Examples Of Bipolar In Catcher In The Rye

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The Catcher In The Rye is a very controversial book that revolves around the adolescence of Holden Caulfield who speaks to the reader directly from a mental hospital or sanitarium in southern California. We find this out at the end of the book which gives a definite answer that he does have a disorder. Holden deals with many mind states which led me to believe that he is bipolar. Bipolar disorder is characterized by cycling mood changes, severe highs, mania, and severe lows, depression. Throughout the story we see that holden shows many symptoms of bipolar disorder. Holden suffers from multiple symptoms such as little or no need for sleep, mood swings, acting off impulse, difficulty remaining on topic when engaged in discussions, outburst of ideas and insight, irritation with people who rationalize with his ideas, excessive spending of money, depression, and paranoia or being insecure. We see that Holden has countless sleepless nights such as the night where he had a conversation with Ackley Instead of turning out the light like Ackley asks, Holden tries to continue the conversation by asking, “Tell me the story of your fascinating …show more content…

I felt like jumping out of the window," (104). He refuses to go back home because he knows what his parents with think so it gets even worse. He says "I wasn’t feeling sleepy or anything, but I was feeling sort of lousy. Depressed and all, I almost wished I was dead," (90). Which death is a very common thought for a person who is in a depressed state of