How Does Holden React To Allie's Death

Catcher in the Rye Essay

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is a novel about a teenager Holden Caulfield, who is trying to find how to live his life and what kind of person he is. In the book, we find out that Holden’s little brother, Allie, recently died of Leukemia and this has impacted Holden in many ways. The theme of death and mortality is expressed throughout Catcher in the Rye. Because of Allie’s early death, Holden felt his innocence had been stolen. Holden's witnessed a young boy’s suicide at prep school. It seems like one of Holden’s major issues in Catcher in the Rye is that people or phonies, go around pretending like major tragedies don’t happen every day. A key part of Holden’s emotional life was his reaction to Allie’s death. People live for a while, but we all have to die at some point. The theme of death is covered many times throughout the novel and there are …show more content…
Holden could not deal with his death and showed it by causing physical harm to himself. He did this to escape the pain he was feeling inside. Because Allie died so young, Holden felt that Allie’s innocence was taken away from him. He recalls how Allie use to write poems on his baseball mitt so he would have something to read while he was just standing in the outfield. He is touched by the knowledge that Allie can’t do this anymore. “He's dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946.” He remembers of Allies sweet nature. His teachers were always writing letters to my mother, telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Allie in their class…. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. God, he was a nice kid, though. He used to laugh so hard at something he thought of at the dinner table that he just about fell off his chair.” (PAGE 49). Its pretty obvious that Holden uses every excuse that he has to think and talk about

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