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Psychoanalysis of holden caulfield background
Psychoanalysis of holden caulfield background
Symbolism thesis statement the catcher in the rye
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Holden Caulfield is an adolescent who is suffering in life and is isolated by the people around him. In the novel The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger, Holden is unsatisfied with his life and has no one that he is close with. The only person who he was close with was his younger brother Allie who had died of leukemia. This caused Holden to change in a negative way. The novel is told in first person by Holden himself. He opens the novel by saying “The first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like” (Salinger 1). From a psychoanalytical view point, Holden is referring to his unconscious state in Sigmund Freud’s theory. The unconscious state “holds troubling or unacceptable urges, impulses, memories, and ideas” (Nevid 469). Holden holds many memories that may be uncomfortable for him to share. This is a reason why Holden is falling apart.
For Holden Caulfield, loneliness and depression happen constantly. He constantly points out something that’s depressing no matter what the situation is. When he leaves his old history teacher, Mr. Spencer, he wishes Holden good luck with his life. Holden thinks “It sounds terrible, when you think about it” (Salinger 16). Another situation in which Holden finds depressing is when he meets two nuns. When they leave, he realizes they won’t be able to eat at anywhere fancy. “You could tell, for one thing, that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch. It made me so damn sad when I thought about it” (Salinger 114). Holden admits being sad for them and then realizes that “it wasn’t too important” (Salinger 114). Even though he knows that this shouldn’t be depressing because it’s not important, he rebuts by stating “but it made me sad anyway” (Salinge...
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... during his childhood. An example of a traumatic experience is when he visits and old professor, Mr. Antolini. Mr. and Mrs. Antolini take Holden in after running away from home. Holden is fast asleep and he “felt some guy’s hand” (Salinger 191). This caused him to flee Mr. Antolini’s house. This may not have been the first time Holden has gone through a traumatic experience. He may have experienced many more moments similar to this causing him to repress his thoughts. His isolation towards others was the effect of Allie’s death. Holden constantly experiences depression throughout the novel and does not like to express his feelings towards others. In the end, Holden has been talking to a psychoanalyst throughout the entire novel. He ends up missing everybody who he has talking about. This shows Holden’s need of therapy and companions that he is comfortable with.
As Eugene McNamara stated in his essay “Holden Caulfield as Novelist”, Holden, of J.D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye, had met with long strand of betrayals since he left Pencey Prep. These disappointments led him through the adult world with increasing feelings of depression and self-doubt, leading, finally to his mental breakdown.
In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the main character, Holden, cannot accept that he must move out of childhood and into adulthood. One of Holden’s most important major problems is his lack of maturity. Holden also has a negative perspective of life that makes things seem worse than they really are. In addition to Holden’s problems he is unable to accept the death of his brother at a young age. Holden’s immaturity, negative mentality, and inability to face reality hold him back from moving into adulthood.
There is one universal truth that will exist through out all of time and space that affects all that live to experience it. That truth is known as grief. We all experience grief, and for Holden Caulfield, grief is a major aspect of his life, the force that drives him to do everything he does in the novel, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. There are seven stages to this emotion known as grief: denial, depression, anger, bargaining, guilt, reconstruction, and finally, acceptance. There are many parts in the novel that could have influenced Holden’s grief, but the main one that most people who read the novel have figured it out was the death of his little brother Allie. The root to Holden’s grief lies with his brother which cause Holden’s to act and change the way he does in the novel.
Holden’s apparent desire to be separated from the majority of his family and friends appears to have been triggered by the death of his younger brother Allie. From Allie’s there has been a downward spiral in Holden’s relationships, as he begins to avoid contact with others and isolate himself more. The reason I believe this is because we can see how immense his anger is after Allie’s death, ‘I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist’. The death of Allie has become like an awakening to Holden, and has alerted him how precious childhood innocence is, when Holden comes to this realisation he convinces himself to do everything within his power to protect the innocence of himself and those around him, to protect them from what he sees as a false adult world. Although Holden clearly fails to protect himself, as he falls into all sorts of situations which hardly boasts of innocence and virt... ...
In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, a sixteen-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield, gets expelled from his school and runs away before his parents find out. He goes to his home town, New York, and encounters many people. Throughout the novel, Caulfield is still coping with the death of his brother Allie. His attitude slowly decreases and various signs of a mental disorder are exhibited through his actions and thoughts. Some people believe that he does not have a mental disorder, he is just grieving; however, he has clear symptoms that he is suffering from depression and anti-social disorder.
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
J.D Salinger’s novel, Catcher In The Rye is about a teen, Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the narrative. Holden is full of unique problems and most of the time lost in his own world, that can’t face reality. The psychoanalytic theory arranges a lens of definition when working at Holden Caulfield. Holden is seen as a lonely, rebellious teen who flunked out of an all boys private school, Pencey Prep. Failing school exemplifies how Holden controls his own decisions in the real world. As stubborn Holden is, opening up his persona and experiences to people is very hard for him, “I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me…” (Salinger 1). From a Freudian psychoanalytical perspective Holden would seem to keep all his thoughts all bottled up, not speaking, and opening up to people. “The preconscious holds information we’ve stored from past experience or learning. This information can be retrieved from memory and brought into awareness at any time.” (Nevid 469). Holden is one step closer to becoming a better changed person by speaking to his psychiatrist, and there is only way to find out if he did.
Many young people often find themselves struggling to find their own identity and place in society. This search for self worth often leaves these young people feeling lonely and isolated because they are unsure of themselves. Holden Caulfield, J.D. Salinger's main character in the book The Catcher In the Rye, is young man on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. One contributor to this breakdown, is the loneliness that Holden experiences. His loneliness is apparent through many ways including: his lack of friends, his longing for his dead brother, and the way he attempts to gain acceptance from others.
The catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger is about a boy named Holden Caulfield and his struggles in one part of his life. Holden seem very normal to people around him and those he interacts with. However, Holden is showing many sighs of depression. A couple of those signs that are shown are: trouble sleeping, drinking, smoking, not eating right, and he talk about committing suicide a couple times during the book. On top of that Holden feel alienated plus the death of Holden’s brother Allie left Holden thinking he and no where to go in life.
Events in Holden's life lead him to become depressed. Holden's depression centers on Allie. The manner that Holden sees himself and how he sees others leads him to be expelled from school. The speaker expresses, "One thing about packing depressed me a little," (51). Holden expresses these feelings when he packs his bags after being notified that he is expelled. Holden leaves school and heads for New York City, where he finds himself to be more lonely and depressed than ever. He is all alone and he laments, " What I really felt like doing was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out of the window," (104). Holden says this while he is all alone in his motel room. He is too ashamed of himself to return home, he knows that his mother will be upset and his father will be angry with him. He also adds that " I wasn’t feeling sleepy or anything, but I was feeling sort of lousy. Depressed and all, I almost wished I was dead," (90). Holden states this during one of the first nights that he is staying in New York. Holden expresses many thoughts of depression.
In J.D. Salinger’s controversial 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, the main character is Holden Caulfield. When the story begins Holden at age sixteen, due to his poor grades is kicked out of Pencey Prep, a boys’ school in Pennsylvania. This being the third school he has been expelled from, he is in no hurry to face his parents. Holden travels to New York for several days to cope with his disappointments. As James Lundquist explains, “Holden is so full of despair and loneliness that he is literally nauseated most of the time.” In this novel, Holden, a lonely and confused teenager, attempts to find love and direction in his life. Holden’s story is realistic because many adolescent’s face similar challenges.
Holden Caulfield suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder throughout the course of the novel. In fact, the root of all his problems come from Allie’s passing; he died from leukemia. Holden used to be extremely close with him and his imminent death changed his entire life and psyche. Holden seems to relive the event of his beloved little brother Allie’s death over and over. “What is clear, however, is that many of the symptoms Holden displays in the course of the novel mirror the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The death of his younger brother, Allie was a traumatic event in Holden Caulfield’s life and is perhaps at the root of the depression he battles in the novel. The death of a sibling can trigger post-traumati...
A major event in Holden’s life, in “The Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger is when Holden’s brother Allie dies. Allie’s death leads holden to being unable to let go of the past, he does not like any form of change, and he is afraid of being alone.
In the world of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden the main character has a dark secret. His dark secret is that he's afraid, afraid of forgetting something deep in his past. Holden's hers scared of leaving Allie. All the memories he had he never wants to forget his brother that was taken away. That's why he's frightened of growing up he blames himself for Allie's death, thinks it should have been him and tortures himself for it.He thinks if Allie can’t grow up and be successful he can't either so he never grows but because he know that if he does one day he will forget forget what he really values.
Some of his physical symptoms include several nervous habits, such as turning a faucet on and off and lighting matches, obsessive smoking and drinking, and difficulty breathing after physical activity. The number of cigarettes he smoked in just the few days he was in New York is very alarming. The patient can be observed doing small things such as turning on and off the faucet, along with many other things, on a daily basis. His mental symptoms are extremely prominent and are obvious to anyone who comes in contact with him. He worries about everything he can possibly think of. He will even avoid going to the bathroom because he is “too worried to go” and does not want to “interrupt his worrying” (Salinger, 1951, p. 40). In addition, Holden is a compulsive liar and will tell at least one lie in a typical conversation. He has even stated that he is “the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life” (Salinger, 1951, p. 16). His loneliness and longing for friendship/companionship are alarming as well. When he is with someone, he does not want them to leave for fear of being lonely, as he showed when he begged his friend to stay after meeting him for a drink, ““Have just one more drink,” I told him. “Please. I’m lonesome as hell”” (Salinger, 1951, p. 149). He always mentions how lonely he feels whenever describing a typical day. Holden has even been driven to the idea of