Should Holden Stay or Go

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Mentally and physically drained, Holden returns home, only to find he almost got tuberculosis. Holden, who is 16 years old, has trouble accepting that innocence is lost by everyone and one cannot preserve their innocence. During The Catcher in the Rye, Holden also does many concerning things that make people question whether he should stay in the mental institution. Although people argue that Holden needs to go home and get his life back, Holden really needs to stay in the mental facility because he continues to have suicidal thoughts, he needs people to help him get over him being lonely, and he also needs cope with his issue of growing up in order to become mentally stable again.
Throughout the book, Holden says and thinks about many actions of suicide. One of the numerous quotes he says is “I’m kind of glad they’ve got the atomic bomb invented. If there’s ever another war, I’m going to sit right on top of it” (Salinger 141). First off, this is a bad thing for Holden because it shows readers and others how bad of a mental state he is in and how much he doesn’t care for himself. Secondly, Holden always said about how he felt like jumping out of a window and some instances, readers thought he would actually get the motivation to jump and kill himself. Even if Holden thinks he can leave, he is honestly ill-equipped mentally and not ready to face the “real world” once again.
One of the big factors in Holden’s mental breakdowns was the fact that he was very lonely and he needed people around him, but he never opened up to people because he thought they were phony. He says “I was crying and all. I don’t know why but I was. I guess because I was feeling depressed and lonesome” (Salinger 153). Being lonely isn’t Holden’s only issue, b...

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...lden, however, will do the opposite when he goes back to school. Instead of thinking about how to handle things, Holden will fall into thinking that everyone is a phony because he still has his brother’s death hanging over his head and we still won’t get a mentally stable Holden.
In the end, Holden’s place for right now is best suited for the metal facility because he continues to have suicidal thoughts, he needs people around him to support him and he needs to learn to cope with his issues. If Holden is able to stay for some time, it will really help him in the sense that he will realize that not everyone is phony and life goes on. The longer Holden is able to stay, the longer he will have time to heal and confront his issues. One can sincerely hope that Holden will be able to eventually live down his problems so he can go into adulthood and live a regular life.

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