Catcher In The Rye Theme Of Pain Essay

Everyone experiences pain. People handle suffering differently, but all humans hurt at one point in their lives. Holden Caulfield is no exception. In J.D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye, the main character Holden loses his brother Allie to Leukemia. This tragic event leads Holden to a downward spiral; he no longer applies himself at school, thinks all his classmates and the rest of New York are “phonies,” and feels so intensely lonely that he contemplates suicide. Instead of facing his despair over his brother’s death, he runs from his problems. He ditches the school that kicked him out and travels around New York trying to make sense of his life. Holden’s obsession with the idea that those around him are fake is a way for him to hide from his pain: “The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt” (Thomas Merton)­­. Merton says that ignoring the main cause of one’s pain will lead to even more suffering over trivial matters. Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in The Rye by J.D. Salinger exemplifies the people Merton refers to because he ignores his brother’s death and makes himself miserable by obsessing over other people’s lives, and only when Holden embraces the pain does he find …show more content…
Holden lost his faith in the world when Allie died, but instead of finding new ways to be happy, he finds something wrong with everyone and everything. Blocking the world out is easier than risking getting hurt again. Once Holden allows himself to truly see Phoebe as the hope he needs, he finds the determination to push on through life. Like Holden, others can accept pain and allow themselves to be free of their