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What Makes Holden Misunderstood

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When one is misunderstood, they may feel unseen or even hurt. In J.D Salinger's Catcher in the Rye the main character Holden is misunderstood by many readers across the world and Misunderstands other people in his world . Sallinger created Holden to have many similar characteristics as himself, a person who is also misunderstood and at times judged by others. Holden is mostly viewed as an immature, hypocritical, and cynical teen in 1949. However, Under each of those characteristics he is a grieving young adult who is coping from the loss of his brother, the loss of his innocence and the loss of affection and true care from his parents. 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 …show more content…

In this Chapter Holden visits his former teacher, Mr.Antolini at his apartment to stay the night. In the middle of the night Holden is awakened by Antolini essentially petting him and admiring him as he sleeps. Holden describes the occurrence in first person which truly alters Antolini’s intentions as the reader is only being informed of what Holden states and how exactly he states it. Holden makes the occurrence out to be a type of inappropriate gesture from Antolini and even accuses Antolini of being a pervert by stating “When something perverty like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard”. Both Holden and readers misunderstood Antolini's actions. The gesture should be seen as a parental type gesture of Antolini sharing care and consideration. Holden is caught off guard from that type of parental figure’s affection as he and his parents are not close and he has been away from a true parental figure for some

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This is how he is blind in a sense. When Holden stayed at Mr. Antolini's house, an incident happened. "What he was doing was, he was sitting on the floor right next to the couch, in the dark and all, and he was sort of petting me or patting me on the head." (192) Holden instantly assumed that Mr. Antolini was being perverted with him. There is a good chance though, that instead of being flitty with him, Mr. Antolini was actually just attempting to comfort him after everything he had been through like a father would with his young son.

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They say some people Holden encounters weren’t completely selfish because they tried to help him; however, these people ended up doing more harm to his situation, making him feel even more lost and alone. When Holden desperately needs lodging after a night of heavy drinking and looking for meaning, he calls up Mr. Antolini, who is more than happy to help; however, when Holden wakes up on the couch, he is deeply disturbed by what his former teacher was doing: “What he was doing was, he was sitting on the floor right next to the couch, in the dark and all, and he was sort of petting me or patting me on the goddam head...boy, was I nervous! I started putting on my damn pants in the dark. I could hardly get them on I was so damn nervous. I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they’re always being

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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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Also, when Holden wakes up to Mr. Antolini patting him on the forehead in the middle of the night, he tells us of similar “perverty” stuff that happened to him multiple times as a child. Therefore, he clearly struggles to trust anyone he both meets and knows, which shows his insecurity and skepticism of others. Another instance of this is Holden’s relationship with D.B. Although Holden says that they were once close, he now considers D.B. as phony because of the work he does in the film industry. In doing so, he loses a close relationship with his brother, just because he feels

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