Catcher In The Rye Holdens Breakdown

A detailed Summary of Catcher In The Rye Holdens Breakdown

"It's not the last straw which broke the camel's back." In J.D. Salanger's, Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, has many mental breakdowns. Though it may not have been one solitary event that pushed him off the edge, the one thing that started the whole ordeal was his brother Allie's death. "He's dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946" (p. 38) Holden refers to his brother multiple times in the novel, showing how much impact Allie had on his life. Holden still will not believe that his brother is truly gone, an unhealthy feeling for such an adolescent. He still continues to talk to his brother, especially when he is depressed and longs for the "good old days" when his brother was still alive and his problems were not so severe. Holden does not believe that it is he who is going insane, but it is the rest of the world who has lost their mind for failing to see the hopelessness of their own lives.

Leukemia did not only kill Allie in a way it also killed Holden. Leukemia is a disease that does not kill you directly; it shuts down your immune system causing smaller things, which do not harm most people, to eventually ki

ll you because your body can not fend for itself. This is a metaphor of Holden's breakdown. Because Holden was so close to Allie when he died, he does not know what to feel about people anymore. He begins to grow a fear of commitment, and has trouble relating to his peers and working hard to attain goals. He worked hard to form such a close relationship with his brother, and what does he get from that? Pain when it does not work out the way he had hoped.

The original cause of Holden's breakdown was his brother's death. Like most mental breakdowns though, it did not come about suddenly. Like a cancer or aids, the original problem or "disease" takes over your immune system. It causes normal infections or viruses, in Holden's case, adolescence, to break you down, even though it is something that most people can mildly overcome and move on from. This did not work in Holden's case. He was stuck in the past and could not move on and work hard and make true friends because he was still stuck back with his brother Allie. Holden remembers the baseball glove that Allie had and wrote about it even when he knew the assignment was to write about a room or place. His desire is not to work hard to get a job and a girlfriend like so many boys his age is, but to become the "catcher in the rye", and abandon all responsibilities that goes along with living in the real world. Because of Allie's death, Holden's mental breakdown occurs, and he is not able to live a normal teenage life.

Holden not only has a "fear" of what he is experiencin

Some common words found in the essay are:
Allie I'd, Anyway Allie, Holden Leukemia, Maine July, Allie Holden, Holden Caulfield, Holden's Breakdown, Bobby Fallon's, holden's breakdown, Catcher Rye, bike meet front, home bike meet, don't disappear, mental breakdowns, real world, allie's death, bike meet, immune system, catcher rye, meet front, home bike,

Approximate Word count = 1036
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels