Examples Of Grief In Catcher In The Rye

Grief is a dominant emotional force that masses of people who suffer losses succumb to. How do people deal with grief? In 1969, the psychologist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross construed five possible stages of grief that people undergo to explain the emotions one feels during grief (Gregory). These stages, in chronological order, are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Kübler-Ross acknowledged that not all people experience the stages in a linear way, as well as noting that grief can be a “rollercoaster”, with a person In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield suffers the loss of his younger brother Allie to leukemia before the plot begins. This raises the question of how Holden deals with his loss. Throughout the Catcher in the Rye, Holden exhibits the characteristics of the five stages of grief.

Almost every person will have to say goodbye to a person they love who has died. When an adolescent goes through this experience it could traumatize them. John Green once said “Grief does not change you. It reveals you.” In other words, the loss of a loved one doesn’t change who you are but reveals your character. A novel that explores the effect of grief on a young person is The Catcher In The Rye by J.D Salinger. The Catcher In The Rye is a novel about a teenager, Holden Caulfield, who is confused and makes life changing mistakes because of his inability to accept his brother Allie’s death. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross made up the five stages of grief. The stages are denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance. Holden goes through these five stages throughout the novel. Salinger uses the baseball mitt, the red hunting hat, and the carousel to explore the protagonist struggle to resolve his grief.

On July 18, 1946, Holden Caulfield suffered the loss of his younger brother, Allie, beginning his life of despair and grief. It is often understood that grief consists of seven emotional stages: shock, denial, bargaining, guilt, anger, depression, and acceptance. In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger's utilizes death as a motif so as to show how the grieving process affects an individual throughout all aspects of his or her life. The stages of coping are represented during the course of the book, appearing whenever death is mentioned. As Holden’s journey starts with shock and denial, it comes to a close with acceptance of what he has gone through.

Denial and isolation is the first stage of grief. Holden constantly feels like he does not belong in school, at home, or life in general. Holden tells Sally, one of his friends:

How would the death of a loved one affect you? Coming to terms is a difficult process for everyone, especially for Holden Caulfield, in The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield, 13, lost his brother, Allie, at 11 to leukemia in Maine in July 18 of 1946. Holden now 17 finds himself coming to terms to young Allie’s death, along with his own problems. After analyzing J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield’s characterization matures and develops after acknowledging Allie’s death through reflection and this affects the plot by helping Holden come to terms with his own emotional problems.

The Catcher in the Rye has been described, analyzed, rebuffed, and critiqued over the years.  Each writer expresses a different point of view:  It is a story reflecting teen-ager's talk--thoughts-emotions--actions; or angst.  I believe it is an adult's reflection of his own unresolved grief and bereavements.  That adult is the author, J.D. Salinger.  He uses his main character, Holden, as the voice to vent the psychological misery he will not expose -or admit to.

Losing someone that is very close to you can cause many problems down the road that people do not realize. In the book The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden lost his brother Allie, he lost his best friend. This caused Holden to become very depressed and effects his life without his brother. When Holden’s brother died, this was the start of Holden’s falling out. Allie’s death is the cause for him feeling angry at the world, him not being able to stay at a school and causes him to feel alienated from society.

He wants to live in the memories of his brother forever thats why he uses the displays in glass at the Museum of Natural History, in which the same people are shown doing the same things year after year. Holden’s fears and what he wants are understandable, but his solution (avoiding reality) is impossible. Life is change. His feelings are typically young, everyone

These instances made Holden have to grow up sooner than he should’ve. To start, when Phoebe, Holden’s little sister, asks what Holden enjoys and would want to do in his future Holden exclaims, “I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be” (Salinger 175). Holden explains the “catcher in the rye,” as catching children that are falling out of their childhood purity, proving his motive to protect children from what he believes is corruption. In addition, when Holden wants to deliver his goodbye note to Phoebe he spots a vulgar statement on her school wall and claims, “I’d smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddamn dead and bloody” (201). Without a doubt, Holden has a strong distaste about the children at the school reading it, proving his desire to protect the innocent. Lastly, as Holden waits to meet up with his old friend Sally his thoughts drift to an old museum that he used to go to as a kid, “The best thing, though, in that museum was that

Throughout the novel of Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is on his own psychological journey. This journey tells a lot about who Holden is as a person and the problems he is dealing with. It all starts when Holden has flunked out of Pencey Prep. His psychological struggles are triggered by the traumatic event of his brother, Allie, dying 4 years prior. The death of Allie has affected Holden in all aspects of his life, including friends, school, actions, and thoughts. This causes concern in Holden’s parents. They are concerned with his health and well-being, therefore send Holden to a rehab center. His parents fear that Holden may have Post - Traumatic Stress Disorder, and have him psychoanalyzed. So, Holden struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder because he shows the causes, symptoms, and effects of the chronic disorder.

Hope 's, failures, accomplishments, joy, excitement, and sadness are all feelings that Holden experiences through the novel. Feelings aid in the dictation of how we live our lives. The feelings may seem insurmountable at one point in time are actually temporary in the bigger picture. This perspective is something that Holden lacks through the course of the novel. After leaving boarding school Holden feels like his life is over he is unable to see that life could change. After Allie died Holden felt like his life was over without his brother he was lost and alone. After he felt like the people around him gave up, he felt like his life was over he had no support. Again and again, Holden 's feelings kept pointing in a negative direction. This struggle is what ultimately directs Holden 's actions and emotions. Holden is naive to the reality that emotions are like a rollercoaster there are great highs and great lows. However, at the end of the day the rollercoaster ride will finish. The underlying theme is to never give up on any of them through the highs and lows of life. You will always have things that hold you back, but at the end of the day success only comes when you are able to conquer those challenges. Catcher in the Rye is a story about a young boy who is lost in the world and has faced his fair share of challenges in his life. After getting kicked out of a boarding school and pretending to be an adult. He finds himself lost and without hope.

In the novel, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden, the main character, is in a mental hospital where he is telling the story of how he got there. Holden starts his story around the time where he gets kicked out of his school, Pencey Prep. Holden, who has gotten kicked out of two schools including Pencey has to face his parents who do not know that he got kicked out of Pency yet. Up to now, Holden has had a rough life between his brother Allie dying of cancer and having to go to multiple different schools. On the other hand, Holden cares about very few things.

Depression is defined as a condition where a person feels very sad, hopeless, unimportant, and unable to live in a normal way, which is Holden’s personality in the book. It’s a very serious situation that many people go through and it takes an enormous toll on people. Many instances can cause depression and grieving the loss of someone is one of them. In the beginning, it seems like Holden is depressed because he is excluded from the people around him. Holden’s flashbacks and hallucinations, along with Phoebe reminding him that Allie is not coming back, show that his depression stems from him grieving the loss of Allie.

He chooses to not acknowledge this and he wants to keep his innocence like the children in the field of rye. Once Holden leaves Pencey and heads into New York, he must face many scenarios where he must confront the good, the bad, and the ugly of life. At one point he encounters a man and a woman spitting water into each others faces. When seeing this he unexpectedly enjoys it and is confused why. He goes on to talk about how “[sex] is something I just don’t understand. I swear to God I don’t” and how he is unaware of the complications of what comes with it (pg.63). Holden exhibits that he still has his innocence and still has not realized the complicated things that come with adulthood such as sex. Another instance of Holden not being able to come to grips with adulthood is when he marvels at the timelessness of the Museum of Natural History. Holden discusses how “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. . . . Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.” (pg. 121). Holden is afraid of the idea of time changing things and he is scared of change. He is scared of the responsibilities that come with change and how things may change around him while he is left behind. At this point in time, when Holden’s journey through New York is coming to a close, he starts to realize

next stages of adulthood. He is scared to be with a girl with the fear she would not like him. Throughout the course of the entire novel, Holden is still unable to grieve for his brother and ends up being admitted and treated at a mental hospital because of his unhealthy obsession with Allie. Holden attempts to lift himself out of the depression but fails to overcome these extreme unhappy feelings because he is stuck in the stages of grief.