Characterism In The Chosen And Chaim Potoks The Catcher...

â€Å"If I could not do these things, my life would have no value. Merely to live, merely to exist --- what sense is there to it?† (Potok 218). A person’s life measures up to be what they decide to do with it. Although, it may be hard for them to achieve what they want within a troubled society, it is still possible. In Chaim Potok’s The Chosen and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, both authors portray their purposes by demonstrating hardships of coming of age and growing up in conflicting societies in order to argue that the environment in which an individual grows up in cannot prevent them from reaching their full potential by using repetition, simile, imagery, and arrangement within their novels. J. D Salinger uses this first example†¦show more content†¦This is a ball game. The enemy’s on the ground† (Potok 6). Potok uses war terminology during the ballgame to show the World War II environment these kids are growing up in. Their religion is the one being killed off. These war terms and fighting between the two teams also foreshadows the conflict that happens between these two groups of Jews when they are confronted with the Holy Land issue. Yet despite the violence that surrounds them, they continue to grow into smart, peaceful young men. â€Å"Yet despite the warlike language of Coach Galanter, Reuven’s team takes a fairly relaxed approach to the sport. Reuven’s assimilationist Orthodox school team learns quickly that Danny Saunders and his separationist Hasidic forces are on hand to play hardball, treating this pastime as a kind of intramural Holy War against the non-Hasidic ‘apikorsim’† (Vanderwerken 112). He shows t he conflict between the two Jewish groups, and he references the war that is currently going on. In this second example of repetition in The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger shows Holden’s insistent effort to not conform to the phoniness of the societal norm. Its beautiful as hell up there, it really is (Salinger 52). â€Å"It smelled like fifty million dead cigars. It really did† (Salinger 53). Holden repeats the phrases â€Å"it really is† (52) or â€Å"it really did† (53) to confirm the things he is saying to both the person he is speaking to and himself. This need of reassurance comes from the way he sees the world and