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Examples Of Depression In Catcher In The Rye

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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. “I was getting depressed as hell.”, (Salinger, 147) “She was depressing the hell out of me.”, (Salinger, 148) and “It was very depressing.” (Salinger, 18) are some of many, ample examples that appear. Another symptom of depression is hopelessness (Goldberg, “Major Depression Symptoms in Adults and Children), often coming …show more content…

One milder event representing this is Holden typing Stradlater’s composition about his brother’s baseball mitt as he began to reminisce about all the fun times they had together in Maine. (Salinger, 43) Towards the end of the story, Holden’s health gradually deteriorates and he finds himself hallucinating, actually talking to him. “Every time I’d get to the end of a block I’d make believe I was taking to my brother Allie.” he says, continuing with, “Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me …show more content…

Anxiety is a mental disorder characterized by exaggerated feelings of worry or fear that interfere with daily life. A couple of symptoms of anxiety that Holden exhibits include feeling tense or edgy, being irritable, feeling overly stressed, and having trouble concentrating. (Riley, “Generalized Anxiety Disorder”) Holden’s edginess is expressed by his intense paranoia and distrust of others, calling them phonies practically everywhere in the book. This may also tie in to his irritability, though one extreme event of this is when he says, “I kept wanting to kill whoever’d written it … I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I’d smash his head on the stone steps till he was goddam dead and bloody.” (Salinger, 221) A second serious event involving Holden’s anger is when he fought Stradlater over the fact that he probably slept with his childhood friend Jane. He recalls, “I tried to sock him, with all my might … so it would split his goddam throat open.” (Salinger, 49) Holden often has trouble concentrating while talking to others, as his mind tends to wander off into different places. This takes place when Holden is talking to Ackley when he can’t stop thinking about what happened after Stradlater came home. “I just kept laying there on Ely’s bed, thinking about Jane and all.” (Salinger, 55) he says while Ackley is telling him to turn off the lights. This also occurs when Holden is talking to Mr. Antolini, saying, “I didn’t

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Holden Caufield exhibits symptoms of both teen grief and antisocial personality disorder. However, Holden definitely suffers from prolonged grief disorder, rather than being antisocial, because Holden expresses aversion to solitude and a need to be around others. In both the desolate hallways of Pencey as he is leaving, and the empty streets of New York as he is wandering them, Holden feels "lonesome and depressed". The patient is clearly not antisocial. Holden demonstrates a prominent symptom of prolonged grief disorder: he avoids reminders of deceased loved ones.

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He never got mad at anybody." (Salinger 38). In this text, Holden is talking about how great his brother was and how pathetic he was compared to him. Since Holden likes to think of his brother and how great he was he starts to doubt his ability. He starts to believe that he not good enough or as good as his brother, so there is no point in trying.

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Holden's constant feeling of being depressed is established early on in the book. For example, when Holden says goodbye to one of his professors before leaving Pencey, he finds himself overwhelmed with sadness over the normal act of a sendoff: “Then we shook hands. And all that crap is. It made me feel sad as hell, though” (15). This is demonstrating that when Holden is in social interaction, he tends to feel down.

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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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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

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Holden remembers thinking, “I felt so lonely all of a

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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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Additionally, another time at a diner he orders a doughnut and coffee, but he is unable to bring himself to eat the doughnut, and even says, “if you get very depressed… it’s hard as hell to swallow,” (Salinger 216). Holden recognized his depression caused by Allie’s death and being isolated in New York for three days, and because of it, he is unable to bring himself to eat. Also, his depression caused him to inexplicably pass out while at a museum (Salinger 225) and nearly vomit while walking around New York (Salinger 202). Additionally, Holden went to Mr. Antolini’s house because he needed a place to stay for the night, and while he was there, Holden said he was “feeling sort of dizzy” and had “a helluva headache all of a sudden,” (Salinger 202). This comes up after Mr. Antolini tries to talk to Holden about his future, and

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Throughout his adventure, he displays multiple symptoms of teen depression. One of the first symptoms he displays is low academic performance. He tells us in the first few pages of the book that he was evicted from multiple schools and hated all of those schools. Negative thoughts leads us into another symptom of teen depression, the thought that life in the future is grim or bleak. Holden calls almost everybody throughout the entire novel phonies and fakes.

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One of the diagnoses that Holden would most likely get would be depression. In the book Holden states, “…I was feeling sort of lousy. Depressed and all. I almost wished I was dead (Salinger [90]).” This can be proven that he has depression because the database Depression states that people have symptoms such as “persistent sad or empty mood… low energy… thoughts of death or suicide (Wastson and Wexler).

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Holden recalls the time he spent the night in his garage: “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. It was very stupid I have to admit, but I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it, and you didn’t know Allie (Salinger, 39).” His denial is represented when he does not admit why he did what he did to the garage. Holden

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As a result of Holden having two extremes that are a component of his personality, he has bipolar II disorder. Throughout the novel, Holden presents signs of hypomania, because of his irritability towards others, while also speaking rapidly and having difficulty sleeping. When Holden has had minimal food to eat, has feelings of depression, and most notably when he has pondered death, is another extreme of his personality. There are numerous occasions that Holden experiences both emotions simultaneously. Since Holden encounters levels of depression and hypomania, bipolar II disorder is a more accurate diagnosis than depression.

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According to Dr. Harold, depression occurs when a person’s brain has trouble managing stress such as divorce, loss of a valued friendship, or death of a loved one. Holdens overwhelming emotion caused him to overreact violently without knowing or feeling

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When Holden sees him he has nothing bad things to say about him. He says to Sally “‘Why don’t you go on over and give him a big soul kiss, if you know him? He’ll enjoy it. She got sore when I said that’” (Salinger 141).

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I was already sort of sorry I 'd let the thing start rolling, but it was too late now” (Salinger 19). This quote goes to show that Holden is trying to be a different person. He normally would accept a night with an escort but as stated in the quote he was so depressed he couldn 't even think about his decisions. A later quote shows that he doesn 't even use his real name he uses the name “Jim Steele”.

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