Most teens have had a time in their life that can be considered “angsty.” The common traits that compose angst are anxiety, dread, and anguish. Typically, this happens in the teenage years when the individual is old enough to realize what is truly happening in the world and surrounding them, resulting in the loss of their childlike innocence. Holden Caulfield in the classic novel Catcher in the Rye is commonly one of the first characters that come to mind when thinking of angst, and a coming of age tale, as he writes from a mental facility shortly after the adventure he has over his winter break. In a more recent novel, that shares extreme similarities Catcher in the Rye, is The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Charlie, very cautiously tells his …show more content…
story though letters addressed to “friend”, and tries not to reveal details that could further identify him, such as his last name. In order to show understanding of these traits and the development of teenagers, authors such as J.D. Salinger and Stephen Chbosky put emphasis on trauma and past experiences to grasp the depths of the dark minds of their teenaged narrators. Both Holden and Charlie experience the death of a close relative, and it closes the boys personalities off, as neither of them ever receive closure.
Without closure, they fail to grow in a positive sense but instead form more damaging outlooks on life. In Catcher in the Rye, Salinger uses the loss of a younger brother to bring reason to Holden’s isolation and frustration. His brother, Allie, died when he was eleven due to leukemia, and Holden was only thirteen. This young age made it so he couldn’t properly express how he felt, and unlike his parents who mourned the loss of their child by shutting down, Holden exploded. This improper placement of anger helped lead to how Holden is as a teenager, full of angst. Thinking back on that night, he …show more content…
admits, “I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam 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 and broken and everything by that time, and I couldn’t do it. 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” (Salinger 44). Due to the fact his hand was broken, he was admitted to the hospital for treatment, at the same time Allie’s funeral occurred. Holden missed out on seeing his brother for the last time due to misplaced rage, so he never got to say goodbye. He never received closure, instead, he received Allie’s baseball mitt, something Holden claims he brings everywhere; it’s as if he’s always keeping a piece of his brother with him. The loss of a child or sibling can shake a family to the point of no return. Sometimes parents place blame on another or themselves, to the point where it’s hard to be around the other, sometimes siblings turn against each other, and misplaced anger at siblings and their parents form. The circumstances of Allie’s death, cancer, gave the Caulfield’s the second type of grief, where the family did not separate but grew stronger. There was no blame to be placed on anyone, just the grief of dealing with the loss of someone precious, innocent, and all around a bright kid. In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Charlie is not lucky enough to receive the kind form of suffering from a loss.
His Aunt Helen, Charlie’s favorite person, died in a car accident on a snowy Christmas Eve, a day shared with Charlie’s birthday. As he reflects on what happens, the grief eats him alive, “I remember not being allowed to go to the funeral. I remember never saying good-bye to my Aunt Helen… Despite everything my mom and doctor and dad have said to me about blame, I still can’t stop thinking about what I know. And I know that my aunt Helen would still be alive today if she just bought me one present” ( Chbosky 90-92). The death of Helen, unlike Allie, was accidental - she was in the wrong place at the wrong time - and with the guilt of being the reason Helen was driving in that harsh winter day was too much for him to handle. He physically shut down after the incident, and similar to Holden, was in the hospital during the funeral. Not getting to say goodbye, or attend the last celebration of someone who means so much to you, is psychologically damaging. Charlie’s emotional break down is one of the main reasons he is a victim of teenage angst, the dread and anguish caused by the guilt continued throughout the rest of his life. However, unlike Holden, Charlie gains closure at the end of the novel, just not in the sense he would
like. This closure does not come at a peaceful time, instead, it is because Charlie realizes his Aunt had continuously molested him. It was such a hard thing for him to understand and admit to being true; the trauma was so intense that his mind had blocked it out. A traumatic event such as sexual abuse as a child can turn even the happiest person into a self-loathing and anxiety ridden kid instead. Charlie suffers extreme PTSD from the constant interactions with his aunt, unable to respond appropriately to romantic advances, and Holden treats the concept of sex as a dirty action that degrades people. The main reason Charlie is as introverted and depressed as he is can easily be traced back to his aunt. With molestation, commonly the predator will give gifts to the abused, and the abused will become very dependent on those that violate them. This explains Charlie’s absurd amount of love for his aunt, his self-proclaimed ‘favorite person.’ Once Charlie starts to act on the typical teenage urges of lust and love, he has to stop due to terrible ‘dreams’ in which Sam, his friend that he’s had a crush on the entire novel, is replaced by Helen, and they immediately stop. He spends another extended amount of time in the hospital, after his mind went into hyperdrive remembering all the things he wanted to forget: “I remembered my aunt Helen. And I started to cry… I kind of figured out that everything I dreamt about my aunt Helen was true. And after a while, I realized it happened every Saturday when we would watch television” (Chbosky 208-209). Holden’s past with sexual abuse, on the other hand, is not a major theme, and there are actually no signs of it until late in the novel when he visits one of his teachers from a previous school, where he spends the night on their couch. He is in the downward spiral of his long weekend adventure, and falls asleep soon after he arrives. However, he wakes up with Mr. Antolini, “sitting on the floor right next to the couch, in the dark, and all, and he was sort of petting me or patting me on the goddam head…When something perverty [sic] like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard. That kind of stuff’s happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid. I can’t stand it” (Salinger 212-213). What Mr. Antolini was doing was strange, but could it be classified as anything more than a man that has been drinking more than average drunkenly admiring Holden? What would have happened if Holden hadn’t woken up? No one knows as Holden dashed out the door as soon as he possibly could once he woke up. The timing of this event was horrible, he had already had four situations occur earlier that morning that brought down his morale, it didn’t help bring it back up when “Holden's favorite teacher, Mr. Antolini, makes what Holden considers a homosexual pass at him. Holden says at this point that he was more depressed than he ever was in his entire life” (Alsen 5). Further raining down on Holden’s life, the line “That kind of stuff’s happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid” stands out as it was the only implication that any sense of sexual abuse has ever happened to Holden. It makes sense as he had been going to all male boarding schools in the late 1940’s, and has a deep set hatred for the concept of sex. Although he claims to be ‘a sex addict,’ Holden has never acted upon any of his teenage urges but instead expressed how he thinks it’s a degrading act that seems pointless. There is an obvious theme of anger and self-hatred in these novels, which ultimately ties back to angst. Being in a harmful environment leads to self-hatred, pessimism and isolation. This self hatred and the depressive episodes Holden and Charlie possess are caused by their past traumatic events and experiences. Although Holden’s early escape from Pencey is supposed to help, “Holden's death wish becomes more specific in New York… he says he was thinking of committing suicide by jumping out of the hotel window” (Alsen 5). Holden is very forward about his wish to die, going on long, extended rants that throw in self-depreciative jokes and claims on attempting suicide, like his stance on war: “I swear if there’s ever another war, they better just take me out and stick me in front of a firing squad. I wouldn’t object” (Salinger 156). Although some of the comments can come off as just jokes, there needs to be a true base of suicidal thoughts and self-hatred for the thought process can even exist. Expressing them, especially as jokes, is dangerous as that pain is there, but the joking vibe makes it appear less severe, when the threat is still present. Charlie, in one of his first few letters, explains the irony in his life situation: “So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be” (Chbosky 2). He knows his life is less than perfect, but he is trying to make the most of it. Granted, this is before most of the harsh realizations he encounters comes about, and it is before he turns to drugs and alcohol to solve them. Due to the poor decision of a drunken truth or dare game, instead of picking his girlfriend when asked to kiss the prettiest girl in the room, he latches on to Sam, one of his dearest friends in which he had always had feelings for; the same Sam who was currently in a relationship with someone else. This choice left two girls of their friend group heartbroken, and Charlie needed to distance himself from the whole situation so both him, and Sam and his now ex-girlfriend can heal. In this time, he spends most of the money he had on marijuana, and the rest of it towards cigarettes. This time of isolation was exceptionally hard on him, he was used to the isolation before stumbling across the duo of Sam and Patrick that became his best friends, and he wasn’t ready to go back to that sadness. In his letter for that day, he opens it with, “I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that. I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this” (Chbosky 94). His life had reached such a low point that he didn’t even want to try anymore, he had seemed to have lost everything he wanted in life. Holden
In J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in The Rye Salinger writes about the main character Holden Caulfield and his life. Holden is a teenager who comes from a wealthy family, he loves his family and lives very happy until the death of his brother Allie. After his brother died Holden becomes troubled, being kicked out of school again and again developing a negative view of the world. Holden throughout the book shows anger,denial, and acceptance over the loss of his brother.
In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the main character, Holden, cannot accept that he must move out of childhood and into adulthood. One of Holden’s most important major problems is his lack of maturity. Holden also has a negative perspective of life that makes things seem worse than they really are. In addition to Holden’s problems he is unable to accept the death of his brother at a young age. Holden’s immaturity, negative mentality, and inability to face reality hold him back from moving into adulthood.
The catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger is about a boy named Holden Caulfield and his struggles in one part of his life. Holden seem very normal to people around him and those he interacts with. However, Holden is showing many sighs of depression. A couple of those signs that are shown are: trouble sleeping, drinking, smoking, not eating right, and he talk about committing suicide a couple times during the book. On top of that Holden feel alienated plus the death of Holden’s brother Allie left Holden thinking he and no where to go in life.
There is one universal truth that will exist through out all of time and space that affects all that live to experience it. That truth is known as grief. We all experience grief, and for Holden Caulfield, grief is a major aspect of his life, the force that drives him to do everything he does in the novel, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. There are seven stages to this emotion known as grief: denial, depression, anger, bargaining, guilt, reconstruction, and finally, acceptance. There are many parts in the novel that could have influenced Holden’s grief, but the main one that most people who read the novel have figured it out was the death of his little brother Allie. The root to Holden’s grief lies with his brother which cause Holden’s to act and change the way he does in the novel.
Imagine if your best friend or someone close to you suddenly dies of a fatal disease. The death of this person would physically and mentally inflict trauma. All though the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is a grieving seventeen year old because he endures a traumatic experience at the age of 13. His 11 year old brother, Allie, dies of leukemia, and this affects Holden throughout the novel. It causes him to yearn for his innocence and childhood back because he wants to return to the stage in his life when there are no worries. He realizes that it is not realistic to become a child again, and he begins to accept the fact that he must grow up and set an example for his sister, Phoebe. Growing up with the loss of a close brother, Holden wants to be a protector of all innocence, and later in the novel, he begins to notice he must find a solution to his traumatic experiences in order to become successful in his lifetime.
Holden feels as if he is stuck in his 13 year old self. Although he is aging he isn’t necessarily maturing the way his classmates and other people are around him. This is due to the fact that he never received closure when Allie died. When he starts picturing his own funeral because he might get pneumonia and die, he remembers D.B. telling him about his brother's funeral. He stated, “I wasn’t there. I was still in the hospital. I had to go to the hospital and all after I hurt my hand” (Salinger 171). Since he never attended the funeral he never got to say his final goodbyes to the one person he truly loved. Holden feels as if he can’t connect with anyone else in the world like he did with Allie. If he did then he would most likely push them away, so he wouldn’t have to experience the trauma of loss again, because it greatly impacted his life the first time. The trauma Holden experienced when he was younger resulted in him not being able to form stronger relationships with people which made him more depressed and
Both Holden and Charlie are full of self-loathing and depression, both experiencing the traumatic loss of a family member at a very young age. "I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake – especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all.” (Salinger 222-223) In this quote Holden talks with his sister about the loss of his brother, Allie. Holden can't seem to move on ever since his brother's death. He needs to learn how to live his life in the present and not dwell on the past. Every day Holden relates everything he does and everything that happens back to Allie’s death. “Hey, Candace. I killed Aunt Helen, didn't I? She died getting my birthday present, so I guess I killed her right?
Childhood is an unusually hard thing to rid yourself of when it is time for you to pass into the intensified life of adults. Personally, I have yet to overcome that challenge. The Catcher in the Rye is a well developed story about a high school boy, Holden Caulfield, who is stuck between the stages of adolescence and adulthood, and is trying to discover his identity. All his life, Holden Caulfield has refused to grow up, and as the book progresses, he is on the fine line of leaving innocence and adolescence behind and passing into adulthood, but what gives him the needed shove into the realm of adulthood was getting over his brother, Allie’s death. To Holden, Allie is the main definition of innocence. Eventually Holden comes to the decision to be the catcher in the rye. After this decision he tries to follow through with his plan and ultimately decides that he can’t keep anyone from growing up. This seems to be his breaking point in the book where he finally overcomes all his negative emotions towards Allie’s death and accepts it for what it is, knowing that he has to move on.
In the Catcher in the Rye, Holden is an immature boy. Holden’s immaturity cause him many problem throughout the book. He is physically mature but not emotionally mature. He acts like a child. “All of a sudden I started to cry. I’d give anything if I hadn’t, but I did” (p. 103). Holden shows his emotional unstableness.
Holden and the Complexity of Adult Life What was wrong with Holden, the main character in The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D.Salinger, was his moral revulsion against anything that was ugly, evil, cruel, or what he called "phoney" and his acute responsiveness to beauty and innocence, especially the innocence of the very young, in whom he saw reflected his own lost childhood. There is something wrong or lacking in the novels of despair and frustration of many writers. The sour note of bitterness and the recurring theme of sadism have become almost a convention, never thoroughly explained by the author's dependence on a psychoanalytical interpretation of a major character. The boys who are spoiled or turned into budding homosexuals by their mothers and a loveless home life are as familiar to us today as stalwart and dependable young heroes such as John Wayne were to an earlier generation. We have accepted this interpretation of the restlessness and bewilderment of our young men and boys because no one has anything better to offer.
However, his feelings suggest that the true reason for his depression is his loss of Innocence. When he was 13 years old, he lost his little brother Allie to leukemia. Allie meant a lot to Holden. He even becomes a symbol in the book. Allie is the one who keeps Holden from falling of the cliff, he’s the reason that he hasn’t lost his innocence yet. “Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I'd never get to the other side of the street. I thought I'd just go down, down, down, and nobody'd ever see me again. Boy, did it scare me. You can't imagine. I started sweating like a bastard—my whole shirt and underwear and everything. Then I started doing something else. Every time I'd get to the end of a block I'd make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I'd say to him, "Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Please, Allie." And then when I'd reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I'd thank him.” (Sallinger) In this part, Allie plays the role as the Catcher in the Rye and keeps Holden from falling of the cliff. This is why i believe that Holden wants to become a “ Catcher in the Rye”. He wants to help people like Allie has helped him. He feels that it's what he’d meant to do with his
The Catcher in the Rye Holden often finds himself questioning his faith and pondering why an innocent adolescent like his brother Allie has to die. By the close of the novel Holden learns to accept not only death but life as well. There are several instances within J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye in which Holden expresses his misapprehension of death. In Chapter 5, on page 38 Holden provides a long excursus on Allie, specifying the particulars of his life and death.
In J.D. Salinger’s controversial 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, the main character is Holden Caulfield. When the story begins Holden at age sixteen, due to his poor grades is kicked out of Pencey Prep, a boys’ school in Pennsylvania. This being the third school he has been expelled from, he is in no hurry to face his parents. Holden travels to New York for several days to cope with his disappointments. As James Lundquist explains, “Holden is so full of despair and loneliness that he is literally nauseated most of the time.” In this novel, Holden, a lonely and confused teenager, attempts to find love and direction in his life. Holden’s story is realistic because many adolescent’s face similar challenges.
While societal attitudes attitudes may change over time, the challenges associated with the transition from childhood to adulthood remain constant. The ideas of individuality, alienation and loss of innocence fortify the theme of coming of age across the texts The Catcher in the Rye and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The Catcher in the Rye, a bildungsroman novel written by J.D. Salinger in 1951, focuses on teenager Holden Caulfield’s transition from childhood to adulthood in 1950’s America, whereas the film The Perks of Being a Wallflower directed by Stephen Chbosky in 2012 follows teenager Charlie experiencing a similar transition in 1990’s America. Despite their varying contexts, these ideas are presented in both texts through the use the
Holden is a pessimistic, remote, and miserable character and he expresses this attitude through dialogue, tone, and diction. Throughout the book he has remained to be a liar, a failure, a loner, and lastly, a suicidal guy who feels like he has no purpose in life. Perhaps Salinger expressed his perceptions and emotions of his teen years in this book and it was a form of conveying his deep inner feelings of his childhood. Readers can see this clearly shown in The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger.