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How Does Holden Affect Allie's Death

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Recommended: Discuss the impact of Allie death on holden in catcher in the rye

At some point in life, everyone is going to lose someone close to them. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye follows Holden Caulfield, whose younger brother, Allie, died at a very young age. Holden gets kicked out of four different schools and after the fourth ends up exploring New York City. The death of Allie affected Holden and all of his family in many ways. Through the effects shown in The Catcher In The Rye, Salinger depicts the struggles of grief and loss in various stages of life. Holden takes Allie's death very harshly. The night that Allie died, he slept in the garage and ended up punching out all the windows in the garage and kept going until his hand was broken and he “had to go to the hospital and all”(Salinger 201). Allie’s death affects Holden as a person, not …show more content…

As a result of this, Phoebe is forced to mature faster than a child her age normally would. Holden notes this on page 217 saying, “She sounds like a goddamn schoolteacher sometimes, and she’s only a little child.” Phoebe has to be more grown up than she should be because she has to take care of herself and those around her. She doesn’t have the same maternal care most children her age do, so she must provide herself and Holden with that care. She takes on the role of almost an older sibling to Holden, offering him advice and money when he needs it. It is not normal for a sixteen year old to ask his ten year old sister to borrow money. Phoebe is forced to care and provide for both of them, and tries to keep Holden accountable in coming back saying, “"You can take it all. You can pay me back. Bring it to the play” (Salinger 97). Phoebe gives Holden extra money so that he has more of an incentive to go to her play, at least so that he can return the change. She fears that Holden will also leave her, in the same way that D.B. left to go to Hollywood. In what seems to be a simple coming of age story,

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For instance, even after so much time has passed, Holden names his dead sibling when asked by Phoebe if there’s anything in the world he cares about. Without memories of Allie, there is apparently nothing else to fit that claim. Allie’s old baseball mitt is still Holden’s most prized possession, and, due to its close personal nature compared to any other items on hand, he writes about it for an assignment even when it goes against the prompt. Therefore, taking note of the effects the death still deals presently, and considering Holden “broke all the windows” in the garage with his fists the day after the death occurred, it makes sense to conclude Allie’s loss has caused him to embrace a jaded view of life and humanity (Salinger, 39). Despite it all, Holden’s venture to the park with Phoebe seems to

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Throughout the novel, the topic of death is reoccurring in Holden 's mind. Whether he 's in school, doing homework, or aimlessly walking around New York City, Allie 's presence or lack thereof is always looming. It escalates to the point that Holden is always thinking about his own death, but more more specifically he 's fear of being forgotten: "Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddamn curb, I had this feeling that I 'd never get to the other side of the street. I thought I 'd just go down, down, down and nobody 'd ever see me again. Boy did it scare me"(256).

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