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Leukemia In Catcher In The Rye

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Leukemia kills an average of 157 per 100,000 a year as of the latest count in 2017. In 1950 however, the five-year survival rate for children was between 1-3%. Every year hundreds of families were affected by the death of one of their children. For many this felt like an epidemic and was traumatizing for the siblings in those families. J.D. Salinger writes about a boy named Holden who was one of the siblings to one of these children that was lost due to leukemia. Since the death of his younger brother Allie, Holden has been dealing with the shock of having lost one of his idols. This surprise was so impactful that it ended up getting Holden stuck on trying to stop time so that he could live out his past without the challenges of life. This reflected in everything that Holden did from his fight with Stradlater to the experience with the prostitute. Throughout each of these events in The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger takes Holden’s transition into adulthood and brings to light the painful nature of maturity through Holden’s frustrations of finding his place in society. …show more content…

During the time that Allie was alive Holden was idolized for being so nice and intelligent. “His teachers were always writing letters to my mother, telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Allie in their class. And they weren’t just shooting the crap. They really meant it. But it wasn’t just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest…” (Salinger 38). Everything mentioned about Allie from Holden is positive compared to the phoniness that he points out in everyone else. Due to the idolization of Allie Holden had begun holding on to trying to “catch” Allie so that he wouldn’t fall into adulthood because Holden refuses to believe that Allie

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522 Words | 3 Pages

Ever since Allie died he has been a mess. He talks about how after Allie died, “[His parents] were going to have [him] psychoanalyzed and all, because [he] broke all the windows in the garage” (Salinger 39). He develops a negative outlook on life. This is the cause of Holden’s continuous downward spiral. He becomes more and more disturbed and eventually ends up in a mental institution.

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128 Words | 1 Pages

She is very dear to Holden and is almost like his best friend. Allie Caulfield is Holden’s younger brother who had tragically died at age eleven from leukemia. Holden used to be very close to Allie due to them only being two years apart. ‘Till that day, Holden still kept Allie’s left-handed baseball glove from when he was very young.

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705 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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499 Words | 2 Pages

Her mind was wandering all over the place”. By watching the behaviors of these people, Holden was able to gain an understanding of maturity. In the first few chapters of the novel, Holden mentioned that he lost his brother to leukemia but he didn’t give a character description of Allie for a reader to better understand the type of impacted Allie had on Holden’s adolescent years. Later on in the novel while completing an assignment for Stradlater, Holden began to talk more about Allie. Holden described Allie as a humble and overachieving person who all his teachers admired.

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893 Words | 4 Pages

Holden’s character development has been influenced by his family and what has happened in his younger years. When Holden was thirteen, his family lost Allie, who died from leukemia. Holden was angry and felt a pain due to this loss because he loved his younger brother and actually idealized him. “He stated, ‘It wasn’t just that he was the most intelligent member of the family... He was also nicest, in lots of ways...

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771 Words | 4 Pages

But in this case, it's holding Holden back from living his life and moving on. Because of this, Holden tends to stay away from people because if they get hurt he doesn't want to have to go through that kind of pain again. Also, by not letting go of Allie, Holden will stay living in the past, and if we've learned anything from Jay Gatsby, living in the past can lead to death. This out of place feeling is not uncommon though, and it can be caused by multiple things. For Holden, the fact remains that he was not there for his brother during his time of need and in the end it's become the biggest regret of his

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303 Words | 2 Pages

Holden feels helpless and alone. In summary, Allie’s death plays a large role in forming Holden’s personality. He tries to graze over the subject without much emotion because Allie’s death was sudden and tragic, and he has been unable to seek support for most of his

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1022 Words | 5 Pages

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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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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736 Words | 3 Pages

However, because Allie and Phoebe were too young and innocent, Holden would never criticize them. For Allie, Holden would remember him as an intelligent kid. " His teachers were always writing letters to my mother, telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Allie in their class." (Salinger, Chapter 5, Page 38). In chapter 22, Holden describes Phoebe as someone who would always listen. "

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720 Words | 3 Pages

Instead, Holden had to confront and cope with the loss of Allie, his younger brother, and the loss of his innocence as he became an adult. The loss of a loved one certainly would certain prove traumatic for most people, including Holden, as evidenced by the fact that he “broke all the goddam windows [in the garage] with [his] fist.” (Salinger 39) What’s significant about Allie’s death is that Holden never fully recovered from Allie’s death. While Holden did carry Allie’s baseball bat as a memory, he remained depressed throughout the book.

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720 Words | 3 Pages

Allies reoccurring presence in Holden 's life causes him to obsess about the unknown future. Since Allie was on of the only people holden was able to relate to, his death took a

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779 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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1125 Words | 5 Pages

Ultimately, Holden’s general loss of innocence can be attributed and supported mainly to Allie’s death. The theme of the book supports him attempting to save children from what he’s gone through by “losing their innocence,” but Holden aspires to be a “catcher in the rye” - which equates to someone who catches children from falling off of a cliff in a big field of rye (symbolizing inevitable losing innocence) that he believes they shouldn’t navigate themselves. We are able to observe many instances of this and analyze the specific details associated with each event, such as the Lavender Room and Phoebe, and discover a correlation between his alienation and his depression which stem from his loss of innocence - due to Allie’s

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659 Words | 3 Pages

He was so young and had so much ahead of him. Holden is now almost trying to let Allie’s legacy live through himself. He want’s to protect all children. He is afraid to grow up and he had a very hard time until he see’s Phoebe on the merry go round and he just realizes he has to let her fall and pick herself back up.

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