What Are The Similarities Between The Catcher In The Rye And The Yellow Wallpaper

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Failure and suffering are two ideas strongly depicted in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Both authors use their writing to show the effects suffering has on their character’s feelings and their actions.
When beginning the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, the reader finds out that the narrator, Holden, is telling his story from a rest home or a home for the mentally unstable. This gives the reader an insight to what state he is in mentally. Throughout the rest of the story, Holden explains his past and gives the reader more information on his personality. The reader learns that Holden had a little brother named Allie, who died of leukemia just three years before the story is told. Holden’s only fond memories are the ones of his younger brother, and he mentions that he had a nervous breakdown the night of Allie’s death and had to be psychoanalyzed. He explains, “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” (Salinger 39). This proves that the death of Holden’s younger brother has affected him deeply and altered …show more content…

For instance, he mentions to Stradlater, “…all I ever saw him do was booze all the time…and run around the goddam house, naked. With Jane around and all” (Salinger 32).When Holden mentions the events that lead the readers to this conclusion, he acts as if he does not know what happened. Holden appears to be very smart; therefore, he is not completely oblivious to what happened with Jane. The reader can infer that Holden is blocking out the images from the past, rather than being unaware of the events that happened. These two events can be seen as extremely traumatizing. Holden’s previous mental breakdowns and tendency to block out memories are a product of the suffering he faced as a

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