Holden says, “So what I did, I wrote about my brother Allie's baseball mitt. It was a very descriptive subject. It was. My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt. He was left-handed.
The postwar setting in J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye influenced the main character Holden Caulfield feelings of disillusionment during a time when conformity left many postwar adults fearing communism in a growing postwar economy. The novel illustrates the main characters’ experiences from the time he is expelled from boarding school over a period of three days. Upon his premature departure from the school, due to a fight with his roommate, Holden makes his way to New York City, where he meets various people in hopes of gaining a form of acceptance and understanding from them to help his troubles (Kirkwood 29). As a result, his needs are deprived, as Holden feels he does not fit anywhere; believing that all the people around him are
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
Allie was Holden’s Younger brother, who had died from leukemia before the novel even started. Throughout the novel Holden praise Allie, and always says how he was better than him in every way. “You’d have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent. He was terrifically intelligent.
Both Holden Caulfield from J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Finn from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are the main protagonists of their respective texts. Both Caulfield and Huck undertake a journey in their text, in which the character learns from their experiences and meet new people, who alter their outlook on life. Both these characters are still not mature, and this is shown throughout the two books, but the boys have to mature soon, as they are becoming adults.
The loss of Allie links directly to Holden's loss of innocence. “…the night he [Allie] died…I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it…I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it, and you didn’t know Allie” (Salinger 39). Salinger uses Holden
Then I started doing something else. Every time I’d get to the end of a block I’d make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I’d say to him, ‘Allie, please don’t let me disapper’” (Salinger 108)... These flashbacks and fastforwards show how scrambled Holden’s mind is, it makes the reader think that the story is taking place over the span of a few weeks but instead it starts on a Thursday and ends on a Sunday morning.
Holden recalls Allie’s baseball mitt, describing it as a paper he was writing for his
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.
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.
Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual”. In the book Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield’s lies become habitual throughout the book. Holden is a sixteen-year-old boy, who has been kicked out of several schools including, most recently, Pencey Prep. Holden’s younger brother, Allie, died when Holden was only thirteen and his older brother is too busy working for Hollywood to care about Holden. Although his mother cares immensely for him, Holden saddens her by failing academically.
In this quote he tells that his brother died. This shows his brother died when he was young. Furthermore he dies as an innocent child who was not exposed to the adult world or the “phoniness.” Allie's death was tragic to Holden but maybe, in some ways Holden wanted the death himself, he wanted to preserve his innocence. Another point that shows Allie's mitt represents innocence is when Holden says Allie used to read poems on his glove while playing baseball which he wrote before the game so he wouldn’t be bored.
“Innocence is always unsuspicious”- Joseph Joubert The loss of innocence isn’t some big celebration when you hit a certain age, or have a certain experience, it is something that comes when you aren’t looking. J.D. Salinger was a man who kept to himself, didn’t offer many interviews, and wanted to make a difference. In this novel, he has woven the story of Holden Caulfield a sixteen year old, who has an adventure in New York City before going home and taking responsibility for his actions that fall. Throughout his time in the city, he matures and learns to look at the big picture.
A. Allie’s death causes Holden to become obsessed with death and this obsession makes him believe that growing up and becoming a “phonie” is like dying; this belief that is planted inside Holden’s head when Allie died is what sends him on a quest to preserve children’s innocence and save them from the “death” of growing up. B. Salinger includes the traumatic story of Allies death that happened years in advance to provide an explanation for Holden’s obsession with death and how he sees loss of innocence as equivalent to dying. Allie died with his innocence still intact, so Holden does not want other children to grow up and have their innocence “die”. C. Holden even admits to being mentally unstable after his brother’s traumatic death when he says, “I was only 13, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all
Catcher in the Rye In the book Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger, the narrator and protagonist Holden Caulfield a sixteen year old junior undergoes a series of changes. Holden learns multiple life changing lessons; one of them is you must grow up. In the beginning of the novel, Holden starts out as “that kid”; the one with the parents who expect him to get into an ivy league school, and end up with a kid with no intentions of doing so. At the beginning of the book it is very apparent that Holden lacks motivation; he also has hit rock bottom.
