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How Does Holden Caulfield Change Throughout The Novel

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Throughout J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Holden can be seen carrying along with him many struggles and problems he faces on his shoulders. He is antisocial, and seems to have a strong hatred for most things and people around him for a variety of reasons. Despite the assumed comfort being alone might bring Holden because of the way he talks about his feelings towards the world around him, throughout the novel, his notable attempts to find connection and companionship appear more and more as the story progresses and as Holden gets more lost with his life. Even though Holden’s annoyance with the outside world and the people in it seems to gives an excuse for being ok when things get lonely, as his journey progresses and things go more …show more content…

The primary way this is demonstrated is through Holdens disappointing attempts to call Jane while wandering the streets at night, and giving the same lousy excuse every time: “I started toying with the idea, while I kept standing there, of giving old Jane a buzz... the only reason I didn’t do it was because I wasn’t in the mood” (82). After considering the idea, Holden is quick to shut it down with a disappointing excuse. We can see Holden say the same thing a few chapters later in the novel, shortly after buying a record for his younger sister, Phoebe. Holden says, “I thought of giving old Jane a buzz, to see if she was home yet and all, but I wasn’t in the mood” (137). This repeated action of Holden’s clearly shows his desire to connect with the people he misses and cares about the most, but it also reveals that something is restraining him from reaching out to them for companionship, as his unreliable excuses fail to shield Holden’s true feelings. Holden’s fruitless consideration and excuses plainly display his hand held out for connection, but also the fact that something is pulling him back …show more content…

Through Holden’s complicated journey of attempts to reach out to find companionship, or even just someone to talk to, someone he commonly mentions seeming to bring him a sense of comfort is his little brother, Allie, who passed away during Holden’s childhood. Allie is someone Holden deeply cares about, if not the person he cares about and loves the most. One way this is demonstrated is through a writing piece he did for a friend at his old school, Pencey, in which he described the only thing he has left of Allie: “I wrote about my brother Allie’s baseball mitt… You’d have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about 50 times more intelligent… He was also the nicest, in lots of ways” (49). This moment of recalling the moments he has with Allie, and looking back at what Allie was like was a heartfelt moment for Holden, and him choosing to write the essay about Allie’s mitt shows Holden’s connection and love for Allie and the relationship he had with him. Later on towards the end of the novel, we can see Holden frantically walking down the streets yet again, as he finds himself slowly losing touch of reality, and starting to do strange things. When this happens, Holden recognizes that his first instinct was to call for his brother to help him. Holden explains, “Then I started doing something else… I'd make believe I was

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At the beginning of the novel, Holden made it clear that he did not want to talk about his past, and told the readers that he was only going to tell the story of what happened to him at Pencey Prep. While doing the description of the glove, Holden recounts events from his life that included Allie, showing parts of his past. Holden may have acted in this manner because he admired Allie, and was close to him before he died and Holden

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This hindered Holden’s way to communicate and relate to others, this affected his relationships that he already has with his family. Holden’s relationship with Allie is one of his strongest relationships we see in the novel and one time we see it is when Phoebe asks him, “Name one thing you like?” and later Holden responds, “I like Allie” expressing his relationship with him and also how he doesn’t like anything except Allie and Phoebe (Salinger 169 and 171). It highlights that he likes innocent kids and also his relationships with others aren’t very good. Holden's good relationships are only with his younger siblings which isn't good in the adult world.

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He is always seeking human contact and love, but has a hard time forming intimate relationships with new people. His alienation is mainly due to Holden critiquing people for being phony and not being unique and different. Because Holden is pushing people away from him such as Sally Hayes's, Ward Stradlater, and Jane Gallagher, it provides him a deeper loneliness. For instance, on his date with Sally Hayes, his loneliness makes him insult her by saying “You give me a royal pain in the ass, if you want to know the truth” (133). As the story advances, Holden's isolation is a way for him to protect himself and to single himself out of the phony world.

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After talking about his childhood memories with his brother he states, ¨He is dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You´d have like him.¨ Then after talking about Allie’s old baseball mitt he said, ¨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¨(43-44). Allie’s death is used to show the unexpected change that Holden had experienced during his life. Allie was only eleven when he died, and Holden was thirteen.

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Holden still sees Allie was the person he aspires to be but unlike Horatio, Allie is just a memory Holden has. These individuals were the people in both of their lives that always seemed to see passed all the faults they had and helped them became who they wanted to

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458 Words | 2 Pages

In Holden's opinion Allie had many good qualities, he was smart, he was patient and "God, he was a nice kid" Holden sees all children like Allie. He loves the way kids are sweet and honest. For most of the book, he wishes for them to stay this way forever and never grow into adults. He represents his desire for permanence with the history museum. "The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was."

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Throughout “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D Salinger, Holden Caulfield shows great difficulty making long and meaningful connections with other people. Holden believes he is the normal one but it is actually the other way around. He holds on to a deep emotional road block of the death of his innocent brother Allie. Holden keeps this dragging around with him which causes him to veer from connecting and having a long term relationship with others.

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He was terrifically intelligent”(43). Holden was jealous of Allie, even if he didn’t realize it. He was jealous that Allie never had to go through the pain of growing up. When Straddler asked him to compose a paper for him, the first thing that came to his mind to write about was Allie. He also thought about Allie all the time, particularly when he was nervous or facing unwanted change.

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Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye Robert Evans writes “Holden seems remote from nearly everyone. We do get inside his head, and some readers clearly empathize with his thoughts and feelings, but Holden rarely invites us (or anyone) into genuine communion. Instead, his general attitude is cynical and judgmental, and he rarely finds—and rarely seeks—a sincere, enduring bond with another person.” (Evans) This behavior from Holden clearly shows that he may have some mental or social issues right from the start of the book.

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Jane would place her hand on the back of Holden’s neck, a gesture Holden thinks women reserve for “their husband or their little kid” (89). Holden loved this because it illustrated her feelings of connection and comfort with him. Reflecting on these moments Holden thinks, “it’s so pretty it just about kills you” (89). Holden strongly values the special relationship he shared with Jane and desperately wants to find such a connection again. He feels so lonely and remembering Jane helps him believe that by continuing to search, he may discover something similar.

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1092 Words | 5 Pages

Allie never grew up, and Holden does not want to mature without him. At the novel’s end, Holden proclaims, “Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody”(Salinger 234). Although Holden's narration throughout the novel indicates his dislike for most people he interacts with, Holden misses all of the people he said he did not like. Holden’s carefree persona is an act to mask all the complexities in his mind.

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1350 Words | 6 Pages

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

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656 Words | 3 Pages

In Holden’s mind becoming “the catcher in the rye “means that he can still catch Allie from falling off the cliff. This is relevant to Holden’s depression because everything around him is telling him to grow up but instead he runs away from it in fear that is will pull him farther apart from his relationship with his brother Allie. Holden is on the edge of becoming an adult which creates more pressure and leads him to

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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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1305 Words | 6 Pages

Her ability to save Holden is recognized when he states metaphorically, “I don’t want you to get the idea she was a goddam icicle or something” (79). Going along with the motif of vision, Holden is unable to see that an icicle girl, who is still moving and not a frozen fish, is exactly what he needs. Nevertheless, his continued practice of never explaining himself is symbolized when he pretends he has a bullet in his guts and keeps his hand under his jacket “to keep the blood from dripping” (150). He wants to call Jane, but realizes he isn’t “much in the mood” for it (150). It’s important to note that Jane alone cannot save Holden or else she would actually been in the book.

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