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Depression In Catcher In The Rye

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A common disorder all teens have is depression. The state of depression causes many different effects on a person’s thoughts and their behaviors. When a person has been through a lot and has seen things, they start to feel empty inside and feel different, for example, having to deal with a death in the family. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye tells the story of the young Holden Caulfield, a teenage boy who is not your ordinary character. He lives a very difficult life while growing up. He drops out of school and tries to talk to random strangers. He deals with a death from his younger brother, Allie. That is a reason why Holden is depressed and he doesn’t know how to deal with himself. Holden has thoughts of suicide, however does …show more content…

Holden generally lies to himself to calm the emptiness and liability he is living with. Holden explains and tells the reader that he is depressed throughout the book. Holden suffers from depression, therefore to cope with it, he lies to everyone in his life, causing his depression to get worse throughout the book. Holden has no explanation has to why he is depressed. He faces problems and issues like accepting death from his younger brother Allie, growing up and omitting parental things because of this it restrains him to entirely see why he's depressed. One hassel he's dealing with is the death of his brother, Allie. He was traumatized by the death of his brother, it left him lots of upsetting feelings. It represented with Holden saying, ”They were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all because I broke all the windows in the garage…I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist” (Salinger 39). The quote announces after the death of his brother, he wasn’t able to control himself and went completely psycho for a moment. The death causes Holden to have aggressive actions. After losing his brother, Holden lost something inside of him that he will never get back. The death worries him because now he will have nothing to

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Throughout the book holden gives off a vibe of being depressed, which might have started when his brother passed away. It’s seems like after that happened he lost all enthusiasm and energy to really try and also to really plan out his future. Most

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Holden is the main character from the book The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger: he is going through the seven stages of grief. The seven stages Holden experiences are: shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, depression, reflection, loneliness, the upward turn, reconstruction and working through, and acceptance and hope. He mainly focuses on three of the stages: anger, depression and loneliness. These stages influence the events and situations that Holden encounters doing the book. Holden gets in many situations because of his uncontrollable anger during his grieving.

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JD Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye is about a boy named Holden Caulfield and his struggle with life. As a teenager, he has one goal and that is to simply find his place in the world. Unlike an ordinary teenager he has a severe case of depression, and displays many signs to exhibit this mental illness. As we escalate through the novel, we notice that his depression seems to be getting worse and that he is feeling despondent more often.

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Holden's admittance that he is "sad" at his parting with his professor also serves to show his emotional struggles. Another example is when Holden is asked by his friend Straudlater to write a paper for him. Holden decides to write about an object that was his younger brother’s, Allie, who passed away when Holden was 13. Holden was very distraught when he found out about his brother's death. He states, “I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage” (38-9).

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Holden represents the theme depression throughout the novel. Depression is a serious condition in which a person feels sad, hopeless, and unimportant. One main reason he experiences depression is because he withdraws himself from society, struggling with the death of his brother, and a lack of motivation in life. Holden's personality is very pessimistic which shows that he tends to look at the negativity instead of the bright side of life. Another reason Holden is depressed is because of his habit of drinking and smoking.

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Struggle of Depression The novel Catcher in the Rye exemplifies the motif of depression through the eyes of the main character, Holden Caulfield. Holden constantly struggles with depression throughout the novel. His depression is directly linked with the death of his younger brother Allie as, the loss of a loved one has that effect on many. The conformity of the society that Holden lives in allows for no grief causing Holden to spiral downwards into a state of depression.

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To begin, early in the novel Holden tells the reader about his younger brother Allie that passed away due to leukemia. It is also made known to the reader that Holden has PTSD from this tragic situation. Holden has a hard time trusting people because of this, and has struggled with mental illness since Allies death. In addition to trust issues and PTSD, Holden tends to go into a fantasy world when he gets depressed. In that world, he “talks” to Allie out loud as if he was there.

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During his short time in Manhattan, just the thought of his yellowness and his gloves being stolen at Pencey Prep depresses him to the point where he decides to have more alcoholic drinks after a night in the town. After a night in which Holden didn’t socialize the way he wanted to, he feels so depressed that he wished he died. These instances are important, because it shows that his feelings are unreasonable, and as a result, his depression affects his rational

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Although Holden is a fictional character, many of the symptoms he displays during his journey are real and affect real life teens. Teen depression is a serious mental health problem. One of the possible dangers is the probability that it's not temporary and may affect the teen in a

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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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Firstly, one possible disorder Holden could be plagued with is depression. Depression is a mental health disorder characterized by a constantly depressed mood or loss of interest in daily activities. (Goldberg, “Major Depression Symptoms in Adults and Children) It can be impairing to living day to day life, which is apparent in Holden’s case. In several instances throughout the story, Holden mentions how depressed he feels.

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In the Catcher in the Rye, depression is shown at many levels from severe to minor like Holden dropping out of school. Depression, if untreated, will ruin a teen's high school career. When depression hits it makes school

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He broke his own hand from the tragic event and was almost forced to be psychoanalyzed. Him breaking his hand wasn't seen as acting out of sadness , but much more on the lines of anger. Holden failing in school and hating the world only shows how much he misses his brother. He has been very judgmental to the world calling everything phonies all because of Allie. The importance of siblings helps drive Holden's life.

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Furthermore, Holden starts to hate all the adults or loses faith in them, calls them phony. Holden has a second thought of becoming an adult he loses hope in his future and it seems to him nothing in the world matters to him anymore. We can see that throughout the book. He smokes, gets drunk, and does daring acts like getting a prostitute in his room. He also tries to escape all this guilt and grief by wasting time with unnecessary people he calls phony.

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Tragic events can affect your mindset in irreversible ways, causing self-destructive behavior, low self-esteem, and devious actions. Jerome David Salinger in his novel, The Catcher in the Rye, he develops the character of Holden Caulfield, an adolescent boy who is living a tragedy, causing suffering and deep pain within him. According to Mary Klages from the University of Colorado, she incorporates Warren Hedges and Freud through a psychoanalytic lens and they come to a conclusion that psychoanalytical approaches reveal how and why people behave as they do, which helps clarify Holden Caulfield’s actions in the novel. Holden is presented as a troubled adolescent, facing discontent of his childhood in which he desires not to describe much in

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