How Is Holden Caulfield A Tragic Hero

Don't you ever wish that you could go back? Not back in time to fix mistakes or for self-related matters, but to forget what we know now. Back to the pure childhood when we didn't know about the corruptions in the world. Well Holden is trying to do exactly this by trying to be the catcher in the rye. Holden Caulfield is a sixteen-year-old junior, who has been through a lot, dealing with a lot of problems. Holden has faced a lot of problems so you can technically say his life has had ups and downs making it tragic. Tragedy, is a branch of the drama that treats in a serious and dignified style the sorrowful or terrible events encountered or caused by a heroic individual. He isn’t like any sixteen-year-old he had to face the death of his brother …show more content…
James Castle wasn't someone that Holden knew personally, but the day he died Holden was talking to him. Holden heard James Castle fall out the window to his death and he saw James Castle's dead body, bloody and broken, wearing his borrowed sweater. He saw people hanging back, inactive, until one teacher carried James' body away. He saw the killers get off with a mere expulsion. Holden describes, “James Castle laying right on the stone steps and all. He was dead, and his teeth, and blood, were all over the place, and nobody would even go near him. He had on this turtleneck sweater I’d lent him” (170). Yea sure Holden really didn’t talk to him in that way, but imagine seeing a body like that just laying there. Even if you don’t know them well, seeing an accident like that and especially wearing something that belongs to you must be dramatizing. Holden states, “All they did with the guys that were in the room with him expel them. They didn’t even go to jail” (170). Imagine learning that a group of classmate bullies could drive someone to their death, yet still almost no one would want to get near the victim to help him out of at least cover the dead body. Imagine that the bullies would only get expelled like poor performers, instead of going to jail like killers. “ James Castle is being true to himself in the only way he knows how. Notice that Holden …show more content…
He was sounded and the way he expressed things made him seem sad, lonely, depressed, and suicidal. Holden remarks, "What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would've done it, too, if I'd been sure somebody'd cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn't want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory" (104). Holden complains about being phony and all this other stuff and that the reason he wants to die. But, then at the same time he is saying he is technically concern about what others think about him, like what the phonies would think if he was to kill himself. It seems like he isn’t sure what he wants, his mind is all over the place. Holden states, "What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff...That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be" (173). Even though his life isn’t the best he wants to protect the innocence of children's childhoods. He doesn’t want them to feel pain and get hurt, he wants them to live a happy life but the part of growing up is to learn how to deal with problems and be able to face them. “In other words, when he says he's crazy he seems to mean that he's acting oddly, or inconsistently, or stupidly, but not that he's actually going insane. And when he says