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The American Literature is very intriguing and overwhelming to read. So far I have gained a lot of interest in the rich American Literature that explores different aspects of the American culture and their ways of life


AMERICAN LITERATURE-REFLECTION PAPER
Introduction
The American Literature is very intriguing and overwhelming to read. So far I have gained a lot of interest in the rich American Literature that explores different aspects of the American culture and their ways of life. From poetry to drama through short stories the literature is just in place and playing its role as a mirror to the society. I have gained a lot of interest on plays especially one written William Tennessee the Glass Menagerie and the novel Catcher in the Rye written by written by J.D Salinger. In such, I will use these two pieces of literature to offer a self-reflection of how American literature has revolutionized my thinking and overwhelmed my interest in reading more. In essence, these two pieces of literature had a greater impact in my past and considers them fit for a self-reflection based on my own personal experiences in dealing with my teenage life and making choices given personal biases and world realities.

Both these two pieces of literature have something in common; they focus on the drift between what a character would want the world to be and what the world actually is. In the, play The Glass Menagerie the family is portrayed as a unit that love each but due to life realities they cannot live together. In essence, the play explicates the guilt borne by a man as they pursue their path. Tom Wingfield is one of the characters in the play who is faced with the challenges of agreeing to life realities, he works at a shoe warehouse but deep in the heart of his hearts he wants to be a poet. Further, their mother desperately wants her daughter-Laura to be a southern belle because she appreciates memories she gained but at the end she is very disappointed. These two scenarios show characters that cannot accept the state of their circumstances but rather holds onto obsessions to values and rituals. At some point I found myself in this twist, especially when it came to choice of my career.

In the novel Catcher in the Rye the narrator Holden Caulfield- who is also a major character lives in illusion of his past troubled life. This character is stuck in time and is very pessimistic about the future he never finds anything interesting about it. Ideally, this novel made me realize how a harsh society can destroy the mindset of a young teenager and ruin their perception about the future completely. This is a situation that I almost found myself in growing up as a teenager which nearly ruined my self-esteem. Holden Caulfield finds himself a mature person suffering from self-esteem and ignorance of basic things he ought to have learnt in his teenage.
If there is a character I would wish to associate myself with is Mr. Antolini in the novel Catcher in the Rye who offers to accommodate Holden when the whole world was practically evading him. I feel so much connected to Mr. Antollini because he accommodates him and offers him personal advices about how he can change his state of mind and deal with challenges of his time. I would really wish to be knowledgeable to the many teenagers who lack people to offer them guidance in their life challenges and pursuits.

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