"It killed me."

I am fascinated by Holden's vocabulary. "I really am." I love how everything either kills him or gives him a bang.

"I got a bang out of it" is reserved for special situations and has a fairly clear meaning--a sense of amusement or "kicks". At one point we read that Holden gets a "big bang." In the first few chapters of the book Holden describes how Mr. Spencer got a "big bang" out of buying an "old beat-up Navajo blanket." I found 8 instances of the word "bang" used in this way or a variation.

"It really does" and associated variations are often repeated. It seems to be some cross between a nervous tic and a joke. Early in the novel I wondered if this phrase is a red flag when Holden is being an unreliable narrator, but as I kept reading no obvious pattern of inaccuracy emerged. I found 49 instances of "really am/is/isn't/was/do/don't/does/doesn't" when used as a standalone sentence, phrase, or interjection. (I may have missed some linking verb combinations.)

"It killed me" is the least clear of Holden's sayings. Does it express frustration or amusement? Both? Either, depending on context? Holden uses it frequently during his late-night conversation with Phoebe, and he evidently has the highest regard for her. On the other hand, we have this quote from Holden's conversation with Lillian Simmons and Commander Blop:

Then she left. The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to've met each other. Which always kills me. I'm always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.

The subtext of the novel is crucial to interpreting this phrase. I found a total of 34 instances of "killed/kills/kill" used in Holden's characteristic way.

The words "phony/phoni-" appear 49 times in the text. Similarly, "crumby" appears 21 times and "lousy" appears 50 times. [Update: A quick search reveals that "goddam" appears in the novel 245 times.]

"Nobody." as a stand-alone sentence appears twice in the novel to great effect. (A third is used by Holden in his drunk phone call to Sally but it does not fit the same pattern.)

"[...] Am I late?" I told her no, but she was around ten minutes late, as a matter of fact. I didn't give a damn, though. All that crap they have in cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post and all, showing guys on street corners looking sore as hell because their dates are late--that's bunk. If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.

I thought probably I'd get pneumonia and die. I started picturing millions of jerks coming to my funeral and all. [...] Then I thought about the whole bunch of them sticking me in a goddam cemetery and all, with my name on this tombstone and all. Surrounded by dead guys. Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.

I found a 1959 article in the journal American Speech which indicates that contemporary reviewers of the novel found that Holden's language "struck the ear of the contemporary reader as an accurate rendering of the informal speech of an intelligent, educated, Northeastern American adolescent." (You can read it here from a UIUC network or here to log in from home.)

To conduct my word and phrase counts, I copied the full text of the novel from a pdf e-book into a text document, though which I could search using Notepad++.

Portrait, Ch. 5: A Departure

To say the least, chapter five (or "V" if you want to be particular) stands out from its four predecessors.

One notable change is the wealth of dialogue we find in the long first section of the chapter. The writing in this section depends quite a bit more on showing than telling compared to the rest of the book. Both the dinner scene in chapter one and the sermon in chapter three are primarily dialogue, but in those two instances, Stephen is merely observing and listening. Starting with the memory of Davin in chapter five, we get much more of Stephen himself speaking than in the rest of the novel.

I would proposition that we don't see much active character development of Stephen in chapter five. Instead, we have a lot of exposition. In chapter five we see Stephen in college, thinking like an artist, defining beauty, rejecting faith, obsessing over "her," and detesting Ireland's state of affairs. We don't see journeys like we do at Clongowes, in the red light district, at Belvedere, and on the beach.

I also question Stephen's emotional maturity, based on what is presented. His critical thinking skills are definitely honed by this point, as is his manner of speaking, yet he still thinks too often of Emma, and the concluding letters reveal an almost dismissive disgust with his family and the world around him, while showing a preoccupation with his own writing.

From a personal standpoint, I had difficulty holding my attention to chapter five. I theorize that the changes in the writing style itself (which felt, to me, flatter) are the underlying causes. Here is an example (p. 223):

—Rhythm, said Stephen, is the first formal esthetic relation of part to part in any esthetic whole or of an esthetic whole to its part or parts or of any part to the esthetic whole of which it is a part.

I enjoyed the previous portions of the book because they balanced a narrative with Stephen's process of discovery, foibles and all. Chapter five is all talk, no resolution—unless Joyce crafted it as one big ironic send-off to the novel.