The night of his death, Holden broke all the windows in the garage and had to be hospitalized. Ever since Allie’s death, Holden has tried to deny it. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is about an adolescent (Holden Caulfield) getting kicked out of school and living in New York alone for a few days. In that short time, Holden learns to accept reality as it is, thus accepting the death of his brother.
He is socially inept, awkward with people and has a set of ideals by which he lives which indicates that he is suffering from depression. Holden is suffering from a mental disorder which is caused by the death of his brother Allie of which he has not allowed himself to grief properly. In Chapter 5 Holden talks about his brother Allie and what he did after he died. He says “I was only 13 and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage”. Holden narrates that he smashed windows of the garage and cars, and he literally lost it.
Benjamin Braddock, from “The Graduate”, feels alone, confused and doesn’t know what to do with his life. He, in many ways, mirrors Holden Caulfield, from The Catcher in The Rye. They are both surrounded by people they consider phoney and consumed by confusing thoughts of sex. They both feel alone and as though they have no one to talk to. Even though Holden spends three days alone in NYC at age sixteen, and Ben spends weeks sleeping with a married woman in California at age twenty two, they share the same haunting feelings of loneliness and depression.
He never knew his father so he doesn’t have a good sense of his own identity, he makes poor decisions in raising his son’s by instilling a false sense of what it takes to be successful, and allows them to steal and cheat. Willy’s father left when he was a baby and he only has one memory of his dad, “All I remember is a man with a big beard, and I was in mamma’s lap, sitting around a fire, and some kind of high music” (Miller 1232). After his older brother Ben leaves shortly thereafter to search for their father, it is assumed that Willy doesn’t have a male figure in his life during his upbringing to teach him the things that a father would teach a son, such as morals, and a sense of values, possibly helping him form a sense of identity. Because of this Willy feels a tremendous sense of loss. Willy confesses his sense of loss over his father’s abandonment to Ben.
Allie, Holden's young brother who died several years beforehand is a major symbol throughout the novel. When Holden remembers incidents from his past involving him, his attitude changes, such as when he writes the composition about Allie's baseball glove or when Holden remembers breaking his hand after punching all of the windows after Allie’s passing. "I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddamn windows with my fist, just for the hell of it”, (Salinger 39). He feels that Allie was one of the few people who was normal in a world full of phonies. More importantly, Allie represents the innocence and childhood that Holden strives to find throughout his three-day journey.
Holden is afraid of growing up and becoming an adult – Discuss J.D. Salinger’s unique novel ‘The catcher in the Rye’ explores the life of a cynical teenager, Holden Caulfield, who is stuck between childhood and adulthood. Salinger highlights that Holden’s goal is to resist the process of maturity and entering adulthood. This is evidenced and demonstrated by Holden’s persistent fear of change, his strong opinion on the ‘phonies’ of adult world, his difficulty of moving on from the past and his impulsive personality. Holden’s fear of change contributes to his resistance of the process of maturity.
He holds on to his brother Allie’s death as well as holding on to Allie’s baseball glove which has poems written all over it. Every time something changes or Holden feels uncomfortable and lonely, he brings up his brother Allie. After Holden left Mr. Antolini’s house, something very spooky started happening. Every time [Holden] came to the end of the block and stepped off the goddam curb, [he] had this feeling that [he’d] never get to the other side of the street…and nobody’d ever see [him] again…. Every time [he’d] get to the end of a block [he’d] make believe [he] was talking to [his] brother Allie…then when [he] reached the other side of the street without disappearing, [he’d] thank him.
Due to Tomas Hardy’s fatalistic outlook of life, Hardy presents the character of Tess as having a variety of forces working against her efforts to control her destiny. Fate approaches Tess in a great variety of forms. Fate is present throughout the novel through chance and coincidence, nature; and time. Hardy incorporates
Throughout the novels, Frank McCourt, the protagonist in Angela’s Ashes and Paul Morel, the protagonist in Sons and Lovers face many similar family issues. In the novel Sons and Lovers, Paul grows up living with an alcoholic father. Paul’s father, Walter Morel, is does not support his family and is never home because he is always out wasting away his money on alcohol. Walter is also a violent drunk who comes home from the bar and fights with his wife every night due to her endless nagging. “She tried to force him to face things.
Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist Holden Caulfield discusses his journey from the inside of an insane asylum. As most he holds a fear. His fear is of seeing the innocence and purity of childhood lost. This fear allows him to realize the painfulness of his growing up, the phoniness of the cruel adult world, and the path in which he wants his life to follow. These realizations develop from his lying and deception, his fear of relationships and intimacy, and his self imposed loneliness.