Authors often use death to show a revelation in another person’s life. In the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is changed by the death of his brother. After the death of Holden Caulfield’s bother, Allie, Holden’s education, personality, and sociological standing change for the worse.
After Allie dies, Holden gives up on his academics. Holden does not apply himself to his academics, even after receiving warnings about his academic performance:
They kicked me out. I wasn’t supposed to come back after Christmas vacation, on account that I was failing four subjects and not applying myself and all. They gave me frequent warning to start applying myself- especially around midterms, when my parents came up for a conference with old Thurmer- but I didn’t do it. (4)
Holden’s callous personality and debauched attitude make making friends hard for Holden. Holden rejects trying to make friends and instead calls everyone phony. Holden states that his bad grades and no social life are due to the phonies that make up his school:
You ought to go to a boys' school sometime. Try it sometime, It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. (131)
Holden’s obstructed view of the world make it hard for him to be happy.
After the death of Allie, Holden thinks that everyone is phony and that no one can be as innocent as Allie was. In Holden’s mind, Allie was perfection to the tee:
But it wasn't just that he was the mos...
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...o have hallucinations and become sort of crazy. While walking along Fifth Avenue in New York City, Holden starts to have delusions. These delusions serve as the main sign of Holden’s declining sociological standing.
Proceeding Allie’s death, Holden changes his personality, social life, educational standing and sociological standing. Holden becomes introverted and angered with the world, blaming everyone of being phony. The Catcher in the Rye through the life and actions of Holden Caulfield truly portrays the role a loved one’s death can play in a person’s life.
Works Cited
Bryan, James. The Psychological Structure of The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Modern Language Association, 1974.
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951.
Vanderbilt, Kermit. "Salem Press: The Catcher in the Rye." July 1963. Salem Press. 02 April 2014.
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.
Holden Caulfield values his brother, Allie. When Allie died of Leukemia on July 19, 1946, Holden was left devastated. However, Holden always thought that Allie was the most interesting person that he has ever met. Allie was one person that Holden mentions that he loves in the novel. When Holden’s younger sister Phoebe asks Holden what he likes he says, “I like Allie” (171). Holden hides or at least does not want to join the world because of Allie’s death. He cannot come to terms with himself to see that Allie’s death has nothing to do with how he should live his own life. Holden carries A...
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
Almost every person will have to say goodbye to a loved one who has died. When an adolescent goes through this experience it could traumatize them. John Green once said “Grief does not change you. It reveals you.” In other words, the loss of a loved one doesn’t change who you are but reveals your character. A novel that explores the effect of grief on a young person is The Catcher In The Rye by J.D Salinger. The Catcher In The Rye is a novel about a teenager, Holden Caulfield, who is confused and makes life changing mistakes because of his inability to accept his brother Allie’s death. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross made up the five stages of grief. The stages are denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance. Holden goes through these five stages throughout the novel. Salinger uses the baseball mitt, the red hunting hat, and the carousel to explore the protagonist struggle to resolve his grief.
In the novel, Allie has an immense impact on Holden through his journey. Allie is Holden’s brother that died of Cancer when Holden was young. Holden is always sad about Allie’s death and is always thinking about Allie. Allie’s impact on Holden’s life sparks from Holden feeling like Allie missed out on opportunities.Allie also brings Holden a sense of guilt and also pain because he feels that Allie is missing out and that it is unfair for him to experience life. Holden can never get over Allies death and Allie because of his guilt that stems from his beliefs of Allie’s inability to experience life. When talking to Phoebe he says, “I Know he’s dead? Dont 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 171). This quote shows Holden’s reluctance to not forget Allie, and move on with his life not living in regret of Allie’s...
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.
The Catcher in the Rye has been described, analyzed, rebuffed, and critiqued over the years. Each writer expresses a different point of view: It is a story reflecting teen-ager's talk--thoughts-emotions--actions; or angst. I believe it is an adult's reflection of his own unresolved grief and bereavements. That adult is the author, J.D. Salinger. He uses his main character, Holden, as the voice to vent the psychological misery he will not expose -or admit to.
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. The consequential point comes at the close of the digression when Holden discloses his own reaction to Allie’s death. In this Chapter Holden first poses the question of why did Allie have to die at such a young age.
...t in school and doesn’t even care if he is flunking his classes. Although Holden himself does not mention it, he believes he has no future. Due to him failing all his classes and getting kicked out of school, we can see that Holden doesn’t want a future and doesn’t want to form friendships in school, therefore he detaches himself from school and society.
People go through depressing periods in their lives as teenagers, and some experience it more severely or for longer periods of time than others. In The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger expresses this time of dejection through the protagonist Holden’s thoughts and personal feelings. Holden’s tone reinforces a theme of suicide and depression. He is sarcastic, biter, and occasionally upbeat.
This novel by J.D Salinger is about a rebellious teenage, Holden Caulfield. Holden's brother, Allie death affects Holden academics and future. Holden goes through many different experiences that make his pyschoanalytic traits stand out.
Onset of Allie’s death Holden evades the path of adulthood and struggles to preserve his childhood by eluding any actions that may identify him as an adult. He then states the idea that adulthood revolves around the idea of” phoniness.’’ Holden tries to escape reality by doing adult things: smoking, drinking, renting hotels, and ordering a prostitute; in which is ironic to what he has been trying to do since he left his school. Later on the novel, Holden manages to mature with several encounters with Phoebe. When Phoebe had gone to ride the carousel, he stood back and watches as reality began to sink in. This was the first time Holden’s outlook towards everything truly began to shift. Holden realizes that adulthood is set right before him and he has no other options but to grasp it.