Examples Of Allie's Death In Catcher In The Rye

In this quote, Holden is expressing how he wishes to save kids from “falling”, e.g. losing their innocence to what he sees as a corrupt and “phony” adult world. He wishes that he could save Allie from losing his innocence. By doing this, he is showing that he denies the permanence or significance of Allie’s death. He is holding onto a false hope that he can save Allie from losing his innocence (through death). Holden also isolates himself from society throughout the novel. For example, he misses Allie’s funeral, runs away from Pencey Prep, and fails to make phone calls to any of the people he wants to talk to. Holden is attempting to stay away from other people in an

Throughout the story Holden emphasizes his love for childhood innocence. In a passage he says “The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the golden ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything.” (Salinger 211) This immediately points to his affinity for innocence and not having the limits of being and adult. The

The death of Holden’s brother Allie at a young age adds to Holden’s negativity as well as stopping Holden from accepting inevitable change. Allie dies immaturely of leukemia. “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” (p. 39). Holden is in the hospital because he broke his fist, and he was unable to attend Allie’s funeral. Holden has trouble accepting Allie’s death because he never said goodbye to Allie. His relationship with Allie is similar to his maturity. Just as Holden is unable to accept his brother’s death, Holden is not able to accept that

Almost every person will have to say goodbye to a person they love who has died. When an adolescent goes through this experience it could traumatize them. John Green once said “Grief does not change you. It reveals you.” In other words, the loss of a loved one doesn’t change who you are but reveals your character. A novel that explores the effect of grief on a young person is The Catcher In The Rye by J.D Salinger. The Catcher In The Rye is a novel about a teenager, Holden Caulfield, who is confused and makes life changing mistakes because of his inability to accept his brother Allie’s death. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross made up the five stages of grief. The stages are denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance. Holden goes through these five stages throughout the novel. Salinger uses the baseball mitt, the red hunting hat, and the carousel to explore the protagonist struggle to resolve his grief.

Holden’s contempt for adults goes deeper than teen angst or a need to rebel. Rebellion is done out of a need for attention, however in Holden’s case he acts upon a fear and unresolved childhood trauma. Throughout the novel, we see our character Holden bouncing around denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Holden lost his brother to leukemia; Holden was 13, while Allie was 11. Holden was left devastated. At the beginning of this book we see Holden in isolation watching the football game on his own atop a hill after a long disappointing day in New York. Holden tells us about when he found out about Allie’s death, and in a fit of rage punched the windows out of the garage of their summer home, breaking his hand with the desire to punch the car windows out. Holden was unable to reconcile the loss of Allie. He missed the funeral because of his accident and continues to not visit the grave because of his denial of the situation. Holden used bargaining when he asked Allie to catch him in his fall through depression. Holden perceived the children of the rye as falling, while he was the only one actually falling with no one to catch him. Throughout the entire novel except in short bits, Holden claims to be depressed and hates being around those with less than himself. Finally, at the end of the book, Holden reaches an acceptance that he can’t control everything and life continues. He has to let go and allow others to reach for that carousel's golden ring even if they do fall along the

In Chapters V and VI, Holden’s feelings of anguish and anger are expressed in his actions. Holden describes the death of his younger brother, Allie. As a result of his overwhelming emotions, he broke all the windows in his garage with his fist. “It was a very stupid thing to do, I’ll admit, but I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it, and you didn’t know Allie.” (page 39) Holden couldn’t control his actions and acted recklessly. He does acknowledge that it was dumb to take out his anger by punching windows, but he did it on impulse.

Secondly, most teenagers have struggles grieving for the loss of of their loved ones. Holden struggles multiples of times to grief for the death of his younger brother, Allie, who died at the age of 11 due to leukemia. Holden writes about Allie for Stradlater’s english homework and tells the reader, “He was terrifically 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...But it wasn’t just that he as the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anyone...I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because i broke all the windows in the garage. I don 't blame them. I really don 't. I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the

     Holden becomes reluctant to change because of Allie’s death. The loss of Allie was a great change in Holden’s

What is grief and how does it affect someone? Throughout the novel The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield narrates his experiences during the “madman” period of his life (Salinger 3). As he tells his story, one can clearly tell Holden is grieving and is going through the five stages of Grief. Grief is a cycle of five stages that a person experiences after undergoing a loss of some kind. Before a person is able to move on from the loss, he or she has to go through the stages of grieving and make it to the fifth stage of acceptance. The time frame for this process varies from person to person but can range anywhere from six months to four years (staff). Holden grieves over the loss of his little brother, Allie, who died of cancer. By the time Holden reaches the acceptance stage at the end of the novel, he has been grieving for roughly four years. The stages of grieving include denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Holden suffers from the five stages of grief, with depression being the stage he maintains throughout most of the novel, which leads others to believing that he is only clinically depressed; however, he clearly is suffering from more than just depression.

Salinger highlights the struggle after a loved one’s death through the protagonist, Holden, who accounts the memories of his brother Allie: “He used to laugh so hard at something he thought of at the dinner table that he just about fell off his chair. I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don't blame them” (Salinger 38). At an adolescent age, Holden had to go through the tragedy of his brother's death, where he demonstrated strange behavior due to his emotional instability. Holden had ruined his friendship with Stradlater, who’d asked Holden to write him an English prompt where Holden wrote about Allie’s glove, but had disappointed Stradlater, thus Holden tore the paper. Holden became furious due to the connection Holden had with his brother, he portrayed the misunderstanding that society and adolescents have of one another after a

Holden uses innocence to describe the kids surrounding him. Phoebe and Allie stand out as examples. “‘I like Allie,’ I said. ‘And I like doing what I’m doing right now. Sitting here with you, and talking and thinking about stuff, and ---’” (Salinger, 171). In Holden’s mind, only children are innocent in this world. Children don’t have sexual desire; they are not fake. However, Allie’s death due to leukaemia destroys his belief in childhood innocence. He thinks that pure kids never die, but his brother’s death goes against his thoughts. To be able to deal with his sadness logically, he always thinks that his brother will come back just like the ducks in Central Park. Holden protects his belief in childhood innocence through the hope that the ducks will eventually return. What’s more, he also mentions he wishes to be the catcher in the rye in his conversation with Phoebe. He imagines children running around in a rye field. He says he would like to catch children before they fall from the end of the cliff. This is symbolism for Holden trying to protect childhood innocence from adulthood

Every time he talks about them, it seems like he idolizes them. He constantly praises and compliments them, which shows how Holden is sort of attracted to the idea of childhood. When Holden is still at Pencey Prep, he writes an essay for his friend Stradlater (Salinger 43). In this composition, he talks about Allie almost like he was a saint. Holden says Allie is “about fifty times as intelligent” as him and “never got mad at anybody” (Salinger 38). This and his description of Phoebe the same way (Salinger 182) both illustrate Holden’s fixation on children and childhood. Over the course of the novel, Holden becomes slightly more open to the idea of both mentally and physically entering adulthood. At first, he tries to be his idealized version of an adult, by going to nightclubs and trying to talk to women. But he soon realizes that adulthood isn’t as good as it originally seemed – this is where he starts to tie adulthood with

Holden Caulfield encounters himself facing issues of acceptance of death, growing up, and parental neglecting that prevents him from completely understanding why it is that he is severely depressed. One of the hardships Holden must cope with is his inability to come to terms with death, of his younger brother, Allie. We often discover

Holden experiences extreme difficulty accepting his current realities and one of the main factors causing this is the lasting negative impact his brother Allies death had on his life. Firstly, when Holden decides to leave his school, he tells readers , “I don’t care if it’s a sad goodbye or a bad goodbye, but when I leave a place, I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse” (Salinger, 4). Holden’s need for closure is evident in this quote. When Allie died, it was very unexpected and he was not prepared to let him go, resulting in his denial that his brother is actually

Holden has experienced clusters of severe trauma throughout his entire life. His brother Allie died of Leukemia a few years ago and Holden was so upset that he punched all of the windows out in his garage that night. Neither Holden, nor his family have yet to deal with the loss of Allie, which clearly affected Holden very much. Also Holden was a witness to James Castle’s suicide at a private school that he once attended. James Castle had been bullied and could no longer handle the situation, so he resorted to suicide by hurling himself out of a building window and falling to his death. Although Holden was not incredibly close with James Castle, he was still affected deeply by the sight of the incident.