Holden's Alienation Of The Catcher In The Rye

The origin of his alienation is the disappointment brought about by the loss of his younger brother’s life, which leads to the idea of life being cruel and his perception of all adults as “phonies”. When his brother Allie died, “[Holden] was only thirteen, and they were going to have [him] psychoanalyzed and all, because [he] broke all the windows in the garage…[He] slept in the garage the night he died, and [he] broke all the goddam windows with [his] fist, just for the hell of it.” (Salinger, 44). At thirteen years old, the loss of someone as significant as Allie has an immense impact on Holden’s life. This is the first time Holden alienates himself as a form of protection, as it happens a year before all other events. Here he does it to

He also protects Phoebe because he knows that he cannot act like Allie never died, and that he cannot act happy. This leads him to avoid the topic in his conversations with Phoebe because exposure to such mature themes would lead to a loss of her innocence, and he could never live with himself if he were the cause of that. Holden’s anger is emphasized by the fact that he says both swears that he uses, “goddam” and “hell” in the same sentence. This shows that even though “[Holden] [is] seventeen now” (Salinger, 11) and four years have passed since Allie’s death, Holden still harbors hatred toward the world for taking Allie’s life from him. He also tries to downplay the anger that he is experiencing, and does not want to admit it, shown by his use of “just for the hell of it” (Salinger, 44) which clearly is not true, but he is still not willing to admit the real reason. This event sparks an epiphany that life is cruel, which is why this inspires Holden to begin his journey to prevent other people from experiencing all of the pain that the world has made Holden

Here a discrepancy between what he wants and what the reality of the situation is, is revealed. He wants them to simply dance with him, and due to his thoughts and perception of reality being alienated from reality itself, he fails to realize that it is genuinely funny that a sixteen year old is asking women twice his age if they would like to dance. When dancing with the blonde girl he says that she is “a dopey girl” but she dances very well, because while he cannot deny that she is very good at dancing, he also does not want to acknowledge her more than that because she is ignoring him. His expectations conflict with the reality of society once again and he thinks of her as stupid. He portrays her and the other two girls in such a negative light because he is expecting their rejection. By thinking of them as stupid, ugly, and bad dancers he goes into a mentality that makes him not feel bad about rejection, which is that he is not even missing out on anything since they are not anything special anyway. According to Holden’s descriptions, while the blond is slightly more good-looking than the other two, and a much better dancer, he also describes her