Ten Literary Devices

Simile
“Anyway, it was December and all, and it was cold as a witch’s teat”
(p.4)

Metaphor
“Life is a game that one plays according to the rules”
(p. 8)

Hyperbole
“All you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she’ll hear you"
(p. 158)

Consonance
“I can read that kind of stuff...all day and all night long. Kid’s notebooks kill me”
(p. 161)

Situational irony
"Almost everytime somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad"
(p. 52)
-Receiving gifts makes most people happy. For Holden, however, he hates how his grandmother gives him gifts because he usually throws them away afterwards. Later in the story, Holden gets Phoebe a broken record as a present. Phoebe nontheless keeps the pieces, but later realizes that Holden had gone shopping before school was over. Thus, she concluded that he had been kicked out of school and starts to discipline her older brother. Holden's intentions of bringing Phoebe a gift turned into his sister threatening to tell their parents about the expulsion.

Symbolism
“My hunting hat really gave me quite a lot of protection, in a way”
(p. 212)

Alliteration
"I'm not too tough...if you want to know the truth"
(p. 46)

Allusion
"He's carrying this copy of Oliver Twist and so's she"
(p. 138)

Onomatopoeia
"He's the best drummer I ever saw. He only gets a chance to bang them a couple of times during a whole piece"
(p. 138)

Verbal Irony
“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one”
(p. 188)
-Holden, according to this description, is an immature man. Fearing corruption in teenagers' lives, he wants to die nobly to catch 'people falling off cliffs'. In effect, he is no longer part of the teenage norm. However, in the process, Holden quits school since he considers most of his friends childish. The sacrifice of not completing school to ideally save people is, according to the quote, the mark of an immature man and thus discouraged. Normally, though, people are considered heroes by fighting for what they believe in. In this case, Holden is criticized for wanting to save others.

Naturally Immoral

There is a saying that ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’. An examination of history supports this argument: from Louis XVI’s harsh treatment of critics to his execution, from Hitler’s totalitarian dictatorship to his suicide. Unregulated power leads to greed, egocentrism, and ultimately defeat. Dictators, despite knowing that absolute power is immoral, repeatedly make the same mistakes. This quality of immoral stubbornness is not caused by ignorance, but rather by human nature. Humans are naturally selfish and corrupted; their sense of morality is not inherited, but rather taught.

Since humans are descendants of animals such as monkeys, an analysis of animals reveals why morality is not innate to humans: it is not necessary for the continuation of life so it needs not be inherited. To explain this concept, humans lost their ability to dangle off trees because they didn’t need the function. Likewise, animals lost their morals because they mostly cared about surviving. Some of them can rip other animals’ flesh to pieces just to live another day. In other words, while selfish beasts survive, selfless creatures die. In S.I. Hayakawa's Language in Thought and Action, the author notes that the “fittest” are those people who can bring to the struggle superior force, superior cunning, and superior ruthlessness. In other words, the fittest species, humans included, lack morality. This concept is true upon examination: weaker species tend to protect each other while stronger species ruthlessly and immorally hunt for other animals.

According to Darwin’s natural selection, which stresses the elimination of incompetent species, the strongest species, or the least moral ones, survive and the weakest species, or the most moral ones, die. The contrasting outcome of two different species leads to the weakening of the morality gene represented by the innocent creatures and the strengthening of the survival gene represented by the beasts. As animals’ descendants, we thus are blinded by genetic instincts and priorities to survive; we will never possess an innate emphasis on morals.

Expanding on how the animal’s desire to survive justifies the disappearance of morality as a genetic trait, human’s selfish actions such as cheating and stealing support that morality can only be taught. In the ‘Parker-Hulme Murder Case’[1], a girl with the help of her friend used bricks to bash her mother to death, who wanted to separate the two girls because they were too noisy. Scared of isolation, the girls therefore killed the mother to stay together. Had the daughter had an ounce of morality in her, she wouldn’t have exploded so erratically. Evidently, the girl did not inherit morality; she needed to be taught. But taught she wasn’t.

Both examples demonstrate that morality is not congenitally passed down from generation to generation. If it were, animals would not be fighting and all humans would act peacefully. If it were, no laws would ever be needed because everyone would act orderly. If it were, the naturalistic mode of fiction would disappear for the description of evil would be completely irrelevant to society. Realistically, however, morality is not inherited. It is rather taught, for humans and animals alike are naturally selfish and corrupted.

http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Heritage/Digitised/ParkerHulme/Page26.asp