Leukemia In Catcher In The Rye

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.

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