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Reflection On Catcher In The Rye

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Recommended: Holden Caulfield Catcher in the Rye character analysis

When you’re a kid you get asked this one particular question a lot. It really gets kind of annoying. “ What do you want to be when you grow up?” Adults are hoping for answers like “ I want to be an astronaut” or “When I grow up I want to be a Neurosurgeon”. Adults and their imaginations. But Holden Caufield is different. He just simply wants to be a Catcher In The Rye” “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids and nobody 's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I 'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean, if they 're running and they don 't look where they 're …show more content…

Holden adores Allie and is very distressed about his premature death when Holden was thirteen because of leukemia. It is easy to say that Allie’s death was the beginning of a downward spiral in Holden’s life. According to Holden, Allie was one of the most lovable people. “You’d have liked him… He was terrifically intelligent… But it wasn’t just that he was the most intelligent member of the family. He was also the nicest”. Holden loved his brother more than anything and when he died, he punched out all the windows in the garage. He said that "my hand still hurts me once in a while." This is symbolic of the love he had and still has for his little brother; he even quotes later that "you don 't stop loving someone because they die" proving that he still cares for him. He may even think he had something to do with his death or he caused it. Sometimes little kids think stuff like that. Holden also says that " I can 't make a real fist any more-not a tight one." If his fist represents his love for his brother or his heart then maybe he can 't love again. When he meets up with Sally he said he felt like marrying her than he discards it by saying "I don 't even like her much." Holden is afraid to love again because of the way his heart and fist was broken when Allie died. As Holden gets more and more upset throughout his days in New York, Allie is a recurring thought. Holden seems to use Allie as a sort of medicine. Thinking of Allie both comforts him and upsets him. Holden feels guilty about some things with Allie. One particular instance that holden dwells on is a summer day when Allie wanted to accompany Holden and a friend on a bike ride. “Allie heard is talking about it, and he wanted to go, and I wouldn’t let him. I told him he was a child.” Now Holden replays this situation in his head, only this time he includes Allie. Allie will always remain a

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Allie was Holden’s everything, he looked up to his brother and respected him. Holden never really had anyone to discipline him or tell him right from wrong. Even though Holden liked too seem as if he was already older then he actually is, he is still a young kid who needs his parents. Allie was Holden’s angel who took care of him while his parents couldn’t. Holden is a protagonist that has been through many harsh events throughout his

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Allie was very intelligent, kind, and one of the few people Holden truly loved. When he passed away from leukemia, Holden broke down and stayed a night in his garage, where he destroyed all of the windows with his fists. Allie’s death left both psychological and physical scars on Holden, which have a subtle, but important influence on the rest of the novel. Although I have

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This hindered Holden’s way to communicate and relate to others, this affected his relationships that he already has with his family. Holden’s relationship with Allie is one of his strongest relationships we see in the novel and one time we see it is when Phoebe asks him, “Name one thing you like?” and later Holden responds, “I like Allie” expressing his relationship with him and also how he doesn’t like anything except Allie and Phoebe (Salinger 169 and 171). It highlights that he likes innocent kids and also his relationships with others aren’t very good. Holden's good relationships are only with his younger siblings which isn't good in the adult world.

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But in this case, it's holding Holden back from living his life and moving on. Because of this, Holden tends to stay away from people because if they get hurt he doesn't want to have to go through that kind of pain again. Also, by not letting go of Allie, Holden will stay living in the past, and if we've learned anything from Jay Gatsby, living in the past can lead to death. This out of place feeling is not uncommon though, and it can be caused by multiple things. For Holden, the fact remains that he was not there for his brother during his time of need and in the end it's become the biggest regret of his

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The loss of Allie links directly to Holden's loss of innocence. “…the night he [Allie] died…I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it…I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it, and you didn’t know Allie” (Salinger 39). Salinger uses Holden

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Holden feels helpless and alone. In summary, Allie’s death plays a large role in forming Holden’s personality. He tries to graze over the subject without much emotion because Allie’s death was sudden and tragic, and he has been unable to seek support for most of his

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After talking about his childhood memories with his brother he states, ¨He is dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You´d have like him.¨ Then after talking about Allie’s old baseball mitt he said, ¨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¨(43-44). Allie’s death is used to show the unexpected change that Holden had experienced during his life. Allie was only eleven when he died, and Holden was thirteen.

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Holden still sees Allie was the person he aspires to be but unlike Horatio, Allie is just a memory Holden has. These individuals were the people in both of their lives that always seemed to see passed all the faults they had and helped them became who they wanted to

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Pained by the loss of his brother, Holden has delusions that if he tells Allie to join him, then he can change the past and be a better brother. Holden relives his past through schizophrenic episodes in attempt to bring his brother back, however, his mind has been exposed to shattering pain and his life will never be the same

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1363 Words | 6 Pages

This clearly shows about the importance of Allie in Holden’s life and how the death of him would affect him for a very long time with the depression he gets soon after. As Well as the death of Holden’s brother, the depression that lingers long after these events dictate Holden 's words and actions. In the article Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness, Patrick W Corrigan and Amy C Watson states, “ Many people with serious mental illness are challenged doubly. On one hand, they struggle with the symptoms and disabilities that result from the disease… people with mental illness are robbed of the opportunities that define a quality life”. As mentioned in the article, Holden’s depression challenges him greatly as shown in his interactions with other people.

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After Sunny had left, Holden lit a cigarette and started to talk aloud to Allie, who is his deceased little brother. Holden right now is feeling very down, and depressed, and when he is, he speaks aloud to Allie. While talking out loud Holden reflects on the relationship he had with Allie. While speaking to him, Holden tells Allie to Allie to go back to the house to grab his bike and meet up with him at Bobby’s, house. A short while later, Holden prepares to go to bed.

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Allies reoccurring presence in Holden 's life causes him to obsess about the unknown future. Since Allie was on of the only people holden was able to relate to, his death took a

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779 Words | 4 Pages

In this quote he tells that his brother died. This shows his brother died when he was young. Furthermore he dies as an innocent child who was not exposed to the adult world or the “phoniness.” Allie's death was tragic to Holden but maybe, in some ways Holden wanted the death himself, he wanted to preserve his innocence. Another point that shows Allie's mitt represents innocence is when Holden says Allie used to read poems on his glove while playing baseball which he wrote before the game so he wouldn’t be bored.

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1230 Words | 5 Pages

A. Allie’s death causes Holden to become obsessed with death and this obsession makes him believe that growing up and becoming a “phonie” is like dying; this belief that is planted inside Holden’s head when Allie died is what sends him on a quest to preserve children’s innocence and save them from the “death” of growing up. B. Salinger includes the traumatic story of Allies death that happened years in advance to provide an explanation for Holden’s obsession with death and how he sees loss of innocence as equivalent to dying. Allie died with his innocence still intact, so Holden does not want other children to grow up and have their innocence “die”. C. Holden even admits to being mentally unstable after his brother’s traumatic death when he says, “I was only 13, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all

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This is representative of how Holden is currently still carrying his grief of Allie’s death, manifesting itself in his lack of motivation in school while he is maturing to become an adult. This is important considering Holden is currently at an area where he is neither an adult nor child, but

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