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Analysis of holden the catcher in the rye
Analysis of holden the catcher in the rye
Analysis of holden the catcher in the rye
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This anecdote is a reflection of Holden’s personality. All of the literary devices link back to how Holden is as a person. We learn more about Holden’s contradicting and depressing personality. He contradicts himself by calling the man that carried his bags not very intelligent and terrible, when he said that he wasn’t the smart one in the family. He also links back old age to depression. Ever since Allie died, Holden’s personality has drastically changed. Being expelled from school and passing only his English class was just a taste of what was to come. He was bipolar, which really didn’t help at all. Allie’s death had a huge impact on Holden’s life. Holden’s contradicting personality reflects his bipolar issues. When people are bipolar they
In the novel, Allie has an immense impact on Holden through his journey. Allie is Holden’s brother that died of Cancer when Holden was young. Holden is always sad about Allie’s death and is always thinking about Allie. Allie’s impact on Holden’s life sparks from Holden feeling like Allie missed out on opportunities.Allie also brings Holden a sense of guilt and also pain because he feels that Allie is missing out and that it is unfair for him to experience life. Holden can never get over Allies death and Allie because of his guilt that stems from his beliefs of Allie’s inability to experience life. When talking to Phoebe he says, “I Know he’s dead? Dont you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God’s sake-especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that’re alive and all” (Salinger 171). This quote shows Holden’s reluctance to not forget Allie, and move on with his life not living in regret of Allie’s...
Allie, Holden's young brother who died several years earlier, was a major symbol throughout the story. When Holden remembers incidents from his past involving Allie, his attitude changes, such as when he writes the composition about Allie's baseball glove or when Holden broke his hand after punching all of the windows after Allie died. "I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it". (39) He feels that Allie was one of the few people who were not phony in a world full of phonies. More importantly, Allie represents the innocence and childhood that Holden strives to find throughout his three-day journey. In Holden's opinion, Allie represents the purity that Holden looks for in the world. Holden admits that he admires Allie more than he admires Jesus, and even prays to Allie at one point, rather than Jesus. Allie is Holden's role model, whom he judges the rest of the world according to. When Allie dies, it creates turbulence in Holden's life.
However, his feelings suggest that the true reason for his depression is his loss of Innocence. When he was 13 years old, he lost his little brother Allie to leukemia. Allie meant a lot to Holden. He even becomes a symbol in the book. Allie is the one who keeps Holden from falling of the cliff, he’s the reason that he hasn’t lost his innocence yet. “Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I'd never get to the other side of the street. I thought I'd just go down, down, down, and nobody'd ever see me again. Boy, did it scare me. You can't imagine. I started sweating like a bastard—my whole shirt and underwear and everything. Then I started doing something else. Every time I'd get to the end of a block I'd make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I'd say to him, "Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Please, Allie." And then when I'd reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I'd thank him.” (Sallinger) In this part, Allie plays the role as the Catcher in the Rye and keeps Holden from falling of the cliff. This is why i believe that Holden wants to become a “ Catcher in the Rye”. He wants to help people like Allie has helped him. He feels that it's what he’d meant to do with his
Unfortunately, his younger brother, Allie, passing away took a huge toll on his life. One night after being physically abused by Maurice the elevator operator Holden says “What I did, I started talking, sort of out loud, to Allie. I do that sometimes when I get very depressed” (Salinger 98). Clearly, he causes his own self-anxiety sometimes leading to sleep deprivation. Flashing back to unnecessary memories such as simply not allowing Allie to go shoot his BB gun with him, Holden puts himself through more pain than he already was going through. In the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder article, it explains, “Some people get PTSD after a friend or family experiences harm.” Therefore, the death of Allie is most likely one of the main reasons for Holden’s not so ordinary
Holden feels as if he is stuck in his 13 year old self. Although he is aging he isn’t necessarily maturing the way his classmates and other people are around him. This is due to the fact that he never received closure when Allie died. When he starts picturing his own funeral because he might get pneumonia and die, he remembers D.B. telling him about his brother's funeral. He stated, “I wasn’t there. I was still in the hospital. I had to go to the hospital and all after I hurt my hand” (Salinger 171). Since he never attended the funeral he never got to say his final goodbyes to the one person he truly loved. Holden feels as if he can’t connect with anyone else in the world like he did with Allie. If he did then he would most likely push them away, so he wouldn’t have to experience the trauma of loss again, because it greatly impacted his life the first time. The trauma Holden experienced when he was younger resulted in him not being able to form stronger relationships with people which made him more depressed and
As Holden is writing Stradlater’s composition about his brother Allie, he thinks back to the times when both he and Allie had fun together as well as the effects Allie’s death had on him. Due to his inability to express his feelings, Holden isolates himself in the garage and “[breaks] all the goddam windows with [his] fist”(44). Holden chooses to handle the pain of losing his brother by separating himself from the rest of his family and letting his emotions run loose. Although he may believe that he took the right course of action he is actually setting the foundation of a defense mechanism to keep others away. It prevents himself from having to deal with the pain of someone he cares about from leaving him again. While Stradlater is on a date with Jane Gallagher, Holden’s childhood sweetheart, Holden is unable to stop worrying about what Stradlater is doing to her. Once Stradlater returns from his date with Jane and shares some of the details, Holden’s anger continues to grow as he listens to Stradlater's remarks. As he thinks about Stradlater stealing Jane from him Holden’s anger begins to boil over pushing him to unsuccessfully “sock [Stradlater]...right smack in the toothbrush, [to] split his goddam throat open”(49). In Holden's eyes Jane is an important person, almost like Allie, and Stradlater is trying to take her away from him. Any other reasonable person would have talked out the situation and solved the problem, however, Holden is just the opposite. Rather than taking a rational approach Holden jumps to conclusions and attempts to use violence as a solution, which ends in him held to the floor. Holden is out on a date with Sally Hayes and finds himself confiding his problems to her. While Holden hysterically venting his angers out, he comes up with the idea to “drive up to Massachusetts and Vermont,” with good old Sally “tomorrow
When dealing with Allie’s death, Holden takes out his anger on himself and on others. He does this by putting other people and himself down. When Holden is talking about his experience with women he says, “I mean most girls are so dumb and all. After you neck them for a while, you can really watch them losing their brains” (103). Holden feels the need to call girls dumb because it makes him feel superior. Holden thinks of himself as better and smarter than everyone else, even though he has flunked out of multiple schools and has done nothing productive with his life. When Holden hates or insults characteristics in people, he often does it to make himself feel better about himself because he knows that he disappointed himself and everyone who cares about him. Holden clearly has always had the potential to be smart because his family tree is full of successful people. In addition to his successful family tree, he can write well demonstrated by his success in English class and by the composition that he writes for Stradlater. When Holden is talking about himself, he says, “I am the only dumb one in the family” (75). Holden’s lack of effort in school is the reason for his bad grades which gives him a low self esteem. Holden needs to stop hating and insulting himself and hating others because if he keeps doing that, he will see his
Holden was walking in Fifth Avenue and overtime he came to the end of the block he began to feel extremely nervous. He sad he felt as if he was going to “disappear”(Salinger 198). Holden says, “Boy did it scare me… Every time I’d get to the end of the block I’d make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I’d say to him ‘Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie don’t let me disappear… Please, Allie,’ ” (Salinger 198). When Holden is nervous he is nervous because he doesn’t want to “disappear” (Salinger 198). Holden is nervous because he doesn’t want to “disappear” at “the end of the block ” (Salinger 198). By this he really means he does’t want to die at the end of his life, like Allie died at the end of his life. He steers clear from using the words die and at the end of life, because he is in denial that Allies life is over and that he is dead. Although his conscious mind logically knows that Allie is not alive anymore, subconsciously his mind refuses to accept that, and this is where there is conflict. To cope with that conflict he begins to fantasize that Allie is with him giving him advice and watching over him. To Holden Allie is like a child's imaginary friend, when he doesn’t need Allie it is not like Allie doesn’t exist in his subconscious mind, his conscious mind simply takes over. Although when he is scared, or something is triggered to cope he begins to fantasize Allie and take comfort in Allie even though consciously he knows it is impossible for him to be talking to Allie. I relate to Allie in the manner that I went through a denial phase why coping with my grandfathers loss, also denial was not nearly as sever as Allie’s. When my grandpa first died it was hard to truly accept that he wasn’t with us any more. Again, I was little when he died so I kept trying to convince that he wasn’t dead, although eventually I really
Throughout the novel, Holden struggles emotionally as an outsider, gradually becoming more unstable as time passes on. He’s an outsider at school and in society so he doesn’t have many friends. In his eyes, everyone is letting him down, which causes him to think very low of himself. Earlier in his life, he had a brother named Allie, but he died due to his leukemia. The collateral damage from that caused him to break emotionally. The night of Allie’s death, he slept in the garage
Early on in the novel, readers learn of the way Holden viewed his brother as a “terrifically intelligent” and “the nicest” family member before his tragic loss against leukemia at age 11 (37). Being only two years older than Allie, Holden experienced this death at a relatively young age, explaining his sudden change in thoughts towards life, since deaths of family members often cause an extreme amount of traumatic stress to an individual-especially to those who can not yet internalize what has
In J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Allie’s presence both explains Holden’s actions and through context shows Holden growth throughout the book by showing his difficult journey through his stages of grief. Usually, the stages of grief are healthy and brief, but when they are too drawn out they become ruinous. The pain of Allie’s death is the cause of nearly all his problems; Holden seeks out pain due to his guilt of being alive while Allie is not, and he is determined to protect innocence because Allie died at such a young, innocent age. Through Holden’s memories of Allie and ‘interactions’ with Allie during the story, the reader is shown his progression through anger, a mix of guilt and depression, and, finally, acceptance. By the end of the book,
Holden’s breakdown illuminates an obsession with death that Allie has left him with. His off-hand comments about feeling lonely and wishing he were dead culminates in his fantasy of actually dying and joining Allie, allowing him to finally feel reprieve from the survivor’s guilt he has lived with for three years. This fantasy also serves as a way for Holden to punish those around him. His family would have to deal with another death and the guilt that Holden has dealt with. This penalty is especially directed at his parents for their inability to save Allie all those years ago and for abandoning Holden in his grief. Holden believes that if he is dead, he may actually get the attention that has been denied to him by his absent father and nervous mother. His rage towards the world takes form as anger against his parents. He needs someone to feel the guilt that he feels, and his parents make excellent targets, but in the end, Holden realizes that his own death is futile. It is only him that hasn’t moved on from Allie’s death, and the rest of his family would mourn him just as much as they mourned Allie. It is only Holden who feels this gargantuan
Holden believes that facing adulthood and its responsibilities will ultimately lead to his loss of innocence. This leads readers to question whether in fact, Holden's actions are the result of depression or simply a boy gone mad. As can be seen, Holden has fallen into a deep depression after the loss of his brother (Allie). He becomes so injured and is unable to even attend Allie's funeral, this deepens the depression. He is often seen talking to his deceased brother, looking for guidance, as if his brother were still alive and by his side. This action alone, may change a reader's perception of Holden as simply a boy with depression, to a boy, who is in fact losing his mind.
Holden is grateful and proud of his younger brother. Instead of remembering Allie’s death, Holden chooses to remember what a good person his brother was. On the other hand, when Holden is feeling lonely and thinking about death, he suddenly remembers Allie and his funeral. “I have about fifty aunts and lousy cousins…They all came when Allie died, the whole goddam stupid bunch of them. I have this one stupid aunt that kept saying how peaceful he looked lying there. I wasn’t there. I was still in the hospital” (201). When Holden is at his lowest, he seems to go back to the negative aspects of memories. Holden does not talk a lot about not going to Allie’s funeral because it would cause him too much pain. Secretly, Holden feels jea...
S.N. Behrman, in his review for The New Yorker, also took a sharp look at Holden's personality. Behrman found Caulfield to be very self-critical, as he often refers to himself as a terrible liar, a madman, and a moron. Holden is driven crazy by phoniness, an idea under which he lumps insincerity, snobbery, injustice, callousness, and a lot more. He is a prodigious worrier, and someone who is moved to pity quite often. Behrman wrote: "Grown men sometimes find the emblazoned obscenities of life too much for them, and leave this world indecorously, so the fact that a 16-year old boy is overwhelmed should not be surprising" (71). Holden is also labeled as curious and compassionate, a true moral idealist whose attitude comes from an intense hatred of hypocrisy. The novel opens in a doctor's office, where Holden is recuperating from physical illness and a mental breakdown. In Holden's fight with Stradlater, his roommate, he reveals his moral ideals: he fears his roommate's sexual motives, and he values children for their sincerity and innocence, seeking to protect them from the phony adult society. Jane Gallagher and Allie, the younger brother of Holden who died at age 11, represent his everlasting symbols of goodness (Davis 317).