Nick Cilento Mrs.Rocco English II Honors 5/20/24 Holden’s Lack of Maturity. Many children across the world exhibit traits of anger issues and dissociation, because children are more prone to these issues and in the book The Catcher in the Rye, Holden holds onto these same problems. Across the three days of Holden's journey, he stretches from being a critic of modern society to throwing temper tantrums and dissociating from his problems like a child. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden ends the story without reaching adulthood, due to the fact he constantly hides from his problems and very often responds with anger. There are many instances of real world events where people who experience trauma seek refuge through behaving like children, in …show more content…
In the story, Holden's long speech about leaving everything behind with a girl he is on a first date with perfectly aligns with the scholarly study that describes how children confronted with problems often just ignore them, because of these close correlations it is evident that Holden is stuck in his childhood. Another prominent mental condition he exhibits is anger problems. Anger problems are more prone to occur in children with an underdeveloped maturity compared to adults, and this is another example of what Holden needs to lose, to escape his childhood. Holden exhibits raw anger in the book many times but it is most clearly seen in the text where it states, “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. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn't do it,” (Salinger 50). Uncontrolled anger is a very common trait in children, and can be seen being shown by Holden when he punches out the window. Holden punches the windows till his hands bleed and he cannot go any longer, showing how angry he was. However, …show more content…
“America the Traumatized.” New Republic, vol. 254, No. 2 -. 10, Oct. 2023, pp. 113-122. 12–21. The. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=6b4a919b-dc18-355f-a11b-547675c23324. Hempseed, Michael. A. “Understanding Sensory Processing Issues: A Cause of Some Students’ Distress, Anger and Anxiousness.” Teachers Matter, no. 48, Oct. 2020, pp. 78-89. 24–25. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=02d5495b-b41b-3887-a6df-661a54fa5585. Sharma, Manoj, et al. “Digital Failure: An Emerging Reason for Anger Expression among Adolescents.” Industrial Psychiatry Journal, vol. 29, No. 1 -. 2, July 2020, pp. 113-120. 335–38. The syllable of the syllable of the syllable of the syllable of the syllable EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.4103/ipj.ipj_81_19. Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Little, Brown and Company,
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.
Holden begins his story of his grieving process when he tells of his memory of his night in the garage the same night Allie had died. This is when Holden expresses the step anger and denial. Holden tells of how he broke the windows in the garage. “I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddamn windows with my fist, just for the hell of it… it was very stupid I have to admit, but I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it, and you didn’t know Allie (Salinger, 39).” Holden expresses his anger through the physical force he applied to the windows, and he expresses his denial when he does not clearly state why he does it and does not fully own up to his actions that he committed that
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.
First, Holden attempts to cope with the loss of his brother Allie, but continues to feel depressed and alone. As a result of Allie’s death, it immediately affected Holden and his actions. This is where his anger began to develop. His immediate response was to lash out despite the consequences he would face. Later he would find out that consequence would be not attending the funeral. His parents “were going to have [him] psychoanalyzed and all, because [he] broke all the windows in the garage” (Salinger 44). Also, Holden breaking his hand could have been a cry for attention and his regret. At one point he had wished his brother was dead, but then when he actually died Holden was devastated. By lashing out and injuring his hand he was full of anger, but also “he received the attention and sympathy which were denied him during Allie's illness” (Miller).
In J.D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, is a rather negative teenager who has been kicked out of yet another boarding school. Set in the late 1940s, he decides to leave his school, Pencey Prep, early and takes a trip to New York City. As Holden adventures through New York City, he seems to have a fixation on his brother, Allie’s, death. Allie dies a few years prior to the novel, and this tragedy has seemed to leave a long-lasting, negative impact on Holden. Because he has seen the harsh realities of adulthood, too early, Holden has tried not only to not grow up himself, but to also prevent others from having to face the sadness that comes with maturity.
Childhood is an unusually hard thing to rid yourself of when it is time for you to pass into the intensified life of adults. Personally, I have yet to overcome that challenge. The Catcher in the Rye is a well developed story about a high school boy, Holden Caulfield, who is stuck between the stages of adolescence and adulthood, and is trying to discover his identity. All his life, Holden Caulfield has refused to grow up, and as the book progresses, he is on the fine line of leaving innocence and adolescence behind and passing into adulthood, but what gives him the needed shove into the realm of adulthood was getting over his brother, Allie’s death. To Holden, Allie is the main definition of innocence. Eventually Holden comes to the decision to be the catcher in the rye. After this decision he tries to follow through with his plan and ultimately decides that he can’t keep anyone from growing up. This seems to be his breaking point in the book where he finally overcomes all his negative emotions towards Allie’s death and accepts it for what it is, knowing that he has to move on.
In the Catcher in the Rye, Holden is an immature boy. Holden’s immaturity cause him many problem throughout the book. He is physically mature but not emotionally mature. He acts like a child. “All of a sudden I started to cry. I’d give anything if I hadn’t, but I did” (p. 103). Holden shows his emotional unstableness.
Almost everybody in the Catcher In the Rye gets Holden upset in some way. That is, almost every adult. Holden seems to enjoy children. The person he loves most in life is not his father or mother it is his sister Phoebe. When Holden says," The kid was swell... he had a pretty little voice too...his parents paid no attention to him" ( Salinger 150 ). It shows how Holden immediately enjoys the child, while the parents seem careless about their kid's singing. Also when he goes to deliver the note inside Phoebe's school and sees the curses written on the wall, he immediately tries to get rid of it. He gets mad at the person who wrote it, he shows this when he said, " I kept wanting to kill person who had written it. I figured it was some perverty bum that'd sneaked in the school last night to take or leak or something and wrote it on the wall." ( Salinger 260-261) This shows that the first person he thinks that would write such a thing was an adult, he never thinks it could be a kid at the school. This also shown when Holden describes his dream j...
Holden has delusional thoughts. “Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around––nobody big, I mean––except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff [...]” (page 191). Holden’s dream is to keep kids from growing up, to keep them young and innocent. Holden’s views of this stems from his fear of maturity and growing up. The idea of keeping children young is a delusion thought because he, in theory, wants to control whether or not the children grow to become adults or become mature. Holden has a strong dislike towards “phonies” and anything having to do with them. In Holden's mind, as people grow older, they become “phonies”. Holden has shows signs of depression throughout the text, specifically on page fifty-four it states, “I got up and went over and looked out the window. I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead.” Holden’s old roommate from another school had died after jumping out a window, and Holden had seen it happen. Holden was triggered into remember the event, causing him to feel lonely and depressed. Depression may be the cause for Holden's addiction to alcohol and smoking as well as his low appetite, low sex-drive, and insomnia. Holden shows many other psychological signs of schizophrenia, but the most predominate are delusional thoughts and
In the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the protagonist, Holden Caulfield is portrayed as a brave individual. Throughout the novel, Holden struggles to find his way in a world which he feels he doesn’t belong. In order to protect himself, he shows contempt towards others and remains in constant isolation. Holden is brave through the aspect of his uniqueness and individuality. He tries to connect with other individuals, but is prevented as a result of his protective bitterness. Furthermore, Holden struggles with the issues of growing up and dealing with the death of his brother. As he ages, he sees the superficiality, hypocrisy, pretension, and the shallowness of the world around him. In order to combat this, Holden tries to resist
Since Holden is so happy with childhood and so completely turned off by adulthood he fears his inevitable change from youth to adult. He has no positive adult role models and no real interests other than preserving children and he is unable to communicate with anyone other than children. Holden is unable to accept growing up with an open mind. He sees only phoniness, greed, and corruption; it is this narrow-minded idea that is the basis of his problem. He does not see any uncorrupted adults. Once Holden learns that an adult is able to remain pure at heart if so desired, he will be a balanced individual. Unfortunately Holden feels alone in his quest which to him is an impossible mission. Since Holden is telling the story to a psychiatrist it is evident that he is facing his fear. It seems Holden just needed his own “Catcher in the Rye” to help him through his difficult time
In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden’s vision of nature of childhood and adulthood are not as separate as Holden believes them to be. Holden tries to battle through the pressures of adulthood while staying in his childish frame of mind. He feels that if he acts childish, he can go back to that. He also feels the need to be an adult and do his own thing. Holden is at war with himself trying to see what he really is- a child or an adult. Although, Holden thinks he is being an adult by drinking and smoking, he is actually becoming more childish.
The Effects of Unhealed Trauma on the Human Brain During development, a child’s mind is built on their experiences with their environment. Childhood trauma can have a significant negative impact on the mental health of a child, as well as long-term effects that could impact them for the rest of their lives. In addition, it is important to learn and practice healthy coping mechanisms to learn how to live with the effects of trauma from the past. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, displays the effect of childhood trauma on Holden Caulfield, the main character. After losing his younger brother Allie to leukemia, Holden struggles with moving forward in his life and having goals to strive for.
Filling the Void of Adolescence Throughout the ages marked by adolescence, I have experienced my own world becoming bleak by the drainage of color, my bubble of hopes and dreams deflated by the prick of a needle. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger examines the challenges that junior Holden Caulfield experiences throughout the novel. One of Holden’s deciding moments in his coming of age occurs at the end of the novel, at the carousel in Central Park. After getting into a fight with his younger sister, Phoebe, Holden takes her to a carousel in Central Park.
Jaden Francis Mr. Chomin English 10 11 June 2024 Phoniness of the Adult World Imagine a world where everyone around you acts fake and unreal, and you can not trust anyone but yourself. " The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger portrays the idea of this. The book follows the journey of Holden Caulfield, a teenager who has been in schools left and right and is navigating the struggles of entering adulthood while dealing with his mental health. In "The Catcher in the Rye," Salinger explores the theme of the phoniness of the adult world through Holden’s interactions with characters in the book and his observations. Holden’s distaste for the adult world is mainly shown through his interactions with other characters.