Holden Caulfield Siblings

The Catcher in the Rye: Essay

Over time, siblings who grow up together grow closer to each other. The older siblings look out for their younger brothers and sisters by teaching and protecting them, while the younger siblings learn from their older brothers and sisters and aspire to be like them. After years of living with each other, the death of a sibling can be devastating and seem nearly impossible to recover from. In the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, the main character, Holden Caulfield struggles to find purpose in his life while simultaneously recuperating from his younger brother Allie’s death. As the story progresses, Allie’s death torments Holden more and more. Holden starts to isolate himself from everything that

used to matter to him and he agonizes over how there was nothing he could do to save his brother. Throughout the story, Holden’s thoughts and memories reveal the pattern of his physical and emotional instability and decline.
Holden’s thoughts of Allie become more and more frequent towards the end of the novel, but it is evident from the beginning that Holden loved Allie and became distressed as a result of his death. “[Allie] got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18,1946. You’d have liked him.” (49). When Holden recalls the exact date and location of Allie’s death, it shows that Holden is trying to preserve all of his memories of Allie and that Allie is always on the back of his mind. One possible explanation for Holden’s behavior is that he is afraid that if he lets go of his memories of Allie, then no one will ever know about his brother, and Allie will truly be erased from existence. Holden also keeps some of Allie’s belongings, each with a story of its own. When Holden’s roommate, Stradlater, asks Holden to write a descriptive composition for him, Holden decides to write it about Allie’s baseball mitt. “My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder’s mitt… he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere…” (49). Later, when Stradlater says that he is not satisfied with what Holden wrote, Holden gets upset and rips up the paper. This scene shows that Holden is sensitive and easily aggravated. Later on in the story, when Holden is at the Edmont Hotel feeling miserable and depressed, he tries to comfort himself by talking aloud to Allie. “I [kept] saying to him, ‘Okay. Go home and get your bike and meet me in front of Bobby’s house. Hurry up.’” (129) A few years before, when Holden was living in Maine, he and his friend Bobby Fallon used to go to the woods and play. One day, Allie asks to come along with them, but Holden refuses. The fact that Holden is talking aloud, telling Allie that he could come along demonstrates that Holden is regretting his decision to not let Allie come with him to the woods to play with Bobby. As small as that incident was, he feels so much repentance for leaving Allie behind on that one day that he tries to convince himself that he actually did bring Allie along.
After leaving Mr. Spencer’s house, Holden makes his next big mistake: amidst all of his despair and frustration, he decides to leave Pencey Prep a few days before he is scheduled to. When looking for a place to stay, he deliberately finds a hotel far from his house, to avoid contact with his family. This definitely signals a decline in Holden’s emotional state, because his decision to leave Pencey is completely irrational and his decision to avoid his family is counterintuitive; Holden’s family should be the first people Holden should go to after having to go through all of his struggles. To add to that, he did not think twice about leaving. Rather, he started packing to leave Pencey the moment the idea popped into his mind.
While Holden’s emotional state is in decline, he resorts to smoking and drinking, which exacerbates his physical health.

One possible explanation for Holden resorting to smoking and drinking is that he wants to find a way to alleviate himself from the stress that comes with dropping out of school and losing a brother. Some incidents that also indicate the decline of Holden’s emotional state are when he lies to the reader. “‘Thanks,’ I said. I took a cigarette from this box he offered me. ‘[I only smoke] once in a while. I’m a moderate smoker.’” (237) When Holden tries to convince Mr. Antolini that he quit smoking, it connects to the idea that he cares about his appearance to other people; he doesn’t want other people to truly know who he is and what he has experienced throughout his life. In reality, Holden admitted to the reader while at the Edmont hotel to having smoked about two packs of cigarettes in less than a day. Holden also lies about his age and maturity, which shows that he is insecure. Lying about himself to others could help him feel as if he belonged to a certain group of people, because he thinks of himself as an outcast. A more evident example of Holden being obsessed about other people’s thoughts about him is that when he considers the option of suicide, he imagines how he would look to the people on the street after having jumped out a window. After doing so, he decides against suicide, because he doesn’t want rubbernecks to stare at

him.
Holden’s interactions with other people are another major signal that indicate his emotional instability.

When Holden is at Radio City with Sally, he goes from admiring Sally, to wanting to run away with her, to being angry at her, all in just a few minutes. At times, Holden gets overexcited about some things, and right after that, he goes back to being depressed. Mr. Antolini sensed that there was something wrong with Holden when they met, so while he was giving advice to Holden about trying to achieve success in school, he gave a few subtle hints to avoiding suicide. Holden reaches his lowest point towards the end of the story. He sneaks into his own house to meet Phoebe, his younger sister. She gets frustrated with him for not being able to accept Allie’s death and criticizes him for not enjoying anything in life. After Holden’s parents return and he and Phoebe are crouching in her room, in the dark, something happens that surprises both of them. “Then, all of a sudden, I started to cry. I couldn’t help it. I did it so nobody could hear me, but I did it. I scared the hell out of old Phoebe when I started doing it, and she came over and tried to make me stop, but once you get started, you can’t just stop.” (233). That happens as a result of all of the stress and feelings of sorrow and depression that have been accumulating in Holden ever since Allie’s death. It could also be that Holden is starting to feel sorry for himself, needing help from his younger sister. This is

because he is used to being the person giving the help, as he said himself when he was relating himself to a catcher in the rye. Whether it is because of Allie’s death, the stress of being kicked out of school for the fourth time, or the feeling that he is a social outcast, Holden Caulfield’s physical and emotional states decline rapidly over the course of the novel. Holden’s experiences provide the unique perspective of a person whose life has changed drastically, mainly as a result of the tragic death in his family. They also allude to how society affects certain individuals, and how interactions between people can influence actions. Most of all, the story’s main motifs, innocence and death, reveal the struggles of an isolated teenager trying to accept his past.