The Catcher In The Rye Depression Analysis

Holden’s Depression in The Catcher in the Rye In the United States, 20% of teens are depressed at some point in their teen years.. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is going through depression. But he somehow keeps a light humor to everything that happens. Salinger does a good job of keeping the book and the issues of being a struggling, depressed teen light and humorous. What would be different if Salinger didn’t use so much humor to help make light of Holden’s situation? Holden was depressed the whole entire novel. Women kept rejecting him, nobody respects him, people take advantage of him, his best friend is his sister, and his crush is someone who he wants to talk to all the time but won’t because of the fear of rejection. He also gets really depressed when he sees something sad. “That’s what I liked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing, that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch. It made me so damn sad when I thought about it, they're never

Nobody would have wanted to read the struggles of Holden all the time, throughout the entire book. Holden would not have been discovered as a main character. Not very many people would have wanted to read such a depressing book all the time. “What I really felt like was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would’ve done it, too, if I’d been sure someone would cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn’t want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory”(Salinger 116). This quote is a prime example of when Holden is depressed and Salinger made it kind of humorous. With the “I don’t want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory,”(Salinger 116) as his part of the humor. But it made Holden reevaluate the situation and not actually commit suicide. This just adds to the fact that Salinger humor made the book not so