How Is Holden Caulfield Alienated

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The novel Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger is about a young teenage boy who gets kicked out of school and he roams the streets of New York because he is afraid to go home to his parents. The main character, Holden, is always being alienated from society and he plays a big part in this because he isolates himself. He isolates himself from society. He has no one to talk to. Also, when he tries to talk people push him away. In the story Holden gets alienated because he isolates himself from society, he has no one to talk to, and when he tries to talk he gets pushed away. Holden isolates himself from society because he is always depressed. Holden gets depressed about every little thing. When Holden left the fencing equipment in the subway station he got depressed. He went up on top of a hill to watch the football game instead of with everyone else. An example of when this happens is when he says “I was standing way the hell up on top of Thomsen Hill… The reason I was standing way up on Thomsen Hill… was because … I left all the foils and equipment and stuff on the goddamn subway” (Salinger 3). The fencing team alienates him because of this reason. He gets depressed about it and does not want to be near anyone. …show more content…

He tries to talk to people but the words will not come out. When Holden gets off of the train at Penn Station he goes straight to the phone booth. He thinks about calling all these people but makes up excuses not to call them. An example of when this happens is when he says “The first thing I did when I got off at Penn Station, I went into this phone booth. I felt like giving someone a buzz … I ended up not calling anybody. I came out of the booth, after about twenty minutes or so…” (59). For someone to spend twenty minutes in a phone booth deciding who to call and not call anybody comes to show that Holden has no one to talk to. He isolates himself so he does not have to talk to

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