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Analyzing The Conscious Mind Of Holden Caulfield

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Daisy Medina Mrs. Kehrmeyer Ap Language 3 April 2018 The Unconscious and Conscious Mind of Holden Caulfield By the age of twenty-five about eight percent of the population has lost a sibling, according to The United States National Library of Medicine. The loss of a sibling is extremely crucial to the surviving, in certain events The U.S National Library of Medicine stated that the loss of the sibling can cause the surviving to act out and has even caused depression. In the book, The Catcher in the Rye by Jerome David Salinger the main protagonist Holden Caulfield has lost a his older brother Allie which really affected his mindset and his teenage years.Holden is a young boy who does not have the support of his parents and are also not present in his life. Instead they send him off to private schools and show no interest in …show more content…

The loss of his older brother and the absent parents have really affected Holden’s behavior. He lives a life without any care but with exception of younger children. Holden has a fascination with younger children and their innocence possibly because he wasn’t able to enjoy his adolescent years and nor did his brother. Holden mentions “‘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.” (Salinger 217) 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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Holden Caulfield is an adolescent male. He is sixteen years old, and is very pessimistic. He is tall and scrawny. Holden’s hair is graying at his young age which he wears in a crew cut. Holden is constantly shows symptoms of depression such as poor appetite, a pessimistic outlook, and physical headaches.

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Holden Caulfield is a teenage rebel who is struggling to grow up. He can’t keep up with it, so he starts to search for a way to break free. His cynicism ends him up alone for twenty-four hours in the city where he experiences the adult world. Holden’s isolation, however, is disappointment interlaced with a bit of hope. Phoebe Caulfield is Holden’s innocent, ten year old younger sister.

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As I had mentioned before, Holden loves the word “phony” but he hates people who are phony. He believes that the world is corrupt with fake, ungenuine people. For this reason he loves children as they innocent and genuine. I believe this is because he really loved his late brother, Allie, who passed away when he was 10.

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Holden meets few prominent mentors throughout the novel, who offer ephemeral relief to his problems, allowing for itinerantly to the past instead of living in the present. Allie, Holden’s brother, is a significant mentor who makes Holden reminisce on positive experiences with him before he passes away. Furthermore, Holden struggles long-term when Allie passes away and violently reacts, displaying his impaired judgement due to the stress of losing a family member ( Salinger 38-39). Holden admires his brother for being able to work past hardships and emotionally express himself through his unique poetry on his baseball mitt, which becomes a symbolic item to Holden when remembering Allie. Holden’s other prominent mentor is his sister, Phoebe, who sticks by his side,

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Analysis of Holden Caulfield In United States millions are diagnosed with a mental disorder ranging from minor to damaging effects on the human mind. During my meeting with Holden Caulfield his father has provided me information on his son. In addition, from my first meeting with Holden he sounded like a man who was unstable, like he said “When you’re feeling very depressed, you can’t even think” (Caulfield, 49). These direct words from Mr. Caulfield presents me with a feeling that Holden is feeling detachment from his life and feeling worthlessness.

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Keeping these things in mind, Holden Caulfield is presented much like the author. Caulfield has a very immature attitude that fall under the category of Ego-Defensive. The Ego-Defensive category has four subcategories within itself called; denial, repression, projective, and rationalization, that are labeled as defense mechanisms through psychological lenses. According to McGraw-Hill’s Dictionary of Modern Medicine, denial is the “primitive–ego defense–mechanism by which a person unconsciously negates the existence of a disease or other stress-producing reality in his environment, by disavowing thoughts, feelings, wishes, needs, or external reality factors that are consciously intolerable.” Holden presents his state of denial in the way he tries to maintain his relationship with his deceased brother, Allie.

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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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Now, he can look forward to a better future for himself. Allie's death is a traumatic event that deeply affects Holden. He finds it hard to accept that his brother is gone and feels upset and confused about why someone so young and good had to die. Holden feels very sad about Allie's death and because of that, he feels like he doesn't belong and is disconnected from the world around him.

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Holden's fear of rejection is the source of not being able to create relationships which isolates him from society. Because of this fear of intimacy and rejection, Holden begins to go into a very depressed state. Another reason why Holden is never integrated into society is because he still has the mentality of living in the last. This is another problem Allie comes into. When Holden states, "I like Allie just because someone is dead you don't just stop liking them, for God's sakes- especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive (Salinger 171), he believes that genuine happiness and peace can be obtained in his past and believes that Allie is no longer present in society.

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Innocence is fragile, precious and worth protecting and preserving in a world tainted by falsehood and disillusionment. Holden’s childhood experiences and present interactions with children highlight the struggles and complexities of transitioning from adolescence to adulthood, which inspires Holden to be a protector of innocence as he navigates his own transition. Holden’s interactions with various characters, particularly children like his sister Phoebe and his deceased brother Allie, serve as reminders of the purity and authenticity he believes exists in

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He doesn’t want his sister and her friends to live the life that he had to because it was so miserable. He didn’t want their innocence to be washed away at such a young age like him, but one kid is all it takes to ruin it for somebody. This shows that Holden really does care about his role as the catcher in the rye and that preserving innocence is what truly makes him

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Throughout the book, Holden is struggling to get by. The death of his brother Allie has left him in a tough spot. Holden doesn’t exactly know how to deal with this. The different stages of grief are represented through Holden. Holden shows denial and anger when he flashbacks to one of his memories after his brother’s death.

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Holden has so many courteous words to describe Allie. The impact of losing his brother seems to be very difficult for Holden. Salinger uses Allie’s death to show that cancer, primarily pediatric cancer, has a huge effect on the child’s family. Holden continues on stating that when he was thirteen “...they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don’t blame them.

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