Holden Caulfield Reflection

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In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger foretells a story about a young boy’s metamorphosis from immaturity to unsure manhood. The story begins with Holden Caulfield, 16, who has failed numerous classes at Pencey prep school in Agerstown, Pennsylvania and where he is soon to be expelled. Holden later decides to go to New York, where he hopes to escape his many troubles. Throughout the story, J,D. Salinger gives insight on Holden Caulfield’s thoughts, experiences, and frustrations in his world. Holden does not like experiencing things that trouble him, but he seemingly always speaks about them in his mind. In doing so, he essentially isolates himself from reality and creating his own world inside his mind. One of Holden’s main problem …show more content…

Being unable to not get over his death, he clings onto every little thought, memory, and knowledge of Allie as he reminisces about him in his mind. For example, Holden struggles to find something to say for Stradlater’s task, “The thing was, I couldn’t think of a room or a house or anything to describe the way Stradlater said he had to have. I’m not too crazy about describing rooms and houses anyways. So what I did, I wrote about my brother Allie’s baseball mitt.” (49). From this quote, it seems as if Holden has lost sight of the world which then results into him being unable to comprehend or execute certain or simple activities. Holden also refers back to Allie as some sort of safe route because he does not know what else to do. Struggling to let go of Allie, Holden faces trouble in adapting to society, as he judges everyone he sees. When Allie died, Holden immensely expresses his emotions with actions, “ 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. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken… 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. My hand still hurts me once in a while…” (50). In this quote, we can see the impact Allie has had upon Holden’s life. Holden’s reaction shows us that he deeply …show more content…

In Holden’s case, he does not have any close friends, nor is he close to anyone. A big portion of this is because Holden purposely reserves himself, keeping his expressions locked to himself, and only living in his mind where he finds it safe. For instance, “The first thing I did when I got off at Penn Station, I went into this phone booth. I felt like giving somebody a buzz. I left my bag right outside so that I could watch them, but as soon as I was inside, I couldn’t think of anybody to call up.” From this passage, Holden’s lonesome and loneliness is exhibited. This is the aftermath of Holden isolating himself from others, he does not see anyone else to relate to. Having no one to turn to, his character adapts to the loneliness and is dominated by it. On the contrary, Holden shares to us his interests of a certain kind of interaction he yearns for, “While I was changing my shirt, I damn near gave my kid sister Phoebe a buzz. I certainly felt like talking to her on the phone… But I couldn’t take a chance on giving her a buzz… I thought of maybe hanging up if my parents answered, but that wouldn’t worked, either.” (87.) The only time where Holden wants to interact and converse with someone, is with young people, all sharing the same persona, innocence. Holden mentions him hanging up if he encounters his parents on the phone, and that this same feeling is intertwined

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