Camouflaged Maturity

I had never imagined that my legs could move that fast for such a long time. My legs just kept moving and my mind wandered, and I realized that the last time I had sprinted like this was when I was running from Mr. Antolini's house, due to paranoia of what his motives were.
I really don't know why at the time I was thinking about my experiences with Mr. Antolini, but I missed what had happened earlier that night. That was the last time I had seen Phoebe before I ran away and joined the army in the west. Now 6 months later, I am even further from her, being all the way in Europe fighting for a war I don't even know much about. All I know is that other countries started becoming ally's with one another and then decided to attack us due to our power, but we must be pretty weak if America's sending me to fight for them.
The last six months have been hell. I have learned to load a gun, shoot one, take care of a fallen soldier, and I have learned the essence of an army and its troop. All this one guy who was supposedly our leader, named Dave, said day in and day out in military school, was how nothing comes before your troop, and you do everything in your power to protect each other. What a bunch of horse- shit that was, because the first day we arrived in Europe, we were invaded on our helicopter drop of us soldiers and one of our men went down. Dave didn’t know what to do, and just started running to protect himself. What kind of leader preaches something, then does almost the exact opposite. We knew he was a fake, because of our past experiences with him, but I had no idea he was a coward.
The guy that died that day, I had talked to once before when we were learning to march during some of the very first training days. He was a nice guy, but not very talkative though. His name was Barry, and had a voice like one of the African American jazz singers in New York city- low and raspy. The rest of our troop and Dave survived that dayand since then only one other member had died.
O' boy did reality hit me when he was killed. I felt for his family, his friends, and for him. He didn't even get the chance to do what he came here to do, which was to protect and serve our country. Instead he dies while trying to anchor a territory coming out of a helicopter.
On the opposite spectrum, I have yet to kill an enemy soldier. It may sound as if I'm just as much as a coward as Dave, but my role is to fill in if a soldier goes down, and as I said earlier, only two soldiers have gone down. So I stepped in one time for the other fallen soldier (not Barry) and by the time I was ready to fire, they had fled, so actually I have not even fired a shot at an enemy soldier yet.
I have begun to realize that so far I have enjoyed serving in the military, and can now tell Phoebe that the army is something I like. Besides that very first day, our troop has been pretty tight knit. Not close enough to where I would tell anybody about Allie and his glove, but close enough to where I trust them when gunshots are being fired.
In remembrance of Allie, I have written each one of the poems he wrote on his glove on my soldier's helmet. Each of my fellow soldiers asks, but I just tell them I was bored one day and wrote a bunch of words. They don't dare ask any more questions, because I told them I grew up in the hood and was brought up by a single mom in a neighborhood, which you couldn’t make it home alive if you walked alone. I also told them how I eventually got involved in gangs, and that I was still to this day a member, so they never really dared messing with me.
Man, was I good at pulling people's legs. Sometimes as I have told you before, that I can go on and on lying, not even realizing what I'm about to say, words just come out, and before you know it, I have a whole new reputation. It amazed me how well I could think off my feet, when in tests, I was the worst, always seeming to blank out, no matter how much I studied. What also amazed me was how a couple of sentences can completely change a person's perspective on you, You could look like a regular middle class guy from New York, and turn into a gangsta from the hood.
All of a sudden I hear, "Pick up the pace, we need to be there as soon as possible." Immediately, my mind changes back from wandering and returns to the task at hand.
So here I was running, with 2 less troop members due to death, no reason to why I'm actually in the army, and a longing for my family and friends. Actually to be honest, just D.B., Phoebe, Allie, and Jane.
At least I knew why I was running. That morning we were radio-ed that we would be moving bases, and that we would populate a different base in hopes of having enough troops to raid a town by next week. It was a risky move, because we were running by the households, not knowing what men could be inside, but we kept moving.
Out of know where gunshots were fired and we all looked for cover. "Were being attacked. All guns at full force now," someone yelled out. We all took out our guns as quickly as possible and I began to load it. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a sniper pointing in the direction of Dave. What happened after was a blur. In perfect timing as I leaped, a burst of energy hit me, and it seemed as if a meteor had stricken my chest. I dropped to the hard dirt ground, and my legs began to twitch, my eyes began to close and blur, and my ears began to turn mute, as I heard Dave yell and scream at the top of his lungs for help right above me. Then everything went black visually, while my body began to feel empty, and cold.
Finally my vision returned, and the last thing I saw was me, the catcher in the rye, letting myself fall off the cliff into the field of adulthood.


REFLECTION
In this assignment based the story "The Catcher in the Rye," was to create a chapter, that could fit somewhere within the story, while at the same time keeping the personality of Holden through the words. This assignment was especially difficult, because you had to re-read a couple of chapters before you began writing to get in character of Holden's views, voice, and personality.
How I began this assignment, was by picking an idea in which I thought Holden could show off his true character traits, which ended up being about him joining the military and being chosen to fight in World War II. After I chose the idea, I read the ending chapters again, to re-familiarize myself with Holden's character, and then I simply just started writing. I let the ideas come to be, and used the book as a reference whenever I needed to incorporate more of Holden's personality.
I believe my idea and writing, fits into the time period of The Catcher in the Rye, because the true story was written in 1945, and World War II began in 1939 and ended in 1944. My writing also fits the type of language used back then, because my grandpa told me common expressions back then, were words like "horse-shit, O' boy, etc," so I tried as best as I could to make the language like it would have been back in that time. It also fits the tone of all the other chapter's Holden speaks of, because it's about his experiences and his perspectives on the whole situation he is encountering, which is what all the other chapters are about. Finally, I have related to Holden's voice and ideas in these following ways.
First of all, I blended my story/chapter with memories from the other chapters, which give it the sense, of an actual chapter being written for this book. For example, I used Holden's feelings regarding Mr. Antolini and how he is petrified of the experience he had at his house, and blended it into my chapter. I had it incorporated into Holden's wandering thoughts as he was running with his troop, which then allowed me to bring up his feelings of longing for Phoebe, Jane, and Allie.
One of my main objectives was to somehow bring Phoebe into my chapter, because in almost every chapter Holden brought Jane into his memories. She was very important to him, so she frequented his mind throughout the story. My feeling on my own chapter was that if Holden is alone longing for his friends while in the military, then Phoebe would definitely be a top priority in his mind.
Another objective I had for my own story was to have his ideas and mind wander, because in the chapters in the story, his ideas wander frequently. At one point he will think nice thoughts, then all of a sudden he thinks how he dislikes the person do to one action they may have did. Holden never looks for the best in people, while he always seems to look a lot on the negatives. For instance, Dave, who is the character I made up in my story, who did one thing wrong, and Holden forever thinks he's a coward.
Another Holden thing Holden does frequently be negative about everything he does. He lies for the fun of it, just to people not see for themselves who he really is. For instance he can be doing something productive, like serving his country, and see how pointless it is still. He blows things out of proportion and sees every little thing that may be difficult as something that is just way too hard for himself to accomplish.
Eventually I write bout how he saved his leaders life, by taking a bullet for him. The same guy he called a coward. He has begun to trust his troop members obviously, which means he himself is maturing. Previously before war, the only person he trusts is Phoebe, not even himself, but taking a bullet for someone is a first hand action of maturity, especially someone he does not have much respect for. Holden has begun to see the importance of the fellow people around him, and now has begun to trust others, so he can finally allow himself to jump off the cliff into adulthood. Holden has become a man, and now can begin his journey in life, now that he has finally learned to respect himself first and foremost.

P.S. You yourself can interpret the ending of my chapter and whether Holden survive or not.