Why Does Holden Agree With Gradlater

The first time that Holden really declares to the reader his tendency of alienation is during his conversation with Mr. Spencer. Spencer

Holden's childhood friend, Jane Gallagher, also needs protection. She is vulnerable because of her childhood. "` Her mother and father were divorced. Her mother was married again to some boozehound... [He would] run around the goddamn house, naked, with Jane around and all.'" (32) Holden was afraid that Jane's stepfather abused her. "I asked her on the way, if Mr. Cudahy- that was the boozehound's name- had ever tried to get wise with her." (79) Even though Holden likes Jane, he does not try to take advantage of her because she needs the safety of their friendship. Holden is angry with Stradlater because he threatened Jane, and could have harmed her.

Holden is unable to accept realities of life because of his negative personality. He claims that many people are phony and that they try to do things to make them look better than they are. Holden also thinks of many things as depressing. “It was really nice sightseeing, if you know what I mean. In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them” (p. 123). Holden always finds a down side to a situation. He fails to recognize the good sides of life, and this prevents him from seeing advantages in adulthood that are not present in his life.

Stradlater doesn’t know or care. Holden becomes so overwhelmed by the thought of him “giving Jane time,” he gets into a physical altercation with his roommate. After this incident, Holden begins to idealize Jane’s image increasingly, leading to him imagining a fantastic scene after he gets robbed by a pimp, Maurice. “Then I’d crawl back to my room and call up Jane and have her come over and bandage up my guts. I pictured her holding a cigarette for me to smoke while I was bleeding and all” (Salinger 104). This is why Holden can’t talk to Jane; he has created another disjointed image of her in his mind that he uses to rescue himself. Jane saves him; but it’s not really Jane, more likely than not, the Jane in Holden’s head hasn’t existed for years. His image of her becoming more and more warped, and his cowardice in refusing to talk to her, show Holden’s inability to reconcile the past, his childhood, with the present: the fact that he and others around him are growing up. [ADD SOMETHING HERE?]

Although Holden has qualms about Jane being with Stradlater, he lets go of his worries because he knows that Jane is not the type of girl to have “the time” with Stradlater.

Holden’s date with Sally Hayes exhibited his difficulty at cooperating with others. At first he gives us a dire impression of Sally, “I wasn’t too crazy about her, but I’d known her for years.” (p. 105) Later, he wants to marry Sally and says he is in love with her. The biggest mystery of all when it comes to women is with Jane Gallagher. Constantly mentioning Jane, Holden recalls playing checkers with her before he got sent to boarding school. When his roommate, Stradlater, has a date with Jane, Holden asks him a peculiar question, “Did you ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row?” (p. 42) Holden, jealous of Stradlater’s date with Jane, longs to see Jane but never has the courage to call her. Interactions with other people especially women perplex and overwhelm Holden. He therefore resorts to isolation, illustrating a characteristic of his mental state.

Later, Mal Brossard and Holden decide to go to Agerstown to see a movie, despite the fact that Holden hates seeing movies. Out of sympathy, he asks Mal if he can invite Ackley along. The three embark to Agerstown, but it becomes apparent that Brossard and Ackley had already seen the film, so the three end up eating hamburgers and playing pinball for a few hours instead. They return to the dorm, where Mal begins searching for a game of bridge and Ackley immediately begins picking his face. Holden begins to drop hints for Ackley to leave, but Ackley is too stupid to pick up on that. Eventually, Holden kicks Ackley out so he can begin to write Stradler’s composition. The composition was supposed to be based on describing a room or a house, but Holden decides to write a heartfelt composition about his dead brother’s baseball glove, which is covered in poems in green ink. Holden’s brother, Allie, died of leukemia. The composition idealizes Allie for his intelligence and sensitivity. It is evident that the loss of Allie was an extremely traumatic event for Holden and the pain is still very much real. The loss of Allie may attribute to Holden’s cynicism and bitter tones. Holden continues to discuss how on the night of Allie’s death, he slept in garage, where he broke all of the windows with his fist “just for the hell of

I started telling him about how Jane and I were together in Ed Banky's car. Good man, that Ed Banky. Always there to give you a hand when you need one. Anyway, that was when Holden got really nosy. "What'd you do? Give her the time in Ed Banky's goddamn car?" I almost laughed out loud. Wouldn't he like to know? "That's a professional secret, buddy." I answered, like the cool guy I am.

When talking to others, sometimes Holden doesn’t quite get the hint that he needs to stop talking. Stradlater, Holden’s roommate goes on a date with an old friend of Holden’s, Jane Gallagher. Holden is very fond of this young woman and is jealous of his roommate. After the date Holden asks and asks and asks about what had happened on the date.

This passage proves that Holden is dissatisfied with the boys at his school, he believes they are fake and he does not social well with them. Although Holden doesn’t want to interact much, when he does end up interacting with people, he usually gets the short end of the stick. For instance he invites Ackley, a boy he meets at Pency Prep, along to the movies, but Ackley won't return the favor by letting Holden sleep in his roommate's bed. ‘“I’m not worried about it. Only, I’d hate like hell if Ely came in all of a sudden and found some guy-”’ (Salinger 49). Another instance is when Holden pays Sunny even though they don’t have sex, and ends up getting scammed. At a young age, Holden lost his younger brother, Allie. This had a huge traumatizing effect on him; Holden felt useless because he was unable to help his brother. Holden turns his emotions into anger; stating that he punched out all the windows in the garage. Another time Holden felt unable to help was when his peer, James Castle, was harassed and bullied, leading to James’s suicide. Holden says, “... and there was old James Castle laying right on the stone steps and all. He was dead, and his teeth, and blood, were all over the place, and nobody would even go near him. He had on this turtleneck sweater I'd lent him”’ (Salinger 170). Holden feels that society had

Holden wants to protect his younger sister even if it means he lies to her. Holden views Jane with the same innocence that he views Phoebe with. He describes her by saying “What she’d do,when she’d get a king, she woun’t

Holden’s connection with his little brother Allie was very special to him. This is evident in the way he talks about Allie. He holds Allie up to these great expectations, saying “You’d have liked him” (Salinger, 1945-6, p.33) and convincing you how great he was and how intelligent and special he was. You are now able to connect and sympathise for Holden, because he has told you all about the things that mean most to him, and you can’t help but feel a little sorry for him.

(49). Holden never cared too much about Stradlater’s way of getting girls to actually do anything about it, but when it came to Jane, his childhood friend and some may say, lover, he did not want to keep quiet. When Stradlater came home from his date with Jane, Holden showered him with questions : “‘If you didn’t go to New York, where’d ya go with her?’ I asked him, after a little while. I could hardly keep my voice from shaking all over the place.

After Holden gets back to his dormitory, he gets irritated by his disgusting neighbor Ackley, and by his roommate Stradlater. After Stradlater announced he was going on a date with Jane Gallagher, a girl that Holden used to date and he still loves, he asked Holden to write a composition for him. Holden writes it, but it isn’t on the topic that Stradlater asked for. As the evening went on, he became more and more nervous about Stradlater’s date. When he returned, Holden bombarded him with questions about the

Holden is also an extremely lonely boy with only a few friends and relationships, and this just shows us again that Holden struggles to interact in a social setting with people. This can also be the reason for his love and close relationship with his sister, they understand each other completely and they also share the sorrow for the loss of their brother.