What Are The Effects Of Holden Dying

Someone once said, “The hardest part is not losing a loved one, it is the influence it has on your life without them.” In the novel, “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, the main character learns the effects of a loved one dying has. The loss of a young sibling causes an unstable mother, long term depression, and a desire for all children to stay safe and innocent. At a young age of 13, Holden Caufield starts to rely on himself when his mother begins to have nervous breakdowns, after Holden’s younger brother, Allie, dies. When Holden is describing his mother as he gets ready for his date with Sally, he says, “She hasn’t felt too healthy since Allie died. She’s very nervous.” (107) Allie dying leaves their mother in a state of nervous

As a result, when Allie dies, Holden is locked in a deep state of long-term depression. When Holden finishes talking to the old lady at the school, she wishes him good luck. Just after she says this, Holden explains, “God, how I hate it when somebody yells ‘Good luck!’ at me when I’m leaving somewhere. It’s depressing.” (202) Holden literally turns anything positive into something negative. The old lady’s good intentions to wish him well is depressing according to Holden. Thus, Holden’s depression dominates his mind, as he perceives a simple act of kindness into a depressing statement. Furthermore, when Holden is walking through Phoebe’s school, he says, “You can’t ever find a place that’s nice a peaceful, because there isn’t any.” (204) Holden cannot see the good in anything. He states that there is no place in the whole entire world that is nice and peaceful, even though lots of people can see the beauty in many places. Holden finds negative aspects in everything he sees, and that is what he chooses to focus on. Overall, Holden always focuses on the negative, and cannot find happiness anywhere, because of the awful state of depression he is in. In addition, Holden turns his sadness over Allie’s death into the determination to help other

When Phoebe asks Holden what he wants to be when he is older, he says, “Thousands of little kids...What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and don’t look where they’re going…I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.” (173) Holden states that he wants to stand in the rye, and catch kids all day if they happen to run over the cliff. Keeping children sae is very important to him because he does not want to experience the death of a young child again, since it will bring back the sadness of Allie dying. Furthermore, the two people closest to Holden are both children, Phoebe and the late Allie. Altogether, Holden wants to protect children to prevent them from dying at a young age because Allie’s death is already too much for him to handle. He is even going beyond the limits to do this, as he is willing to dedicate his life to it. Secondly, as Holden is walking through the school, he notices, “Somebody’d written ‘Fuck you’ on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would se it…” (201) The fact that when Holden sees a curse word on the wall, he immediately thinks about how it impacts the children, show that kids are a priority to him. It also becomes apparent that not only does he want to keep children