Preview

Examples Of Survivor's Guilt In Catcher In The Rye

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
297 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Examples Of Survivor's Guilt In Catcher In The Rye
Rough Draft
Whenever a deadly event occurs, it can affect the survivor more than the victim in some cases and this is called Survivor's Guilt. In the novel The Catcher In The Rye author J. D. Salinger represents this by main character Holden Caulfield losing his brother Allie causing Holden to wonder who should have died. As a result, Holden shows survivor's guilt by judging himself and others to unachievable standards.
In TCITR Holden is affected by by his brothers death in many ways. Throughout the book Holden has memories of his brother and guilt that His brother can't do the things other do and why Allie had to die in the Following passage I really feel he shows his guilt. All the visitors could

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Allie was a character he spoke about with such a diffident manner, almost as if he was tormented by the sound of his name. Allie was Holden’s younger brother who died of leukemia. As Allie was brought up it seems to be some of his depression was caused by his death. Holden seemed to love Allie deeply and cannot seem to get through his brothers death. Almost as if its killing him inside as well. Holden carries around Allies glove as his souvenir for remembrance. “But it wasn’t just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest in lots of ways.” (Salinger 38). He just went on and on about how much good Allie did and how many smiles he put on peoples faces. He couldn’t get over how many people liked him, and to see him go be such a devastation, it caused him to anger out, and get more depressed. Phoebe on the other hand is Holden’s sister, who is very much alive. She is six years younger than Holden, and sometimes acts more maturely than he does. She’s not afraid to point it out either. She thinks that Holden is to hard on himself, and can be “his own worst enemy”. Meaning he hates himself, and hates what he’s doing, but doesn’t quite know it yet. Phoebe looks up to Holden, and Holden loves his little sister. He includes her for the reason that she’s another main family member who he loves deeply like he did Allie, and doesn’t want to lose her too. I think Holden keeps a sharp eye out for her cause she’s…

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Holden Caulfield is J.D. Salinger’s main character in The Catcher in the Rye. We learn several interesting things about Holden, however, while learning the these we are not experiencing or seeing what Holden is. We learn about it through Holden’s perspective throughout the entire story like, for example, the death of his younger brother, Allie or the time James Castle committed suicide by jumping out of the school window. Most of these experiences have a significant meaning behind them and we find these out by reading the book. We get to know Holden in a personal way. While reading, comprehending, and understanding Holden’s emotions towards the encounters he has with the characters in this book, which makes it very interesting.…

    • 122 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Holden Caulfield Outline

    • 505 Words
    • 3 Pages

    F. Holden is so enraged by the death of his brother who only brought comfort, kindness, and joy around him pg 173…

    • 505 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In J.D Salinger’s book The Catcher in the Rye, the protaginist Holden Caulfied, struggles with life, one of the factors being his unstable state of mind due to the death of his brother. After his brothers death his perspective on life was shaken, culminating to his use of anger and trivial decisions to mask his emotions. We see his rapid choice of judgment evidently when he destroyed his parents garage windows. Holden holds his brother dear to his heart, because of his authenticity and humbleness; traits that arent seen anywhere else in his life.…

    • 399 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Holden loses his innocence when his brother, Allie, dies. Allie is one of the only people Holden cared about, and he struggles with the idea of his beloved brother being touched by the angel of death. He always talks about how Allie was one of the nicest people he has ever met and his mind won’t let him get over it: "But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He…

    • 704 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When Holden first talks about his Brother Allie’s death, he starts to talk about how Allie was the nicest most intelligent one. He talks about how Allie’s baseball mitt “had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere” (38). Allie writing the poems on his glove so he has something to read in the outfield shows that Allie was just being a kid. He was being carefree; he wrote the poems on the glove so he would keep from being bored. Holden also thinks of Allie when Sonny leaves. He starts to think of a time when they were just kids when he would not let Allie come to Bobby Fallon’s house with him. Holden then starts to talk to Allie telling him to “get your bike and meet me in front of Bobby’s house” (99). He says that he thinks…

    • 694 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    woman in the catcher

    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages

    spare him from the pain of knowing his brother was about to die. This resulted in Holden’s violent…

    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In The Catcher and the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the protagonist Holden Caulfield experiences myriad personal difficulties originating from the tragic event of his brother's death from cancer. Subsequently, his perspective towards the whole world has deteriorated into a pessimistic attitude, derived from his own personal sense of inferiority. As a result, Holden feels isolated and alone. In his desire to feel connected to someone, he travels home to visit his sister, Phoebe, hoping to receive emotional support. Instead, Phoebe criticizes his pessimistic attitude towards life, much to his own surprise. However, the criticism that Holden receives from his sister motivates him to improve his perspective towards life, by having become more optimistic, and leading to rapid and significant maturity within his personal development.…

    • 646 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Often times, a death might bring unexpected negative consequences to the grieving people, and cause them to act out or adjust differently to life without them. Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, was the most afflicted in his family by his brother’s death, and he faces the ongoing repercussions of it. Shortly after Allie's death, Holden need a psychanalyst to help him cope, but never fully moved past his brother's passing. Therefore, the death of Allie affects Holden’s depressive behavior, his transition between childhood and adulthood, and finally, his realization of growing up is essential in life.…

    • 1410 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Holden loses touch with reality when his younger brother Allie dies, he cannot comprehend why the essence of pure innocence had to suffer and die. Allie represented the good and truth in the world while everyone else represents the phony and evil aspects. After losing Allie, Holden believes that the only innocent people left are himself and his younger sister Phoebe. The death of Allie is the start of Holden’s…

    • 181 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The grieving process is something many people go through when they lose someone that was close to them and have to choose to overcome this feeling of sadness and depression or let it consume them. In “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D Salinger is a novel about a boy named Holden Caulfield that tells us the story of what has been happening in his life ever since his younger brother Allie died from leukemia three years ago. Throughout the book you see that he is still grieving over Allie, Holden absolutely adored everything about his brother and thought he was the most intelligent person in the world. Holden shows the typical signs of grieving by showing that he is angry, regretful, lonely, and depressed until he knows what he needs to do to make…

    • 139 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    He reveals his fondness of Allie which suggests there was a strong connection which is something that Holden doesn’t have in his life anymore. . ‘I remember once, the summer I was around twelve, teeing off and all, and having a hunch that if I turned around all of a sudden, I’d see Allie. So I did, and sure enough, he was sitting on his bike outside the fence.’ The irony of his brother’s death is that the only person Holden had a connection with, passed away leaving him alienated. Through Allies death it also becomes evident that Holden can’t deal with change. His stream of consciousness continues to explain how he reacted to Allies death. “I broke all the windows in the garage.” He confirms his emotional dysfunction to such a vast change and reveals how alienation took over his life. Holden speaks using a puzzled sense of emotive language. “He’s dead now. He got leukaemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You’d have liked him.” He suggest that the reader would have liked Allie and though the rest of the scene he speaks fondly of him, though to talk of his death in such an emotionless way begins to contradict everything he is saying “He’s dead now.” Later during a conversation with his sister Phoebe he reveals that he is in fact isolated from people and the one true person he was close to has died “Just because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop…

    • 889 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield portrays the second stage of grief, which is anger. Anger is when a person is not only angry with others, but with themselves. Holden occasionally still tends to show denial, but has moved more towards anger.…

    • 396 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in Rye speaks to core of being an outsider, but beyond the anti-hero, anti-establishment persona that Holden reflects, Salinger wrote a portrait of a boy deeply troubled by the end of simplicity. Past the cynical nature and the reclusion from people, Holden is a little boy saddened by the death of his brother. Holden was never able to get closure over Allie’s death and because of this he has never been able to move on. To remember his brother and a simpler time Holden treasures innocence and has remained a child himself in many ways. Through the uses of metaphorical landscapes, a relatable anti-hero, and the setting of a repressed post-war American society Salinger depicts the journey of a young boy fighting, resisting the transition from childhood to adulthood. Holden Caulfield’s cynicism and reclusion are his defense mechanism, they warn of phony and slobs alike, but leave him lonely. He is both a figure for the youth and old alike, because Holden’s disdain of hypocrisy, longing for innocence, and his need for acceptance transcend age groups, these are human emotions that bother any age group. At the end of the novel, Holden says “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do you start missing everybody” (Salinger 214). There are times when Holden comes off as neurotic, but in this case he meant that you will the way life used to be if you remember it. At the end Holden realizes that Allie’s death and his longing to go back to his childhood were holding him back, keeping him from applying himself. Many readers come away from that last line and feel that there is no happy ending for Holden, but the negative tone of the comment is less of a warning and more of a new being for Holden, meaning that Holden’s dream of being the catcher in the rye can can…

    • 481 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout life, an individual may endure emotionally and physically straining moments causing the person to become downhearted, and or irate. These feelings are normal, but may however become a problem when these feelings prohibit someone from living a ‘normal ' life. An estimated 5.2 million American adults ages 18 to 54, or approximately 3.6 percent of people in this age group in a given year, have PTSD (Narrow, Rae, Regier). This purpose of this report is to prove whether or not Holden Caulfield, the main character of J.D. Salingers 's book The Catcher In The Rye, is depressed.…

    • 1193 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays