Holden's Baseball Mitt Analysis

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When people think about baseball mitts, they often think about catching baseballs during a game. However, in The Catcher in the Rye, a novel by J.D. Salinger, a baseball mitt is used to represent many abstract ideas. Holden Caulfield, a sixteen year old teenager, narrates the novel and tells the story from the day that he got kicked out of Pencey Prep. Holden frequently recalls his little brother, Allie, who died of leukemia when he was eleven years old. Holden carries Allie’s baseball mitt around in his suitcase wherever he goes because it is Holden’s only possession that used to belong to Allie. Through examining the recurrent image of Allie’s baseball mitt throughout the text, it is revealed that the glove represents emotions, isolation …show more content…

When Holden’s roommate, Stradlater, goes on a date with a girl named Jane, Stradlater tells Holden to do his composition for him. Stradlater says that the composition has to be about something descriptive such as a house. However, instead of writing about a house, Holden wrote about something else. “Anyway, that’s what I wrote Stradlater’s composition about. Old Allie’s baseball mitt” (39). Holden thought Allie’s mitt was a descriptive subject because it had poems written all over it in green ink. When Stradlater goes on a date, Holden is by himself working on somebody else’s homework. Holden writes about Allie’s mitt because it helps him cope with Allie’s death. When Stradlater reads the essay that Holden wrote, he gets mad at Holden because Holden didn’t write about a house, but instead wrote about a baseball mitt. “‘All right, give it back to me, then,’ I said. I went over and pulled it right out of his goddam hand. Then I tore it up” (39). Since Allie’s death made a lasting impression on Holden, the baseball mitt is Holden’s only physical object that allows him to remember Allie. Stradlater’s frustration and anger at the composition and Holden’s ripping up of the work serves as a reminder of Holden’s isolation and loss of innocence. Allie’s glove is Holden’s connection to his feelings and emotions, which he holds on to and doesn’t

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