Like all of us who read “The Catcher in the Rye”, I was saddened by the death of J.D. Salinger. That’s why I decided to tell you a few words about it today in class and I thought a short article would be useful.

Although J.D. Salinger has written many short stories, The Catcher in the Rye is Salinger’s only novel and his most notable work, earning him great fame and admiration.

At the beginning of his story, Holden Caulfield  is a student at Pencey Prep School, irresponsible and immature.  He has been expelled for failing four out of his five classes. Holden packs up and leaves the school in the middle of the night after an altercation with his roommate. He takes a train to New York, but does not want to return to his family and instead checks into the dilapidated Edmont Hotel. There, he spends an evening dancing with three tourist girls and has a clumsy encounter with a prostitute; he refuses to do anything with her and, after he tells her he just wants to talk, she becomes annoyed with him and leaves. However, he still pays her for her time. Holden spends a total of three days in the city, characterized largely by drunkenness and loneliness. At one point he ends up at a museum, where he contrasts his life with the statues of Eskimos on display. For as long as he can remember, the statues have been unchanging. These concerns may have stemmed largely from the death of his brother, Allie. Eventually, he sneaks into his parents’ apartment while they are away, to visit his younger sister, Phoebe, who is nearly the only person with whom he seems to be able to communicate. After leaving his parents’ apartment, Holden then drops by to see his old English teacher, Mr. Antolini, in the middle of the night, and is offered advice on life and a place to sleep. Mr. Antolini tells Holden that it is the stronger man who lives humbly, rather than dies nobly, for a cause. This rebukes Holden’s ideas of becoming a “catcher in the rye,” a godlike figure who symbolically saves children from “falling off a crazy cliff” and being exposed to the evils of adulthood. Holden intends to move out west; he relays these plans to his sister, who decides she wants to go with him. He refuses to take her, and when she becomes upset with him, he tells her that he will no longer go.

The Catcher in the Rye is written in first person from the point of view of its protagonist, Holden Caufield, a writing style known as stream of consciousness), which seems to follow the protagonist’s exact thought process.

The Catcher in the Rye has been listed as one of the best novels of the 20th century.

These are the only two pictures we have of Salinger. Salinger became reclusive after the publication of The Catcher in The Rye and  gradually withdrew from public view. Some people think that he was unable to deal with the traumatic nature of his war service.

Starting in 1948, the Nationalist Government in South Africa enacted laws to define and enforce segregation.

What makes South Africa’s apartheid era different to segregation and racial hatred that have occurred in other countries is the systematic way in which the National Party, which came into power in 1948, formalised it through the law. The main laws are described below.

Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, Act No 55 of 1949
Prohibited marriages between white people and people of other races. Between 1946 and the enactment of this law, only 75 mixed marriages had been recorded, compared with some 28,000 white marriages.

Immorality Amendment Act, Act No 21 of 1950; amended in 1957 (Act 23)
Prohibited adultery, attempted adultery or related immoral acts (extra-marital sex) between white and black people.

Population Registration Act, Act No 30 of 1950
Led to the creation of a national register in which every person’s race was recorded. A Race Classification Board took the final decision on what a person’s race was in disputed cases.

Group Areas Act, Act No 41 of 1950
Forced physical separation between races by creating different residential areas for different races. Led to forced removals of people living in “wrong” areas, for example Coloureds living in District Six in Cape Town.

Suppression of Communism Act, Act No 44 of 1950
Outlawed communism and the Community Party in South Africa. Communism was defined so broadly that it covered any call for radical change. Communists could be banned from participating in a political organisation and restricted to a particular area.

Bantu Building Workers Act, Act No 27 of 1951
Allowed black people to be trained as artisans in the building trade, something previously reserved for whites only, but they had to work within an area designated for blacks. Made it a criminal offence for a black person to perform any skilled work in urban areas except in those sections designated for black occupation.

Separate Representation of Voters Act, Act No 46 of 1951
Together with the 1956 amendment, this act led to the removal of Coloureds from the common voters’ roll.

Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act, Act No 52 of 1951
Gave the Minister of Native Affairs the power to remove blacks from public or privately owned land and to establishment resettlement camps to house these displaced people.

Bantu Authorities Act, Act No 68 of 1951
Provided for the establishment of black homelands and regional authorities and, with the aim of creating greater self-government in the homelands, abolished the Native Representative Council.

Natives Laws Amendment Act of 1952
Narrowed the definition of the category of blacks who had the right of permanent residence in towns. Section 10 limited this to those who’d been born in a town and had lived there continuously for not less than 15 years, or who had been employed there continuously for at least 15 years, or who had worked continuously for the same employer for at least 10 years.

Natives (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act, Act No 67 of 1952
Commonly known as the Pass Laws, this ironically named act forced black people to carry identification with them at all times. A pass included a photograph, details of place of origin, employment record, tax payments, and encounters with the police. It was a criminal offence to be unable to produce a pass when required to do so by the police. No black person could leave a rural area for an urban one without a permit from the local authorities. On arrival in an urban area a permit to seek work had to be obtained within 72 hours.

Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act of 1953
Prohibited strike action by blacks.

Bantu Education Act, Act No 47 of 1953
Established a Black Education Department in the Department of Native Affairs which would compile a curriculum that suited the “nature and requirements of the black people”. The author of the legislation, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd (then Minister of Native Affairs, later Prime Minister), stated that its aim was to prevent Africans receiving an education that would lead them to aspire to positions they wouldn’t be allowed to hold in society. Instead Africans were to receive an education designed to provide them with skills to serve their own people in the homelands or to work in labouring jobs under whites.

Reservation of Separate Amenities Act, Act No 49 of 1953
Forced segregation in all public amenities, public buildings, and public transport with the aim of eliminating contact between whites and other races. “Europeans Only” and “Non-Europeans Only” signs were put up. The act stated that facilities provided for different races need not be equal.

Please visit http://www.anglarene.com/articles.php?lng=fr&pg=88 for more information on Bill Bryson.

For the TL1 pupils,

please watch the videos on Ellis Island (there are 3 articles) –> use “recherche” and type “Ellis Island” to watch them.

Dubai opened the world’s tallest skyscraper today.The building’s official height, a secret until now, was put at 2,717 feet — more than a half-mile high.The $1.5-billion new tower will take the name Burj Khalifa after the ruler of the neighboring emirate of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.The centerpiece of the $20 billion Downtown Dubai project includes 37 office floors, 1,044 apartments and 160 hotel rooms designed by Giorgio Armani. Emaar said it expects 12,000 people to live or work in the tower and connected office buildings.
(Source: Los Angeles Times)

The game which united a country : more information here

More information about the South African flag

South Africa : history

Situated in New York Harbour, the Statue of Liberty has become the proud symbol of the United States of America.The statue of the Goddess of Freedom carries the light of the spirit of enlightenment to the Free World.

Alexander Gustave Eiffel, whose tower later made him famous, built the statues ingenious iron frame construction supported by a central shaft.Around this framework a 2.4 millimeter thick copper coating was attached to the statue and it is mainly due to Eiffels frame that the monument has withstood the bays savage winter storms.

On the 28th October 1886, North Americas most important statue was inaugurated by President Grover Cleveland.The statue was the design of a young sculptor, Bartholdi, who had eagerly accepted the work due to the fact that the commission of his design of a large female statue for a lighthouse on the Suez Canal had not reached fruition.

At first, the statue received little love and affection.Indeed, New Yorkers used the statue’ s unveiling ceremony for a protest demonstration! Since then, however, it has most assuredly conquered the hearts of those who have seen it and it has become a symbol of freedom for the whole of America.

Nelson Mandela’s biography is here