Stradlater is a narcissist and puts on an arrogant air when dealing with people like Holden, affecting an aura of subtle scorn and disinterest. Holden meanwhile, has gone completely insane, which is understandable considering everything that has happened to him. His insanity is very unique in that it yearns and craves stagnation, Holden expresses admiration for the museum on pg. 154 as “it never changes”. He dreams of being the “Catcher In The Rye” towards children keeping them in a state of perpetual childhood to shield them from the horrors of this
Holden, the protagonist of the Catcher in the Rye often makes decisions under the influence of his problematic emotions and caught himself into many rough and self-harming situations. In the first place, Holden made self-harming decisions under the emotion of anger and sadness when his brother passed away "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 (21). " Holden is making idiotic decisions under the influence of anger and sadness and caused himself a lifelong injury. Similarly, later in the Catcher in the Rye Holden again makes another decision under his emotion of jealousy about Stradlater 's date with Jane. Holden relentlessly insulted Stradlater, driving him crazy until
Holden feels jealous that Stradlater gets to spend time with Jane instead of him. Holden didn’t want Stradlater, who is isn’t very fond of, to be messing around with Jane. Nick Jonas feels the same way, “I don’t like the way he’s looking at you/I’m starting to think you want him too/ Am
During Catcher, the whole story is set as a first person recount from the view of Holden Caulfield, but during this recount, there are some small instances of Holden thinking of his life as a child. The recount is from Holden’s point of view as he is obtaining psychiatric help, after he has been found to have mental issues. The majority of these small flashback moments during the text are about Holden’s younger brother Allie, who passed away with Leukemia when Holden was a few years younger. Holden holds strong and happy memories of his younger brother’s life, and during this extended flashback, he tells the author about his brother, and although Allie does not take part within the story, the audience learns lots about him. Holden is very much traumatised by the death of his younger brother, and this traumatic event has helped in making Caulfield the socially awkward person that he is during the recount.
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.
From the very beginning of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is disgusted with the world and his attitude towards it wasn’t good. He always says how it was full of phonies and how evil and corrupt it was. He often thinks about shutting himself out of society. However, by the end he realizes he must accept he can’t change the way the world works, and that he must find his place in it.
About 15 million children suffer from mental illness disorder nationwide, but only about 7% of those children actually get the help they need from health professionals. (https://adaa.org/living-with-anxiety/children/anxiety-and-depression) Throughout the book The Catcher in the Rye written by J. D. Salinger, the main character, Holden, has to face many scarring challenges at an extremely young age, such as the death of his younger brother Allie. Holden feels extremely lonely, and doesn’t have anybody to turn to, causing him to seek out attention from strangers. His parents have been absent throughout his life and have sent him off anywhere but home. Because Holden faces difficulties with Allie’s death due to a lack of parental support he finds it challenging developing strong personal relationships, causing him
The novel “The Catcher in the Rye” was about the journey of a adolescent boy finding his way to adulthood. In the book Holden Caulfield was unsuccessful in finding his way to adulthood. Holden’s attitude in the novel throughout his journey was very immature. He also can't accept the fact that innocence can’t be forever protected. Lastly, Holden calls everyone a phony when in reality he is the real phony.
When we were younger, all we ever wanted was to be a ‘big kid’. We wanted to be able to do things by ourselves and have independence and freedom from our parents. In J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, protagonist Holden Caulfield finally had this ‘freedom’. But was it what he wanted?
The three episodes shows his lack of insight in his life, ignorance of himself, and his inaccurate observations which clearly demonstrates why Holden is a unreliable narrator. During his time at New York, as a teenage boy, Holden is unaware and lack the insight in his life so as he narrates, he
Holden cannot handle accepting blame for his shortfalls. This is evident in the way he retells his story. Holden repeatedly tells the reader outrageous claims about his character. However when he ends up coming short on these expectations, he backtracks his previous statements in order to shift the blame away from himself. When he first discusses his fight with Stradlater he says, “All I know was I
(Salinger 98). Holden does not want to accept the fact that his brother Allie is dead and that he cannot be with him any more, so in his mind he replays the times that he and Allie had
Holden decides to use the baseball glove of his deceased brother Allie to write a composition for Stradlater, and although Holden does point out he wasn’t exactly thrilled about it, the statement about him not only being unable to think about any other topic, but revealing his interest and liking into the contemplation of Allie’s poems and of his late brother himself, shows his immense care he once had and now has for the brother he lost. Throughout the book that event changed him severely, as it created the sense he needs to be a “Catcher in the rye”, or preserving the innocence of not only himself, but also of the children, who have yet to experience the corruption and evil transferred by the adult world. These events help shape this similar tone, as it represents a darker and intuitive thinking in Holden’s character arc, and when this can be represented through a past event, it helps present the commotion and inconvenience of affairs as something that can be either only a minor event that can be brushed off, or as something that changes entire life’s. How death can drastically change someone’s views is a phenomenon that eventually everyone is going to endure at one point, and the effects on the psyche can be predominant in any
This is reflected in his dialogue and how he narrates the story, ultimately moving along from point to point, but constantly digressing and taking steps backward to explain completely unnecessary details. Holden accomplishes in one “chapter” what he could in half a chapter due to his squandering. In a more blatant way, the actual plot of these chapters is that Holden has flunked out of his current school, Pencey Prep, and moves on to life by himself in New York. He goes through a plethora of changes as a result of the new layers of stress and challenges added to his life by this new and unfamiliar setting. There is a severe duality that can be picked up in Holden’s behavior, a clash between his younger, naive complaints, and his wish to act maturely and be perceived as an adult.
The Catcher in the Rye is an example of a huge flashback, told by Holden from a mental hospital, one year after the main events of the novel. In Chapter 1, Holden says: “I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy” (Salinger.1). This shows that what Holden later on tells us is a flashback to his journey from around last December and that it has all already
