Reviews and Comments

Reading J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye was, for me, like listening to a voice that refuses to be tamed. Holden Caulfield, the narrator, speaks in a way that is restless, erratic, and brutally honest. At first, I was unsettled by his tone – sarcastic, dismissive, often bitter – but as I moved deeper into the book, I realized that behind all the cynicism stood a young man terrified of growing up, desperate to find authenticity in a world he calls “phony.”

The novel follows Holden in the days after he leaves his prep school, wandering through New York City. He drifts from hotel rooms to bars, from awkward encounters with old acquaintances to tender moments with his younger sister, Phoebe. What touched me most was not the plot itself, which is minimal, but the rawness of Holden’s emotions: his grief over his brother Allie, his loneliness, his fragile longing to protect innocence.

The famous image of the “catcher in the rye” – someone standing in a field, saving children from falling off a cliff – struck me as both heartbreaking and beautiful. It made me pause and reflect on my own fears of losing what is pure in life.

Salinger’s style is deceptively simple, but it lingers. I finished the book with a strange mix of sadness and warmth, as if Holden’s voice was still echoing in my head.

Reading William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying was like trying to follow a chorus where every voice sings in a different key. At first, I was disoriented by the shifting perspectives—each chapter told by a different member of the Bundren family, and even by those around them. But slowly, I began to feel the rhythm of their fractured storytelling, and it drew me in.

The novel follows the Bundrens as they journey to bury their matriarch, Addie, in her hometown. On the surface, it is a story of duty and family loyalty. Yet, for me, it quickly became something much deeper: an exploration of grief, pride, selfishness, and the strange ways love and obligation collide.

What unsettled me most was how raw and unfiltered the voices were. Some spoke with bitterness, others with confusion, some with heartbreaking simplicity. I felt closest to Darl, whose eerie sensitivity made me uneasy, as if he could see too much. And Dewey Dell’s quiet desperation left me with a knot in my chest.

Faulkner’s language is challenging—sometimes fragmented, sometimes poetic—but I realized that the difficulty mirrors the experience of grief itself: chaotic, contradictory, impossible to pin down.

When I closed the book, I didn’t feel closure. I felt dust, sweat, and exhaustion, as though I had walked with the Bundrens myself. As I Lay Dying isn’t comforting, but it is unforgettable. It showed me that even in dissonance, a haunting kind of truth can emerge.

Reading Friedrich Schiller’s William Tell felt like stepping into a landscape painted with both beauty and danger — towering mountains, quiet lakes, and the tense air of oppression. I knew the broad strokes of the legend: the expert marksman forced to shoot an apple off his son’s head. But Schiller’s play gave me more than just that moment of high drama; it gave me the heartbeat of a people longing for freedom.

William Tell is not a rebel by nature. He is a man who loves his family, his land, and a quiet life. Yet, when the tyranny of the Habsburg governor Gessler crosses a line too far, Tell becomes an unlikely symbol of resistance. Reading his transformation, I found myself asking: when would I draw my own line? When would I be willing to risk everything?

The famous apple-shot scene gripped me with its unbearable tension — not just for the act itself, but for what it represents: precision under pressure, trust between father and son, and the silent promise of vengeance. Schiller’s language carries both poetic grace and moral weight, making each exchange resonate beyond its historical setting.

What struck me most was how the play balances personal honor with the collective fight for liberty. It reminded me that revolutions often begin with deeply personal acts of defiance.

William Tell is more than a tale of a heroic archer; it’s a meditation on justice, courage, and the quiet moment when an ordinary person becomes a legend. And closing the final page, I felt a little braver myself.

Reading Franz Kafka’s In the Penal Colony was like watching a slow, methodical nightmare unfold in broad daylight—horrifying not because it was loud, but because of its stillness. From the first page, I felt a cold pressure building, an invisible weight pressing down as I entered this remote island where justice is no longer debated, only executed.

The story centers around a bizarre machine used to carry out punishments by inscribing the condemned man’s crime into his flesh. I was disturbed not just by the grotesque detail, but by how calmly it was all described—clinical, almost reverent. The Officer, who worships the old brutal order, explains the machine with the pride of a museum curator. I felt trapped in that moment, caught between fascination and revulsion.

What affected me most was the silence of the Condemned Man, and the passive discomfort of the visiting Traveler. He represents, perhaps, us—the reader, the modern outsider, appalled but ultimately unwilling to intervene. I kept asking myself: Would I have spoken up? Or simply walked away?

Kafka’s prose is precise, cold, and deceptively simple. That simplicity made the horror feel more intimate, more plausible. There are no villains, no heroes—just people upholding systems, clinging to rituals, avoiding responsibility.

By the end, when the Officer submits himself to his own device, I didn’t feel relief. Only a deeper unease. The machine breaks. The system collapses. But nothing is truly resolved.

In the Penal Colony didn’t terrify me in the usual way. It made me question the machinery—literal and symbolic—that we all live inside. And it reminded me that some of the darkest truths don’t scream. They hum quietly, and persist.

Reading The Red Pony by John Steinbeck was like watching the sky darken on a summer afternoon—you think it’s still light, but suddenly, everything changes. What starts as a simple story about a boy and his pony quietly unravels into a series of quiet, devastating lessons about life, death, and disappointment.

Jody, the young boy at the center, reminded me of the version of myself that used to believe grown-ups had all the answers. When he’s given the red pony, his pride and excitement are almost palpable—I could feel that thrill, that hope, as if it were mine. But Steinbeck doesn’t let us sit with comfort for long. The pony’s sickness, and eventual death, hit hard—not because it was shocking, but because it felt real.

There’s something deeply raw in the way Steinbeck writes. No melodrama, just hard truths tucked into plain language. Each section—whether about the pony, the old man looking for a place to die, or Jody’s shifting relationship with his father—felt like another thread in a tapestry about the painful beauty of growing up.

What stayed with me wasn’t the sadness, but the quiet way it settled in. The Red Pony didn’t break my heart. It wore it down gently, like wind over stone. And in that slow erosion, I learned that growing up isn’t about answers—it’s about learning how to carry the weight of not knowing.

Reading Ernest Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon was not what I expected. I went in thinking I’d get a dry, historical account of bullfighting. What I got instead was a meditation on life, art, death, courage—and a brutal honesty that left me uncomfortable, fascinated, and oddly moved.

Hemingway uses bullfighting as more than subject matter; he treats it as a lens through which to examine everything he values: grace under pressure, the meaning of bravery, the aesthetics of violence. I didn’t expect to care about the rituals of the corrida, yet I found myself drawn in by the stark beauty he saw in it. The way he described the matador’s poise, the crowd’s silence before the final thrust—it made me think about how rarely we confront death directly anymore.

At times I resisted him. His admiration for the spectacle felt alien, even disturbing. I questioned the ethics, the cruelty. But Hemingway didn’t avoid that. He forced me to face the contradictions—between art and savagery, tradition and morality. He wrote with clarity and force, but also with deep thoughtfulness. That complexity stayed with me.

Death in the Afternoon isn’t just about bullfighting. It’s about how we look at death, how we avoid it, aestheticize it, even need it. Hemingway's prose, spare and exact, stripped away my filters. By the end, I wasn’t sure what I believed—but I knew I’d read something true, and that mattered more.

Reading Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse felt like watching two parts of myself walk in different directions. On one side, Narcissus—disciplined, cerebral, a monk who lives by order and intellect. On the other, Goldmund—wild, sensuous, always chasing life’s beauty and sorrow. I couldn’t help but feel torn between them.

Their bond begins in a monastery, but soon Goldmund sets off to wander, abandoning spiritual discipline for a path of instinct, art, and love. I followed him through his joy and ruin, feeling the pull of freedom and the cost it exacts. Every encounter he had—with lovers, landscapes, and death—felt deeply human, painfully fleeting.

Meanwhile, Narcissus remains rooted, faithful to thought and structure. When their paths cross again, years later, I saw not just a reunion, but a mirror—each man incomplete without the other. That struck me hard. We all crave meaning, but we chase it in such different ways.

Hesse’s writing is reflective and poetic, but never distant. He made me question the life I live and the life I might be afraid to live. Narcissus and Goldmund isn’t just a story—it’s a meditation on art, mortality, and the balance between the mind and the body.

By the end, I didn’t choose a side. I couldn’t. Maybe the point is that we’re meant to be both—thinkers and dreamers, seekers and still ones. Just like them.

Reading The Road Back by Erich Maria Remarque was like walking through the ruins of a familiar dream—one shattered not by fantasy, but by history. I had read All Quiet on the Western Front and thought I understood the trauma of war. But this novel showed me the deeper, quieter devastation that begins when the fighting ends.

We follow Ernst Birkholz and his fellow soldiers as they return to Germany after World War I. But home is not what they remembered, and neither are they. The true battle is no longer with weapons, but with silence, misunderstanding, and the inability to rejoin a world that no longer feels like theirs.

What struck me most was the emotional restraint Remarque uses. There are no dramatic breakdowns, no patriotic climaxes—just numbness, confusion, and the slow erosion of spirit. I felt that numbness seep into me, paragraph by paragraph. It’s the kind of book that sits in your chest, quietly tightening.

The scenes of alienation—of men wandering their old towns, trying to find meaning in work, in friendship, in love—are some of the most quietly powerful I’ve ever read. I found myself grieving not just for the characters, but for the idea of peace that never quite arrives.

The Road Back reminded me that survival isn’t the same as healing. And that the aftermath of war, the space where the noise fades and the silence begins, might be the most haunting battlefield of all. I closed the book feeling older somehow—humbled, and very awake.