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Recommended: Contributing factors of depression in adolescents
Once Holden decides he is leaving Pencey, he started displaying early symptoms of depression. According to Mental Health America, teens may display signs of depression through participating in substance abuse, lack of sleep, withdrawing from people and missing school. In chapter 20 Holden drowns himself in booze after his naive confrontation with Carl Luce. “Boy, I sat at that goddamn bar till around one o’clock or so, getting drunk as a bastard,” (Salinger 150). Caulfield spends most nights getting drunk or smoking cigarettes. Initially, Holden repeals his relationships from Pencey Prep. “All of a sudden, I decided what I’d really do, I’d get the hell out of Pencey...It made me too sad and lonesome,” (Salinger 51). Evacuating his school was
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.
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, portrays Holden Caulfield as a manic-depressive. Holden uses three techniques throughout the novel to cope with his depression. He smokes, drinks, and talks to Allie. Although they may not be positive, Holden finds comfort in these three things.
Holden’s signs of depression a very strong and frequent thought out the book. The first major sign of Holden’s depression is the lack of sleep sleeping. Holden finds it hard to sleep even in the early morning hours let alone all night. “It took me a while to get to sleep I wasn’t even tired but finally I did.” (Pg. 104). During the story there were many times when Holden could not sleep. One of those times was when Holden left Pencey. Holden left Pencey so late he could not even take a cab. Other times are when Holden went to the bars and drank ...
Holden is not just abnormal, he has problems that other teenagers, including the students at Pencey, experience going through adolescence. An example of this is Holden's jealousy towards Stradlater when he finds out he is going on a date with Jane Gallagher, “Boy,was I getting nervous” (42). Every teenager has bouts of jealously especially about the opposite sex, and Holden is no different. Holden's rebellious nature, to an extent, is typical for a teenage boy. His rebellious nature of smoking when it is not allowed, “You weren't allowed to smoke in the dorm...I went right on smoking like a madman.” (41-42). Holden is also anxious about change, which again to an extent is normal, “Do you happen to know where they go, the ducks...”(60), and he has the right to be; change,especially during adolescence, is a terrifying but exciting ride into the unknown, and similar to other adolescents Holden is afraid but intrigued about the unknown.
At Pencey Prep Holden feels isolated and like he doesn’t belong. For example Holden feels isolated when he described his feelings during the football game as this “Anyway it was the Saturday of the football game… I was standing way the hell up on
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.
Nineteen million American adults suffer from a major case of depression (Web MD). That is a staggering one in every fifteen people (2 in our classroom alone). Holden Caulfield is clearly one of those people. Depression is a disease that leads to death but is also preventable. Psychology, stressful events, and prescription drugs are causes of depression. Stressful events brought on Holden’s depression. Holden has been trying to withstand losing a brother, living with careless parents, and not having many friends. The Catcher in the Rye is a book that takes us through the frazzled life of Holden Caulfield, who appears to be just a regular teen. But by hearing his thoughts and through heart-wrenching events in the book, the reader learns that Holden is not the innocent boy that he once appeared. In his book, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger shows that Holden’s depression is not only affecting him, but also the people around him through Sally, Phoebe, and Sunny.
He's so used to the idea of being alone that it becomes what he wants. Holden is so petrified of losing the people he is closest to, so he decides to not be close with anyone. He is afraid of the same repercussions from Allie. He would rather keep to himself than risk contentment, rationality, and stability. He for so many days after his removal from Pencey would by himself go to bars alone and try to drink away his pain. “I guess it was because I was feeling so damn depressed and lonesome” (Salinger 198). It’s during this time that Holden is falling down a dark, bottomless pit of depression and loneliness. It eventually almost became the death of him when he had isolated himself so much. He became sick, depressed, and full of anxiety. His decision to distance himself weakened him beyond his belief. “I still had that headache. It was even worse. And I think I was more depressed than I ever was in my whole life” (Salinger 252). His depression was starting to get the best of him and all he needed was to be comforted by someone other than
Every person has their own unique way of coping with situations in their life. The goal of coping is,“to deal effectively with something difficult” (OED). While there are many effective ways of coping there are also many ineffective ways to cope. Holden Caulfield , the protagonist The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger, is a character who addresses stressful moments in his life with unhealthy coping methods. According to Sigmund Freud,a doctor who studied the human mind, Holden’s “ID” and “Super-Ego”, or his unconscious mind, was at conflict and the coping strategies that presented themselves through his actions, thoughts, and words were to deal with this internal conflict. An unhealthy coping strategy that Holden uses often is fantasy.
Each year in the United States depression affects over 17 million people of all ages, races, and economic backgrounds. One in every eight teens are affected by depression (“Understanding Depression”). Depression can be defined as a mental illness where the person affected feels very sad and melancholy. Most people have passed through a stage or a short period of time where they have felt downhearted. In The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield, a 16-year old boy, can be viewed as insane in the eyes of many readers because of his behavior and actions. Despite this common belief, Holden most likely suffered from depression. Some symptoms which convey Holden was depressed was his mood, lack of sleep, and his suicidal
J.D. Salinger presents Holden Caulfield as a confused and distressed adolescent. Holden is a normal teenager who needs to find a sense of belonging. All though Holden’s obsession with “phonies” overpowers him. Dan Wakefield comments, “The things that Holden finds so deeply repulsive are things he calls “phony”- and the “phoniness” in every instance is the absence of love, and , often the substitution of pretense for love.” Holden was expelled from Pencey Prep School not because he is stupid, but because he just is not interested. His attitude toward Pencey is everyone there is a phony. Pencey makes Holden feel lonely and isolated because he had very few friends. Holden’s feeling of alienation is seen when he doesn’t attend the biggest football game of the year. His comments on the game: “It was the last game of the year and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn’t win” (2, Ch. 1). This also hints to Holden’s obsession with death. Holden can’t find a since of belonging in the school because of all the so-called phonies. Holden speaks of Pencey’s headmaster as being a phony. Holden says that on visitation day the headmaster will pay no attention to the corny-looking parents. Holden portrays his not being interested by saying, “all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to buy a goddam Cadillac someday, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses”(131, Ch. 17). Holden does not care for school or money. He just wants everyone to be sincere and honest.
Holden Caulfield conveys his melancholy, sarcasm, and seclusion greatly through his dialogue; his vocabulary constantly consists of depression and loneliness. He expresses such agony all throughout the dialogue of the book. An example of this would be when Holden quotes, “When I finally got down off the radiator and went out to the hat-check room, I was crying and all. I don’t know why, but I was. I guess it was because I was feeling so damn depressed and lonesome” (153). In this quote, Holden is expressing his confusion and unhappiness but mostly is just confused to why he is unhappy. He feels a severe amount of misery that devours him, all of which is shown greatly in all of his dialogue. He, at one point in the novel, feels like committing suicide because he cannot handle the pressure. He says that “I stayed in the bathroom for about an hour, taking a bath and all. Then I got back in bed. It took me quite a while to get to sleep- I...
Everybody feels depressed at some time or another in their lives. However, it becomes a problem when depression is so much a part of a person's life that he or she can no longer experience happiness. This happens to the young boy, Holden Caulfield in J.D Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye. Mr. Antolini accurately views the cause of Holden's depression as his lack of personal motivation, his inability to self-reflect and his stubbornness to overlook the obvious which collectively results in him giving up on life before he ever really has a chance to get it started.
While at his parent’s house Holden says that he, “Got up and went into the living room and got some cigarettes out of the box on the table and stuck some in [his] pocket. [He] was all out” (Salinger 166). One of Holden's most noticeable habits is that he is constantly smoking, which can be seen as a way to quell his anxiety and depression. Suzanne Gerber states that, “People who feel lonely and depressed and unhappy and isolated are more prone to smoke and overeat drink too much,... such behaviors help them just get through the day” (Gerber). Knowing this, one can say that Holden suffers through deep depression. While at a bar he says that, “[He] sat at the bar till around one o'clock or so, getting drunk as a bastard. [He] could hardly see straight” (Salinger 150). Smoking and drinking are the most easily seen habits in Holden that can be linked to depression. According to flowpsychology.com, people who constantly smoke and drink do so because they have become fixated in the oral stage of Freud's psychosexual stages of development that take place between the ages of 0-18 months in a child’s life. This fixation, according to Freud, “Is developed because of [a] traumatic experience a person had during childhood” (flowpsychology.com). When given this information, the readers can conclude that Holden’s ‘poor’ childhood, which consisted of his brother’s death and his parent’s lack of attention towards him during their time
By acting immaturely, Holden is not taking responsibility of his actions and is only distancing himself further from the people around him. The first immature reaction from Holden is his reluctance to go home throughout the whole novel. After he is expelled from Pencey, Holden thinks of calling Phoebe multiple times, but never does because their parents would pick up. Holden thinks of “hanging up if [his] parents answered, but that wouldn't've worked, either,” as he does not want his parents to realize he left Pencey early (Salinger 87). Avoiding the fact that he got kicked out of Pencey is immature, however it is his way of coping with being expelled from yet another school. Likewise, Holden does not tell his parents that he left Pencey early and is now in New York. Holden spends the rest of the novel hiding out from his parents and living off money he gets from Grandma. Again, this immature action is his way of safeguarding himself, but this time he is protecting himself from the disappointment of his