sit down at my computer and decide to do some flippin homework for my literature teacher. He wants us to pretend we're a character from a book and write that character in a different situation. Any book is okay he says, as long as it's from this goofy list the school thinks we should read. I decide to write about the guy from The Great Gatsby. He's kind of sexy and posh, just like me, and I bet I can come up with a good story about how he does everything just right so he can get this chick he's really bananas for, stalking her on the internet all the time. I'll have this guy wear an earring and check his hair in the mirror lots. A total phony. And he'll be a computer programmer who wears a brand new pair of socks everyday. That's sounds like a good idea.
By the time I'm done, Seungho has returned and the room smells like a smoky PC room. He's immediately on his computer chatting to freshman girls on Facebook. Woohyuk is talking on the phone to his mom again, telling her what's for breakfast tomorrow. It's aum-rice. I like it, but not with ketchup on it. People who put ketchup on anything besides burgers and hotdogs are phonies if you ask me. I don't know why, but misuse of ketchup really drives me bonkers. I decide that I'm going to buy Woohyuk some socks for his birthday. It's coming pretty soon, and he sure could use some socks. I wonder if there is such a thing as Steve Jobs socks. I google it, and sure enough there's all kinds of Steve Jobs socks. I imagine Woohyuk's toe sticking out of Steve Jobs' head and that makes me laugh. That's definitely worth 5000 won. After I order these socks, I may even sign up for Facebook finally. Just to see how phony everyone is. Especially Seungho who is totally bananas for having over 1000 friends. How can anyone have more than three friends is beyond me. I guess I have a hard time thinking of these two guys as friends, but they are something I guess. Not sure what, but definitely something.
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