The night that Allie died, Holden “broke all the windows in the garage”, symbolizing the turning point in Holden’s life, the point where innocence is no more (Salinger 38). Holden saw Allie as innocence itself, and when he was gone, so was his own childhood purity, trapping him in the shallow end of the pool. Although Holden narrates the story when he is seventeen years old, he still lives in a child’s mind because he was deprived of a proper childhood due to his brother’s death. He categorizes every adult, every person with authority or maturity, as a phony. Holden describes his budding classmates at Pencey Prep as phonies, using them as an excuse to fail out of school once again (Salinger 13).
Allie, Holden's younger brother who died several years earlier, was a major symbol throughout the story. When Holden remembers incidents from his past involving Allie, his attitude changes, such as when he writes the composition about Allie's baseball glove or when Holden broke his hand after punching all of the windows after Allie died. "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". (Salinger 39) He feels that Allie was one of the few people who were not phony in a world full of phonies. More importantly, Allie represents the innocence and childhood that Holden strives to find throughout his three-day journey.
The violent events occurring throughout his life were his primary influence for Nineteen Eighty-Four, however continual illness and the death of his wife helped to form his morals and beliefs, which essentially influenced his greatest novels. The setting of Nineteen Eighty-Four is essentially influenced by Orwell’s sickness and the current state of war around the world. The novel is set in a particularly gloomy era, where Winston feels like everything is not quite right. "Orwell himself told his friends that 1984 would have been less gloomy had he not been so ill—it was a very dark, disturbing, and pessimistic work”. This gloomy atmosphere is influenced by Orwell’s current state of depression, as he has been diagnosed with tuberculosis and he is still recovering from his wife’s death.
Somehow Keller managed to flee to Darwin, leaving the world to think that he had not survived the terrors of the holocaust “A friend saw him fall, he died…” During his time in Darwin, Keller also survived cyclone Tracy, “by sheltering beneath the supine…”- the piano which also costed him his family. Keller resembled a cat; he was born with nine lives. Paul endured a string of tough times when he first moved to Darwin. He was bullied and didn’t warm to Keller until later on in the novel. The music room became his place for refuge after he found himself being a victim of bullying.
Sure others will place restrictions on our desires, but these restrictions are there insofar as we allow them to be. This is being solely applied to Duberman and his suffering in his younger days. He failed to confront himself about his sexuality and accept it, which renders him emotionally unstable. So he readily accepted his sexuality as a disease and self-prescribed as being incapable of a lasting fulfilling relationship with another man, as psychiatry would claim during the time. And in essence he became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When his brother Allie died his whole world came to a halt and he didn’t feel any more happiness. Allie had died of Cancer and it took a toll on him mentally and emotionally. In RWC, Plato’s death made an impact on Jim as well. Plato was Jim’s only true friend when no one else was there. Plato died not from sickness but from a gunshot.
One night while Pat is sleeping he imagines Kenny G and starts screaming and hallucinating, his mum and dad wake up and try to help him to snap out of it, in doing so Pat accidently hits his mum and she falls to the floor. Pat’s dad becomes angry so he jumps on Pat and starts punching him, Pat’s mum tries to stop him, and when he does he says that Pat should go back to the hospital and that he shouldn’t have come out yet. Pat’s mum though tells Pat that everything will be ok and
As you read, you enter the mind of Holden and experience everything he is thinking, which isn’t exactly what I would imagine goes through the mind of every other teenage boy. Holden’s relationships with other people aren’t exactly normal and Holden is extremely affected by the death of his brother, Allie. He constantly finds himself alone and depressed and basically just lost in the world. It’s clear that Holden is psychologically disturbed. To start off, we know that Holden is a troubled kid from the get-go.
It begins with the traumatic episode itself, when Holden learns that Allie has died. Rather than mourn with the family in the home, he resorts to violence and isolation as a coping mechanism. He says, “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” (39). Retreating to the garage is symbolic of Holden’s self-imposed isolation, which becomes one of his primary problems as he enters adolescence. His brother’s death begins his descent into depression, beginning with this night.
David’s father became angry with his son because he did not admit to helping Sophie, a deviation, escape. Because of this David’s father decides to hit him. At the end of page 52 David lies in bed after his whipping, wishing he could have kept Sophie’s secret. “‘I couldn’t help it, Sophie,’ I sobbed, ‘I couldn’t help it,’” The implication that the author makes is that David’s beating is even worse since he was standing up for his friend. Child abuse still takes place today.