Symbolism of the baseball mitt - Catcher In the Rye

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Holden keeps Allie alive through the baseball mitt; it is a constant reminder of who Allie was and what he liked. Holden had a great amount of love and respect for Allie. The baseball mitt helps Holden get through the death of his brother. Holden carried the mitt with him in his suitcase, which shows how important Allie was in his life. Holden was only thirteen when Allie passed away, the loss of his brother affected him greatly. The night Allie died Holden slept in the garage and broke all the garage windows. Since then he kept the mitt because it was like keeping a piece of Allie. Allie showed that he had a passion for both athletics and poetry by writing on his glove. It was how he kept occupied when the field got boring. This shows he was not an extremist; he could have a lot of passion for both baseball and poetry at the same time. Holden only showed one other person Allie’s mitt before, Jane Gallagher. When Holden wrote Stradlater’s essay about the mitt, Stradlater did not understand due to his insensitivity toward the glove. "I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is." -Vladimir Nabokov. This quote strongly relates to Holden and the baseball mitt. The mitt symbolizes a memory of Allie and Holden’s love is what causes him to write about the mitt. Holden believes he wrote about the mitt only because he kept thinking of it. He really chose to write about the mitt because of his desire to express his love for Allie. Allie owned a left handed mitt, which is not as common as right handed mitts. This symbolizes how unique Allie was in Holden’s eyes. “You’d have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent. He was terrifically intelligent. His teachers were

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