Ruby Munguia
Mrs. Kehrmeyer
AP Language
4 April 2018
Understanding the Mind of Holden Caulfield The inner workings of the human mind is hard to understand, especially if it is a teenager who we are trying to understand. Although life as a teenager is chaotic, many of us have not gone through what Holden Caulfield has. With the many series of events the readers of the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D Salinger could come to the conclusion that these all were the reason as to why Holden is the way he is. The readers believe there is something wrong with Holden when he states, “I hope to hell that when I do die somebody has the sense to dump me in a river or something… Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.” ( Salinger 201). …show more content…
Holden has a fond memory of Allie that he always likes to share about. Allie’s death really affected Holden’s life because he was not really given proper time to mourn his lost. He was just sent off into a private school to get him away from the house. Holden appears to be repressing emotions about Allie and since people would not like to express themselves in past. There are many moments where Holden brings him up, like when he write a paper about Allie’s baseball mitt for his roommate, Stradlater. Another point in the novel Holden states, “What I did, I started talking, sorta out loud, to Allie. I do that when I get very depressed” (129). The fact that Holden openly admits that he starts talking to Allie during dark times shows how he still is deeply affected by his death. All his repressed thoughts are coming into the light. These memories of Allie are all in the unconscious part of Holden’s brain according to Freud’s theory. “They [repressed thoughts] are brought into consciousness only with great difficulty” (Nevid 469), the great difficulty appears to be when Holden is at his worse. It appears to be that Holden is exhibiting signs of post traumatic stress disorder because whenever he is feeling depressed or suicidal is when he starts to think about Allie. Since Allie and Holden were close this could be a reason as to why he …show more content…
Holden speaks about how he would like to have sexual contact with a female but he never really gets that far with any of them. Even when he hired Sunny, the prostitute, he did not take that step and have sex with her but he decided to try to have a conversation with her. Holden decides to withhold sex because he just does not yet want to cross the line of adulthood yet, he still wants to have a bit of innocence in him. He also wants to feel like him and his partner should have an emotionally connection as well because he simply is not just going to do it without feeling any type of feeling for her. He is trying to fill in a void that was just left there for someone to fill and he is not going to let it go just because he can. His id brings in his desire for women but he makes himself stop. The only thing he really acts on is violence. That is the main thing he follows because it is his way of getting attention from others. When Sunny confronts him about paying her the other five dollars he waits until he is forced to get roughed up by the “pimp”, Maurice. When Maurice hit Holden he started exaggerated how hurt he was saying,
“I sort of started pretending I had a bullet in my guts” (135). A reason for his exaggeration is that this is the only way he feels like he can be taken seriously by taking the pain and saying it is worse than it really is (Mr. Leclair). Although this is a odd
Mrs. Kehrmeyer
AP Language
4 April 2018
Understanding the Mind of Holden Caulfield The inner workings of the human mind is hard to understand, especially if it is a teenager who we are trying to understand. Although life as a teenager is chaotic, many of us have not gone through what Holden Caulfield has. With the many series of events the readers of the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D Salinger could come to the conclusion that these all were the reason as to why Holden is the way he is. The readers believe there is something wrong with Holden when he states, “I hope to hell that when I do die somebody has the sense to dump me in a river or something… Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.” ( Salinger 201). …show more content…
Holden has a fond memory of Allie that he always likes to share about. Allie’s death really affected Holden’s life because he was not really given proper time to mourn his lost. He was just sent off into a private school to get him away from the house. Holden appears to be repressing emotions about Allie and since people would not like to express themselves in past. There are many moments where Holden brings him up, like when he write a paper about Allie’s baseball mitt for his roommate, Stradlater. Another point in the novel Holden states, “What I did, I started talking, sorta out loud, to Allie. I do that when I get very depressed” (129). The fact that Holden openly admits that he starts talking to Allie during dark times shows how he still is deeply affected by his death. All his repressed thoughts are coming into the light. These memories of Allie are all in the unconscious part of Holden’s brain according to Freud’s theory. “They [repressed thoughts] are brought into consciousness only with great difficulty” (Nevid 469), the great difficulty appears to be when Holden is at his worse. It appears to be that Holden is exhibiting signs of post traumatic stress disorder because whenever he is feeling depressed or suicidal is when he starts to think about Allie. Since Allie and Holden were close this could be a reason as to why he …show more content…
Holden speaks about how he would like to have sexual contact with a female but he never really gets that far with any of them. Even when he hired Sunny, the prostitute, he did not take that step and have sex with her but he decided to try to have a conversation with her. Holden decides to withhold sex because he just does not yet want to cross the line of adulthood yet, he still wants to have a bit of innocence in him. He also wants to feel like him and his partner should have an emotionally connection as well because he simply is not just going to do it without feeling any type of feeling for her. He is trying to fill in a void that was just left there for someone to fill and he is not going to let it go just because he can. His id brings in his desire for women but he makes himself stop. The only thing he really acts on is violence. That is the main thing he follows because it is his way of getting attention from others. When Sunny confronts him about paying her the other five dollars he waits until he is forced to get roughed up by the “pimp”, Maurice. When Maurice hit Holden he started exaggerated how hurt he was saying,
“I sort of started pretending I had a bullet in my guts” (135). A reason for his exaggeration is that this is the only way he feels like he can be taken seriously by taking the pain and saying it is worse than it really is (Mr. Leclair). Although this is a odd