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An essay on mental health awareness essay
An essay on mental health awareness essay
Concept paper about mental health awareness
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The Catcher in the Rye is a novel that follows the journey of Holden Caulfield, a sixteen year old boy between the end of his fall semester and Christmas break at his boarding school. Through a first person point of view, this book is able to focus on moral issues such as the process of maturing, change, and phoniness in the world. While focusing on these moral issues, the novel also focuses on how Holden is forced to handle these situations. Due to his poor mental health, Holden does not handle these situations maturely. In fact, Holden has actions and behaviors that match those of psychological behaviors such as PTSD and depression. These symptoms and his overall mental health is believed to be a result of his upbringing and his childhood. …show more content…
Throughout the book, Holden avoids contact with people and even labels people as “phony”. This causes Holden to alienate himself and doesn’t allow him to connect with anybody. He labels people as “phony” because it allows him to avoid social contact and connecting with people. In fact, Holden fears sharing his feelings with people and has developed a strategy that allows him to stay socially isolated. Due to this strategy, he has an emotional breakdown and other mental issues. Additionally, this social isolation makes Holden feel lonely. This loneliness is also in part due to the loss of his brother Allie and feeling distant with his brother D.B. During his childhood, he had close relationships with his brothers, but as he grew older, these relationships began to fade and he began to socially isolate himself. By distancing himself, Holden begins to develop symptoms associated with depression and other mental disorders. This is quite evident due to the fact that he is telling his life story form a mental hospital. According to J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye and Other Works, “Holden is telling his story while he is in southern California in a mental hospital”(Haugrud Reiff 57). In the novel itself, it does not mention that Holden is telling the story from a mental hospital but rather mentions the place as “here”. As a result, Holden’s placement in a mental hospital supports the fact that he has mental issues in part due to social
Catcher in the rye: A 16 year old boy suffers from a mental illness. Holden Caulfield tells the story of his life from a mental hospital. Throughout the novel he learns to be dependable. The main theme is loneliness.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is an enthralling and captivating novel about a boy and his struggle with life. The teenage boy ,Holden, is in turmoil with school, loneliness, and finding his place in the world. The author J.D. Salinger examines the many sides of behavior and moral dilemma of many characters throughout the novel. The author develops three distinct character types for Holden the confused and struggling teenage boy, Ackley, a peculiar boy without many friends, and Phoebe, a funny and kindhearted young girl.
Holden Caulfield, portrayed in the J.D. Salinger novel Catcher in the Rye as an adolescent struggling to find his own identity, possesses many characteristics that easily link him to the typical teenager living today. The fact that the book was written many years ago clearly exemplifies the timeless nature of this work. Holden's actions are those that any teenager can clearly relate with. The desire for independence, the sexually related encounters, and the questioning of ones religion are issues that almost all teens have had or will have to deal with in their adolescent years. The novel and its main character's experiences can easily be related to and will forever link Holden with every member of society, because everyone in the world was or will be a teen sometime in their life.
Salinger is not specific on the mental issue Holden has that landed him in an institution, one can conquer that Holden is suffering from clinical depression as seen through abnormalities in his cognitive behavior, his shifting moods, and his disruptive sleep patterns. None of Holden’s colleagues, teachers, or acquaintances probably would have calculated he was suffering severely from a mental illness. This should be a lesson to always remember, people everywhere always have something going on that no one is unaware of, and let that be advice for whatever is thought or about someone in the
In J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, the main character Holden Caufield believes that innocence is corrupted by society. He exposes his self-inflicted emotional struggles as he is reminiscing the past. For Holden, teenage adolescence is a complicated time for him, his teenage mentality in allows him to transition from the teenage era to the reality of an adult in the real world. As he is struggling to find his own meaning of life, he cares less about others and worries about how he can be a hero not only to himself but also to the innocent youth. As Holden is grasping the idea of growing up, he sets his priorities of where he belongs and how to establish it. As he talks about how ‘phony’ the outside world is, he has specific recollections that signify importance to his life and he uses these time and time again because these memories are ones that he wont ever let go of. The death of his younger brother Allie has had a major impact on him emotionally and mentally. The freedom of the ducks in Central Park symbolize his ‘get away’ from reality into his own world. His ideology of letting kids grow up and breaking the chain loose to discover for themselves portrays the carrousel and the gold ring. These are three major moments that will be explored to understand the life of Holden Caufield and his significant personal encounters as he transitions from adolescence into manhood.
The parents of Holden play a significant role pertaining to his mental state. When Holden was just thirteen, Allie passed. According to Mayo Clinic “you’re more likely to develop PTSD if you're lacking a good support system of family and friends”. That was exactly the case for Holden. His parents were going through great grieving themselves and neglected their child in a time of need. That resulted in Holden not getting the support and attention necessary for him to fully grow mentally. Holden mentions his mom's position a few times, saying she “still isn’t over my brother Allie yet” (Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye revolves around Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the novel, and his disillusionment. Holden’s disillusionment illustrates that he has a problem accepting such. Aforesaid is based upon multiple factors, most which have brought Holden lasting traumas. A remedy is required for Holden to accept his disillusionment and enable an improvement of his situation. For Holden’s remedy, the consultation of psychologists, and additional specialized health professionals would be the core of an apt remedy for Holden’s psychological and physiological state based upon the numerous causes of such and the everlasting trauma of some of the determinants of aforesaid situation. The origins of Holden’s disillusionment revolved mainly around the death of his younger brother Allie three years ago, of which he still experiences the trauma to this day. His disillusionment is caused by both
Some people feel all alone in this world, with no direction to follow but their empty loneliness. The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D Salinger, follows a sixteen-year-old boy, Holden Caulfield, who despises society and calls everyone a “phony.” Holden can be seen as a delinquent who smokes tobacco, drinks alcohol, and gets expelled from a prestigious boarding school. This coming-of-age book follows the themes of isolation, innocence, and corrupted maturity which is influenced from the author's life and modernism, and is shown through the setting, symbolism, and diction.
According to a report published by the Associated Press, nearly two million teens in America are depressed. Teens go through so much and are very stressed. Holden Caulfield is one of these teens. In the novel the Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, we meet Holden, a seventeen year-old boy facing tough times in his adolescent years. Holden struggles throughout his life. His internal conflicts that keep him from being happy, are his fear of isolation, the pressure to conform, and his depression.
As a matter of fact, Holden’s brother Allie Caulfield had died of leukemia when Holden was thirteen. Holden’s bond with his brother was strong and he talks highly of him saying he was smart, laidback and friendly. As a result, Allie’s death impacted Holden making him severely wounded emotionally (Litchart) “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 22). When, Holden punched the windows it was an outcome of his rage and sorrow when he thought of his brother. Unfortunately, instead of being there for him, Holden’s parents attempted to psychoanalyze him along with sending him away to another school after his brother’s death. “I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage” (Salinger 22). The idea of his parents wanting him to be psychoanalyzed is a feeling of betrayal. Most definitely, Holden’s depression is caused by the heartbroken event in his family as well as his parents lack of
One of the most challenging times during a person’s life is by far being a young adolescent. Teenagers today face so many changes both physical and physiological. In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, the main character, and the narrator, Holden Caulfield, a young teenage boy in the 1950’s, faces many difficulties with not only the world around him, but also within himself. As a troubled 16 year old, Holden Caulfield, is having a very difficult time accepting that he is becoming an adult and still wanting to stay an adolescent. Throughout the entire book, Caulfield struggles with understanding the world around him. He protects himself from the world by being judgmental to everyone around him while feeling safe in the fantasy world he created for himself.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger is told through Holden, the narrative in the novel. Holden is 16 years old boy , and he has lot of problems during his life. He became more depressed and he can’t deal with people and life around him. Based on the novel The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is suffering from depression.
The catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger is about a boy named Holden Caulfield and his struggles in one part of his life. Holden seem very normal to people around him and those he interacts with. However, Holden is showing many sighs of depression. A couple of those signs that are shown are: trouble sleeping, drinking, smoking, not eating right, and he talk about committing suicide a couple times during the book. On top of that Holden feel alienated plus the death of Holden’s brother Allie left Holden thinking he and no where to go in life.
In the book, “The Catcher in The Rye” by J.D. Salinger, the main character is very strange in numerous ways. His name is Holden Caulfield and boy has he got something wrong with him. He rambles on and on about nonsense for the first 20-something chapters of the book. He only likes 3-4 people in the book. He smokes and drinks heavily at the ripe age of seventeen. He has been expelled out of numerous prep schools, and feels abandoned and not wanted. He has some sort of mental illness and I think I know what it is. I believe that Holden Caulfield has a mental illness known as Borderline Personality Disorder, also known as BPD. The reasoning for my thinking is that Holden’s actions match up with the symptoms of this illness and the isolation he
Throughout the entirety of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the reader meets many strange and confusing characters. The strangest, and most important, character the reader will meet is a young boy named Holden Caulfield. Holden, being the protagonist of the novel, is followed through his adventure into New York City. These adventures ultimately take a toll on Holden’s sanity. As the plot advances Holden learns more about life and adulthood, transforming him from a cocky teen into a more caring and respectable individual.