Catcher In The Rye Grief Analysis

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Pages: 3

In the novel “The Catcher in the Rye” Holden shows grief throughout the whole story. Holden shows denial, anger, depression, acceptance, and bargaining. Holden’s main focus on depression is caused by Allie passing away, but there was a little part of Holden being depressed was as well when he continued to get kicked out of school. Holden does not reach any closure, he just slowly begins to let go. Holden shows that he is in denial when he is refusing to accept that his brother Allie has passed away because Allie was innocent and Allie did not deserve to die. Holden is worried about all of the negative things such as that he believed that it was all of Holden’s fault that his little brother had passed away. He does not listen to anything that …show more content…
Most of chapter six is where Holden shows depression, he begins to show that he is depressed when he holds in all of his anger and finally goes down to the basement to express his pain, but when Holden goes in the garage he begins to think about the fact that he will never be able to see his brother again and has to accept the fact his brother is gone forever from dying from leukemia. As well, Holden is depressed because he continued to get kicked out of school and his parents had made him move to attend another school. In the novel it stated “One thing about packing depressed me a little,” (Salinger, 51). This expresses Holden when he begin to pack his bags to go to school in New York. When Holden went to move to New York, he was not happy at all. Holden was depressed even worse then what he was when he was living at home. Holden was depressed due to the fact that he had nobody in New York to talk too about his problems or to even hang out with, he felt alone because he had no friends in New York. As well, Holden is depressed when he is in his motel room when Salinger stated “What I really felt like doing was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out of the window,” (Salinger, 104). Holden was too depressed to even go home because he felt ashamed to even return home because he knew his mother and father would be ashamed of