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Character analysis of Holden Caulfield
Character analysis of Holden Caulfield
Analysis of holden caufield character
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Throughout The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield shows signs and symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. As the novel progresses, one can see Holden’s actions reflecting a similar disorder, Depression. In most cases, PTSD is coupled with an underlying disorder also affecting them. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD is normally associated with hyper-anxiety that tends to occur after an terrible, traumatic experience. In Holden’s case, multiple events including his brother Allie’s death, and witnessing a gruesome suicide at Pency. Holden’s condition has suffered in respects of his schoolwork and stress put upon his relationship with his parents.
Holden Caulfield experiences symptoms of reliving the past, detachment, and agitation.
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He is constantly thinking about past occurrences with his beloved brother Allie. Holden admired Allie and frequently praised him; “His teachers were always writing letters to my mother, telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Allie in their class. And they weren't just shooting the crap. They really meant it. But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways.” (Salinger 38). Holden usually criticizes and notices the faults in people; with Allie, there were only compliments. Also with Allie--Holden seems to grip to Allie as a means of self-support--even if Allie had died years ago, Holden uses Allie's reminiscence to calm himself. Throughout The Catcher of the Rye, Holden seems to not want to grow up. He constantly drinks, rebels against his parents, and continues to fail his classes. It appears he does not want a future, and refuses to work towards one. This is visibly addressed by Mr. Antolini--"The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." The after effects of Allie’s passing by Leukemia have taken a toll on Holden Caulfield as he goes through his young adult years.
Like everyone else, Holden goes through the 5 steps of grieving. Step 1 would be Holden experiencing denial and isolation. Holden has a lonely, introverted personality. Even though Holden travels to New York, he still feels isolated, unable to make a connection with people. He finds himself in constant criticism of other people, unable to realize his poor treatment and judgment of others.. In this way, he keeps himself completely isolated from everyone, even Phoebe. When Phoebe expressed her desire to run away with Holden he tells her immediately to "shut up" and in this way, isolates himself from the one person he loves most. Salinger uses The Catcher in the Rye to express Holden’s denial of maturing into an adult. Step 2 would be the feeling of anger after a loved one’s passing. After Allie died, the first thing Holden did was punch out all the windows in his garage with his bare fist. “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 He also lets out his emotions by attacking Stradlater when Stradlater refused to use Holden's essay about Allie's mitt. Holden felt Stradlater was dissing Allie, and acted blinded by
anger. The 3rd stage would be bargaining with God. Holden is not a religious guy. However, affected by his many mental illnesses, Holden bargains directly with Allie and frantically prays to keep him from dying (disappearing). Disappearing could also represent a belief of Holden that when he grows into adulthood, his memory and existence will be gone, as there is no longer the need to pay attention to the child that Holden once was. Holden Caulfield obviously goes through Depression (fourth step) while grieving. One could see his lack of hope for the future and the constant negative remarks about everyday events. Towards the end of the novel, Holden goes through the last stage, Acceptance. Holden begins to sense the maturity of adulthood as he gradually progresses from childhood. Holden did not only grieve for the death of Allie, but also the death of his youth innocence. However, he begins to understand actuality toward the end of the book--the reality that he cannot escape the certainty of growing up. This is evident in his "Catcher in the Rye" speech. Holden instead accepts that he has passed the particular stage by stating that he wants to be the ‘Catcher’-Protector of childhood.
In J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in The Rye Salinger writes about the main character Holden Caulfield and his life. Holden is a teenager who comes from a wealthy family, he loves his family and lives very happy until the death of his brother Allie. After his brother died Holden becomes troubled, being kicked out of school again and again developing a negative view of the world. Holden throughout the book shows anger,denial, and acceptance over the loss of his brother.
Immaturity of Holden in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye 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.
In the novel, Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is an example of a prosaic rich adolescent boy,with a pedestrian set of problems, but a psychoanalysis reveals that Holden has a plethora of atypical internal conflicts. Internal conflicts that other students at Pencey, such as Stradlater and Ackley, would not normally experience.
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
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.
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
Untitled “BPD has a higher incidence of occurrence than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and is present in approximately 2% of the general public” (Johnston).Borderline Personality Disorder, or BPD, is an emotional disorder that creates unstable behavior and stress in an individual. Holden Caulfield, J.D. Salinger’s, 1948 novel, The Catcher in the Rye, has been praised by many readers. Psychoanalysis is insightfully looking at a character's actions and behavior to better understand them psychologically. By psychoanalyzing Holden Caulfield’s behavior and thoughts, it becomes evident that he has Borderline Personality Disorder, caused by his childhood trauma and neglect, and portrayed through symptoms that damage his relationships and himself. Holden’s Borderline Personality Disorder is caused by trauma and neglect during his childhood, and separation from family, all mostly circulating around the death of his younger brother, Allie (“Mayo Clinic”).
As Holden Caulfield interacts with others and meets new challenges, he reveals his innermost feelings throughout The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. Some may interpret his behaviors as teenage angst, but others find that Holden reveals traits of a mental disorder. Specifically, Holden suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder. Borderline Personality Disorder “is a serious mental illness marked by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships” (NIMH). He often experiences uncontrollable rage that results in altercations and behaves on impulse when handling money. He also shows signs of addiction when consuming alcohol. Additionally, Holden has trouble maintaining positive relationships with
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
This is the first psychiatric hospital admission for the patient, a 17 year-old male. The subject freely admitted himself to care at 13:00 hours on November 28, 1958. Mr. Holden Caulfield arrived at the hospital in the company of his parents--whose consent was necessary given Holden's legal status as a minor--and his younger sister Phoebe. His induction took place without any incident.
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). It is a mental illness that can sometimes occur in teenagers as a response to a sudden traumatic experience or abandonment.
As with escapism, the mental instability of Holden and Winston also covers up their identity. However, in comparison to Winston, Holden's escapism does not lead to his mental instability. Winston suffers from depression whereas Holden struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder to the extent where he is institutionalised at the end of the novel. This post-traumatic stress disorder is a reason for him feeling scared of making connections, with places, he says at “I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it." The repetition of “good-by” creates a sense of irony because he is the one who alienates himself from those around him but wants to be acknowledged as he is leaving. Here he is trying to make a connection with his environment but his post-traumatic stress disorder causes him to fear these connections and leads him to describe his feelings as "hate" when in fact it is fear, creating a paradox and ultimately
Holden and his family's first-hand experience of Allie's death had a devastating effect on their lives. After the death of Allie, his family was unable to get over the loss and started to neglect Holden. This led to Holden believing that no one cared for him. "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. 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." (39) Holden tries his best to cope with this traumatic event, but anger still arises when he thinks about how Allie left him. Instead of focusing on going to school and creating friendships, Holden is criticizing the tiniest of details and grieving over Allie's