How Does The Past Affect Holden's Life

Events from one’s past can affect them in the future, especially if they struggle with letting things go. In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, many events from his past lead the main character, Holden Caulfield, to feel depressed and alone. Since he struggles with moving past things, these incidents from his past negatively affect Holden and his mental health. Seeing the suicide of his classmate, dealing with his loneliness, and the death of his brother, Allie, led to Holden’s loss of innocence and his struggle to preserve the innocence of others. One of Holden’s biggest struggles was when his classmate, James Castle, killed himself. This affected Holden for two major reasons. First, Holden was there when James jumped out of the …show more content…
He hasn’t been lucky with girls, friends, or fitting in. His childhood crush, Jane, didn’t go anywhere past friendship which left him feeling lonely and started his misfortune with girls. Years later, Holden still is unlucky and has never been with a girl and has difficulty even talking to them. Salinger uses Holden’s isolation to show us that he feels that something is wrong with him. He has never had a girlfriend, or a really close friend, which makes him feel like he doesn’t fit in. Being previously alienated by others, Holden begins to alienate himself to prevent himself from getting hurt like he has in the past. The story even starts with Holden watching the game alone “way the hell up on top of Thomson Hill” (p.2). Salinger places Holden there at the very beginning of the novel to show us just how serious his struggle with alienation really is. When he gets to New York, he really feels like giving someone a call. He weighs his options and finally he “ended up not calling anybody” (p. 59). This is heartbreaking to us as readers because we know Holden just needs a friend, someone to talk to, but he is afraid to call someone because deep down he wants to avoid being cast aside. He makes excuses for why he shouldn’t call any of his chosen candidates. Holden had been hurt one too many times, and alienated himself as a form of protection from losing the little innocence he still has, and from all of the …show more content…
He wasn’t completely oblivious to death before this, but with youth does come ignorance, and this was his first encounter with death. Salinger shows us that Holden has never been able to move past his brother’s death when Holden says, “I’m seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen” (p.9). Since Holden still talks to his brother, and has the emotional state of a thirteen-year-old, his age when Allie died, we have reason to believe that he has not accepted his brother’s death and still lives his life as though Allie is alive. This exemplifies Holden’s struggle with change and preserving innocence because he doesn’t want to accept Allie’s death and doesn’t want anyone else to go through something like this. Allie’s death took a toll on Holden, as would be expected, but it impacted him so deeply that he is stuck in the past and can’t continue growing up. Holden may want to preserve his thirteen-year-old mentality because he fears that growing up will bring more pain and take away the sliver of naïvety he still has. The death of his brother was Holden’s first and most major loss of innocence that activated his need to preserve innocence. Holden Caulfield’s struggle with loss of innocence can be traced back to Allie’s death, his difficulties with alienation, and witnessing the suicide of James Castle. He wants to prevent another person from experiencing the cruelty of growing

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