Holden Caulfield Instances Off Loss and Goodbyes

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Essay about Holden Caulfields’ attitude towards loss and death Holden Caulfield is a teenager that has a very negative attitude towards change and thus the whole concept of death and loss which implies change. This attitude towards change we can see through his words about the museum that he likes so much as all the displays always stay the same, its static and never changes, from when he was a kid to the present, it’s still the same. He likes continuity. The first instance where it becomes clear that he handles change very poorly is where he is expelled from Pency Prep for not applying himself and thus failing 4 out of his 5 subjects. He is standing on top of Thomson Hill overlooking the school and the football field. He tries to remember things he didn’t like about the school so as to make the pain of leaving less. He thinks about his coat and gloves that were stolen and says that this school is full of crooks. “Pency was full of crooks, Quite a few guys came from these very wealthy families but it was full of crooks anyway.” (Salinger 1994:3) He also rejects Pency and tries to lighten the situation by saying “So I got the ax. They give guys the ax quite frequently at Pency.” He almost sound as if he doesn’t care about being kicked out. He recalls a memory of him and 2 guys called Robert Tichner and Paul Campell chucking a football around one evening till it got so dark that they almost couldn’t see it but kept going. Holden says “ You need some kind of goodbye sad or bad but need goodbye otherwise you feel even worse.” I believe that Holden refers here to his brother Allie’s death meaning he didn’t get to say goodbye at the funeral as he was in hospital with broken hands (he smashed all the garage windows when Allie died). So Holden had to get some sort of closure on the whole Pency prep chapter that was coming to an end. The second instance

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