Catcher In The Rye Holden Grief Analysis

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,

He agonizes over how he should have spent more time with Allie, wishing he had brought Allie along when Holden and Bobby Fallon had one our biking and shot BB guns. Although Holden is extremely judgemental at this moment in the story, he tells the reader that “you’d have liked him”(Salinger 49) instead of the usual label of phony that he sticks on nearly everyone. Then, Holden describes Allie as “the nicest”(Salinger 50) and “the most intelligent member in the family”(Salinger 50), while Holden never describes himself as caring or smart, only “yellow”(Salinger 115) or “absent-minded”(Salinger 78). This exposes that he considers Allie to be superior to Holden in every way. Allie is also unique in the way that he has red hair and is left handed, both rare traits that highlight how he is different from everyone else and special. This shows that Holden sees his life as having less worth than Allie’s life had, revealing his enormous guilt. His guilt causes him to fail all his classes except one at Pencey because he does not want to apply himself and try to be smarter than Allie, a destructive behavior which leads to him being