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Holden Caulfield Loneliness

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The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger goes into the life of a boy named Holden Caulfield. The novel tells of his thoughts, and depicts him as a lost teenager. Holden is the definition of a slacker; he can’t even stay in a school for long before getting kicked out. Holden is lost without his brother Allie, and seems to be lost in his path of life. He is constantly dealing with loneliness, and depression. Holden is stuck in a part of his life that doesn’t exist anymore. He holds onto the past, and isn’t making anything of his future. His brothers death is the biggest part of why Holden is lonely. Allie and Holden were close, and Allie was there for Holden when he needed someone to motivate him, or help push him to be great. Throughout the novel …show more content…

He seeks help in all the wrong places. When he stayed at a past teachers house it was okay at first, but it didn’t last long till he felt uncomfortable there. “...I felt something on my head, some guy's hand. Boy, it really scared hell out of me. What it was, it was Mr. Antolini's hand. What he was doing was, he was sitting on the floor right next to the couch, in the dark and all, and he was sort of petting me or patting me on the goddam head…” (Salinger 24). Holden even hinted at the beginning “Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football game….You could see the whole field from there, and you could see the two teams bashing each other all over the place…” (Salinger 1). He’s not a people person, friends and parties aren’t his thing. Holden didn’t even attend the game everyone was at that night. He says that most people are fake and phonies “ One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all…” (Salinger 2). He isolated himself at school, and he would continually read his brothers glove of poems. That seems to be the only enjoyment and closest thing to interactivity he’d get. It was to someone dead; a person who he could no longer see anymore. If he holds onto this, and habits of his lonesome self his future could be jeopardized. He won’t make anything of it, and Holden is stopping himself from having any good happen to him. He broke down completely by the end of the novel. This shows

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When Holden had reached the climax point of his mental state, he had a hard time to get across the street. “Every time i came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I’d never get to the other side of the street. I’d just go down, down, down and nobody’d ever see me again”. At this moment when his mental state was lost and his shield down, the loneliness consumed him. At one point he even accepted

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He wants to leave some impression to people. He wants them to remember him instead of ignoring. Holden is not as tough as he shows when he describes his parents and his brother D.B in the previous paragraphs. Another good example shows his fragility appears when his brother died and “[he] broke all the goddam windows

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1493 Words | 6 Pages

In this paragraph, the audience hears Holden’s negative immutable perspective about his school Pencey as he seems to not like the school at all, much less the people in it. The author uses words like “splendid” and “clear-thinking” to really express holden’s strong opinion about the guys at Pencey and how they don’t meet the expectations that the school holds. In the beginning of the book the reader is introduced to Mr. Spencer who is one of Holden’s teacher’s. Mr. Spencer comes out as a nice teacher whose only intention is to help Holden and guide him through the misfit of society as he realizes that Holden needs a hand to hold. Salinger writes, “Game, my ass.

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1548 Words | 7 Pages

Holden grapples with loneliness and a lack of connection stemming from the loss of his brother, Allie, three years before the beginning of the novel. We learn that Allie died of leukemia when Holden was only thirteen: “He's dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You'd have liked him.” Holden’s reminiscences display the hole in his life that Allie once filled.

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303 Words | 2 Pages

His parents sent him to three different prep schools, all of which he had been kicked out of. Without a solid environment, Holden has been unable to make many friends in which he can find sympathy and comfort. This makes him become an introvert. “…I was standing way the hell up on top of Thompsen Hill…” (Salinger, Page 2). He finds it hard to relate to people because they don’t understand him or his circumstances.

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983 Words | 4 Pages

From the beginning to the end of the novel, Holden is seen continuously distancing himself from his friends by calling them “phonies” as reasoning to not be close with others to hide his depression. Eventually, Holden is left with barely anyone who he sees as a friend, leaving him all alone. For instance, on his way to a hotel since he cannot go home, Holden asks the taxi driver, “Would you care to stop on the way and join me for a cocktail? On me, I'm loaded” (Salinger ). This evidence demonstrates to the reader that Holden cut out everyone in his life and is now left with no one due to his isolating methods that provide influence to his depression.

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1039 Words | 5 Pages

From the very beginning of the book Holden does not attend the football game at his private school, and that's a clear indication that he doesn't fit in. Specific events that occur throughout the book give off a very lonely

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1065 Words | 5 Pages

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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380 Words | 2 Pages

Holden refuses to interact with others because he wants to be with his brother Allie and he is still emotionally destroyed by his death. Holden is still regressing to the time of his childhood, a time where he was happy and with Allie. This is the reason why Holden refuses to enter the threshold of adulthood. The reader can notice then when Holden says, "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". Holden still believes that true happiness resides in his childhood in the presence of his deceased brother.

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2042 Words | 9 Pages

… You could hear them all yelling. ”(Salinger, 2) This quote shows how Holden is alienated from society because he wants to stay away from the “phonies” as he explains later in the book. While everyone else is at the game, Holden is isolated on Thomsen Hill, far away from the football game, and not communicating with people at

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656 Words | 3 Pages

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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379 Words | 2 Pages

1. In the 1950s, the time when rock ‘n’ roll began to emerge and become popular amongst the youth of its time, parents feared that the U.S. was becoming over sexualized and the teens were becoming addicted to pleasure due to several reasons. For one, rock ‘n’ roll was associated with promiscuous behavior, such as inappropriate dancing. Also forms of contraception were becoming more available to the public.

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720 Words | 3 Pages

Holden Caulfield, the main protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, embodies the classic teenager in the process of discovering himself, and how the world works. But, regardless of Holden 's rich, prep school lifestyle, the series of events that have mapped out his life up to this point have utterly affected his emotional well being and perception of the world. Many traumatic events such as the death of holds brother Allie, the death of a class mate, and countless numbers of awkward incidents with adults have all added up to affects Holden 's well-being and detach him from reality. The death of Holden 's younger brother Allie has caused him to confuse his perception of reality and to alienate himself.

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728 Words | 3 Pages

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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1002 Words | 5 Pages

Holden is a very isolated person and has many things that contributed to that such as his brother’s death that was very hard to cope with. Through a series of events that happened to him, developed a very unconscious mindset which makes him relive traumatic pain as mentioned in the document Sigmund Freud Biography. Holden developed his personality because he has dealt with other things in the past such as not doing good in school, having family conflict, not being that popular, and even going from school to school because he was never doing good. These factors can all contribute to why he would prefer to be alone, because he does not find himself worthy of anything. An inference that can be made of Holden is that there is also a slight possibility that he may have been sexually assaulted even as a child,

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