The past is like a skeleton in your closet. It lurks there, in the back of your mind, impacting everyday actions and creeping in places it shouldn’t be. Its influence poses a threat to the present, and to be able to fully move forward, you must come to terms with it. Holden Caulfield of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is all too familiar with skeletons. Since the death of his younger brother, Allie, a few years prior to the events of the novel, Holden has suffered from grief. Throughout the novel, Holden contends with the survivor’s guilt he feels from growing up without Allie, and he subsequently fears his ascent into adulthood, revealing that if not properly addressed, grief can push individuals into mental illness and towards the …show more content…
brink of sanity. Holden’s grief over the death of his younger brother has led him to punish himself and others. The first instant of this comes the night Allie died. “I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don’t blame them. I really don’t. 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” (Salinger, 50), Holden tells his audience. This behavior is indicative of someone who is in serious anguish and cannot control his own actions. Holden does this as a form of retribution for Allie. He breaks the windows to punish the world for its cruel nature, his parents for their inability to keep his brother alive, and, mostly, himself for being unable to save Allie or even to take his place. Holden often makes reference to how smart and good natured Allie was, and in face of his own inability to make friends and stay in school, Holden perhaps believes Allie should have been the one to stay alive. Even though the world does not work like that, Holden is a young boy and punishes himself for lack of knowing better. This self-punishment is only the beginning of the deep-seated guilt Holden feels, and because he is so young and does not have a way to cope, his grief follows him as he matures. For instance, Holden eggs Stradlater on in a fight after writing a paper for him on Allie’s baseball mitt. Overcome by the barely suppressed grief let loose by thinking about Allie, Holden feels the need to be punished and says things he knows will anger his roommate until he beats Holden up. Holden forces this physical attack on himself because he feels survivor’s guilt for outliving his little brother and needs someone to deliver it. With these actions, it is clear Holden is mentally ill and walking the fine line of sanity and absolute madness. His grief has gone unchecked by the adults and role models in his life. In Mentor Mori; or Sibling Society and the Catcher in the Bly by Robert Miltner, the author asserts that it is this lack of role models that has sent Holden towards this edge. He has no one in his life to model his own grief and healing after, so he wallows in it. One person almost came close to helping heal Holden’s grief. “It was D. B. who functioned as Holden's surrogate by attending Allie's funeral when Holden was still in the hospital from hurting his hand by breaking the garage windows the night Allie died, and it is through D. B.'s eyes--"D. B. told me. I wasn't there" (155)--that Holden waked his little brother” (Miltner, Mentor Mori; or Sibling Society and the Catcher in the Bly). Being in the hospital exacerbated Holden’s grief. He wasn’t able to save Allie, and he wasn’t even able to see him into a better life, but D.B., Holden’s brother, realizes that Holden needs help. He recounts the funeral in hopes of giving Holden some amount of closure, and it might have worked, but then D.B. abandons his brother and enters the phony world of adulthood as a screenwriter. Holden feels an utter sense of betrayal in a time he needed a role model most. Holden’s self-punishment had landed him in the hospital, forcing him to miss Allie’s funeral which could have offered him an immense amount of comfort. Instead, Holden is left with survivor’s guilt that is even greater than before. While D.B. had begun to help Holden in the healing process, he is unable to see it through to completion. Holden is incapable of coming to terms with Allie’s death, just as he wasn’t able to see Allie’s burial. This lack of closure enables his past guilt to stay with him into the future, leaving Allie’s death as something Holden must always contend with. It has shaped and molded him into the extremely unhealthy and bereaved person that he is during the events of The Catcher in The Rye. His guilt has forced him closer and closer to a mental break down, and eventually, after Holden’s first full day in the city, the break down sets in. Holden enters a deranged state and believes he is about to die of pneumonia as he sits in Central Park next to the lagoon of ducks that represent Holden’s fear of change. “In this fantasy he acts out his anger against his parents and inflicts upon them the ultimate punishment, his death” (Miller, In Memoriam: Allie Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye).
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 …show more content…
survivor’s guilt. He is young and has no one to tell him that he is not responsible, so his remorse follows him as he ages, growing as he grows. It is like Romeo and Juliet, a play which Holden enjoyed. Mercutio is Allie, leaving the play too early, and “like Romeo, Holden is guilty because he has gone on living after Allie's death, and like Romeo he cannot really be accused of being at fault” (Shaw, Love and Death in The Catcher in the Rye). When Holden brings up the Shakespearean play to the nuns, his survivor’s guilt is evident. It is clear that Allie’s death is haunting him, pushing him towards a mental illness that has been born from his fixation. His grief has gone unaddressed and has consumed nearly every thought and action of Holden’s current existence. By not ever coming to terms with Allie’s death, Holden has turned in on himself and created an air of isolation through rejection and cynicism.
Holden proudly wears his red hunting hat, not giving “a damn how [he] looked” (Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, page 115) in order to separate himself from other people. While the teenaged boy seems to be content to stand out from the crowd, the red hunting symbolically keeps him from ever joining society. The hat is red, and by wearing it, Holden assumes Allie’s red hair, showing how his obsession with Allie is a reason he is not able to rejoin his peers. He is fine separating himself from the rest of the world, so long as it is in the name of remembering Allie, but this is not a way to go on living life. Allie’s death has consumed his life to the point that Holden has entered a harmful cycle of isolating himself, feeling incredibly lonely and reaching out for help, but because he does not want to burden his loved one with his guilt, he reaches out to the wrong types of people, such as Sunny the prostitute, Sally Hayes, and the cabbies. The connections he makes scare him, and Holden subsequently withdraws back in on himself, forcing the cycle to continue. It gets to the point in The Catcher in The Rye that it seems as if Holden doesn’t want to be helped in getting over his grief. Its presence has become familiar to Holden and is a reminder of Allie that keeps Holden tied down to his past, “but mourning is only one of the two main
psychological experiences typical of Holden's stage of adolescence. The other is "being in love." If Holden is unable to move on from mourning, he is equally unable to commence the being-in-love portion of his maturation process” (Shaw, Love and Death in The Catcher in the Rye). Holden desperately wants to make connections with other people, but his remembering of his past relationship with Allie terrifies him out of it. Holden and Allie had a deep and strong bond that was severed by his death. Holden fears a relationship that is akin to his and Allie’s because he fears that too will be ended in some way. So to cope, Holden avoids the formation of any connection at all. This isolation contributes to the aforementioned cycle and forces Holden closer and closer towards mental illness, and “what makes Holden's experience particularly difficult is that he is keenly aware of being isolated and feeling alienated; seemingly, there is no one he can turn to for guidance, as those few he does turn to do not provide him with effective help” (Miltner, Mentor Mori; or Sibling Society in the Catcher in the Bly). Even if Holden could bring himself to reach out to people, he believes there is a lack of people to understand him. Although this is a relatively normal part of teenage angst, Holden is right in that no one around him has felt Allie’s death as deep as he has. Finding someone who could match the friendship and emotional connection Allie offered Holden could perhaps help heal him, but nevertheless Holden puts on his red hunting hat and rejects the world around him as a place full of hypocrites who couldn’t possibly understand. Holden brings the isolation on himself, perhaps as another form of self-punishment, indicating his failing mental health and lack of a healthy development. His struggling mentality is apparent in the rescue fantasies he becomes overtaken by. Holden cares deeply about other people despite everything and wishes to save them because he was unable to save Allie. The most complex of his messianistic tendencies occurs when he tells Phoebe that he wishes he could be the catcher in the rye, saving playing children from falling over the edge of a cliff. “Holden has the "crazy" idea that he should have saved Allie, and that in the future he will save children abused by adults” (Miller, In Memoriam: Allie Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye). While it is evident that this idea is indicative of a desire to not grow up and to prevent other children from growing up so that they can stay just as Allie is forever, Holden’s idea also brings up his own desire to be saved. He too stands at the edge of the cliff of adulthood, wishing someone would save him, but he is too far away. His isolationist tendencies even in his most perfect world win, and he stands removed from the children who would be unable to save him from falling off the cliff. In the end, it is clear that Holden’s isolation will be his destruction. There is no way to heal from the past death of another if you do not let others in to help you in your grief. Holden folds in on himself to prevent others from reaching his core, from saving him. He still suffers from the guilt of living on without Allie that he tries desperately to save other people when it is him who is in the most desperate need of a savior.
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.
Imagine if your best friend or someone close to you suddenly dies of a fatal disease. The death of this person would physically and mentally inflict trauma. All though the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is a grieving seventeen year old because he endures a traumatic experience at the age of 13. His 11 year old brother, Allie, dies of leukemia, and this affects Holden throughout the novel. It causes him to yearn for his innocence and childhood back because he wants to return to the stage in his life when there are no worries. He realizes that it is not realistic to become a child again, and he begins to accept the fact that he must grow up and set an example for his sister, Phoebe. Growing up with the loss of a close brother, Holden wants to be a protector of all innocence, and later in the novel, he begins to notice he must find a solution to his traumatic experiences in order to become successful in his lifetime.
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
Allie’s baseball mitt is a very important symbol in the novel. It is connected to the novel, because the heart of the novel is Holden's grief over his brother's death and his inability to accept it. When Holden finds out that his brother Allie died, he is in denial because he refuses to accept Allie’s death. Holden is in denial because he thinks why his innocent brother had to die and not him. Because Holden needs help dealing with this grief he must always take out the mitt, and acknowledge his feelings over Allie in order to release himself from the guilt he feels. When Holden’s roommate at Pencey, Stradlater, asks him to write a descriptive essay, Holden writes about Allie’s baseball mitt. Holden treats the mitt differentially, taking it with him to Pencey and copying “down the poems that were written on it” (Salinger 38). For Holden, t...
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.
One of the most impactful events in Holden’s past is the death of his brother. Jos death definitely took a big piece of Holden’s innocence. One of the main causes of his depression is the death of Allie’s and it had a tremendous impact on his life. Allie inset rarely mentioned, his passing had a great impact on Holden. Leukemia took is younger brothers innocents and this deeply saddened him and he promise himself to that he would do whatever he could not to let that happen to other innocent kids. “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. It was a very stupid thing to do, I’ll admit, but I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it, and you didn’t know Allie”
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... ...
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
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...
J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye tells an unforgettable story of teenage angst by highlighting the life of Holden Caulfield, a young boy who commences a journey of self-discovery after being expelled from his private boarding school. Throughout the novel, Holden struggles with issues such as self-identity, loss, and a wavering sense of belonging. Holden’s red hunting hat is consistently used throughout the story as a symbol of his independence and his attachment to his childhood. From the very moment he receives it, Holden’s red hunting hat becomes a symbol of his own alienation. After traveling to New York for a fencing match and losing the team’s equipment on the subway, Holden is outcast by his teammates, who are angry that he hindered their ability to compete in the match.
The Catcher in the Rye has been described, analyzed, rebuffed, and critiqued over the years. Each writer expresses a different point of view: It is a story reflecting teen-ager's talk--thoughts-emotions--actions; or angst. I believe it is an adult's reflection of his own unresolved grief and bereavements. That adult is the author, J.D. Salinger. He uses his main character, Holden, as the voice to vent the psychological misery he will not expose -or admit to.
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
The symbolism throughout the novel illustrates Holden’s isolation from the adult world. In the beginning of the Chapter Three, Holden returns to his dorm room where he finds his pestering roommate, Ackley. After seeing Holden’s red hunting hat, which he purchased in New York, Ackley is fascinated by it and tells Holden that “Up home [he] wears a hat like that to shoot deer in,” (22) Holden then takes the red hunting hat off of Ackleys’ head and closes one eye as if he is trying to shoot it. “This is a people shooting hat,” he says (22). It is obvious from the start of the novel that Holden’s red hat symbolizes his mark of individuality and independence. In this scene, the audience sees how his desire for independence is connected to the feeling of alienation and the bitterness Holden feels for the people in society. Of course, Holden will not actually sh...
In The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden is in a rest home, where he speaks about his past and discusses his thoughts and feelings of his memories. Holden tells about his life including his past experiences at many different private schools, most recently Pensey Prep, his friends, and his late brother Allie which led to Holden’s own mental destruction.
In J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield exhibits many symptoms that can be directly linked to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, as well as other forms of grievance. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a mental illness which generally implicates exposure to trauma from single events that oftentimes involve death. It is frequently divided into three main categories: Reliving the Past, Detachment and Agitation. When analyzing the novel itself, it can be viewed as one large flashback in which Holden is constantly reflecting on past occurrences: “I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy” (Salinger, 1).