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How Are Gatsby And Holden Caulfield Alike

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In The Catcher and the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield would like The Great Gatsby because he has much in common with Gatsby. After all, they are both fixated on the past. Holden is stuck in the past with his brother Allie’s death. Allie was only eleven when he died of leukemia. The tragedy of his younger brother’s death left him lost in the way he looked at life and a lack of connection with other people. He always brings up Allie in such a beautiful way and never has anything bad to say about him. He says how “[Allie] was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody.God, he was a nice kid, though he used to laugh so hard at something he thought of at the dinner table that he just about fell off his chair.” (Salinger …show more content…

In addition to both Holden and Gatsby’s fixation on their past, they both look at the world in a very pessimistic way. Holden is like this because he is unable to see the good in life and always views everything as depressing due to his negative personality. This is shown twice in chapter two when Holden enters Mr. Spencer’s home and the smell of Vicks Nose Drops makes him feel depressed. Another moment in this chapter is also when Holden sees the clothing Mr. Spencer has on and “what made it even more depressing, old Spencer had on this very sad, ratty old bathrobe that he was probably born in or something” (Salinger 10). As Holden walks into the house, many things that come up bring a sense of sadness to him, including the smell of Vicks Nose Drops and what Mr. Spencer had on as Holden walked in. This shows the pessimistic side of Holden’s view of the world in a negative manner. This connects to how Gatsby also has this pessimistic view of his world where even though he has all this wealth he is still sad every day because he has no one to share it

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My favorite sentence from this reading had to be, "The arms were in sad shape, because everybody was always sitting on them, but they were pretty comfortable chairs." (Salinger 18). In the short sentence, I furthermore get a glimpse of Holden's voice and personality, this time by seeing him contradict himself. He describes how sad looking and beat up the chair is, yet goes on to say how nice and comfortable it is. This to me is a very important clue to Holden's overall personality in regard to life.

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Meanwhile, Holden is still stuck in the past. The change that is occuring in his life is affecting his current emotions and his ability to move forward. When forced with abrupt, unforeseen change, people desire to hold onto the familiar. Salinger uses the death of Holden 's family and friends to show the tragic change that he has to deal with.

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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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This quote is considered to show the pessimistic view of Holden “When I finally got down off the radiator and went out to the hat-check room, I was crying and all. I don’t know why, but I was. I guess it was because I was feeling so damn depressed and lonesome”(Salinger 169). This quote shows much of how Holden feels as he uses depressed and lonesome together in the novel. The way Holden feels is that when he is lonely it makes depressed.

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