Practical Reading

If you want to test yourself if you've understood completely the text, you should ask yourself the following questions: 

To practise this, I will answer the questions based in a fragment of "The Catcher in the Rye", written by Jerome David Salinger.

• What is being shown or said in the text? Why is the text interesting?
• What do you think and feel about the text?
• What particular elements in the text have led you to your      conclusions?

"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?"

The text tolds us about the process of death duel of the family. Probably they'll go every Sunday and put flowers in the "stomach" of the dead person, but for Holden Caulfield (protagonist), this is useless. Why'd you want to have flowers in your chest? Personally, I think he is trying to convince himself about this, because he had a brother that died young and he feels bad about it. So he may want to put this ideas in his head so he can try to separate a little bit from thinking in his brother and not feeling bad for not going to the cemetery. 

I have passed through this same situation, and I don't like going to the cemetery, but I think that the flowers are not specifically for the person that is dead, but they are for the person that goes to visit the place, so he feels better. 

Holden is characterized because of his careless way of thinking, so I don't believe his attitude should be discussed.