Holden, an oldest child, feels very protective toward his younger sister Phoebe, whom he loves very much. His protectiveness is increased because his younger brother Allie died three years earlier from leukemia. When Phoebe, who loves Holden very much, presses him on his aimlessness and lack of purpose in life, he tells her in chapter 22 that what he would like to do in life is be the catcher in the rye:
Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around—nobody big, I mean—except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. 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. I know it’s crazy.
This speaks to Holden's great love for his siblings, and his desire to protect them and to protect all children.
Holden talks about his brother Allie in chapter 5. We know how much he loves Allie because he tells us what a wonderful person he was. We begin to feel that Holden perhaps suffers from survivor's guilt, because he survived and Allie died:
He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You'd have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent. He was terrifically intelligent. His teachers were always writing letters to my mother, telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Allie in their class. And they weren't just shooting the crap. They really meant it. But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody.
We know how very upset Holden is at Allie's death in chapter 5 when he tells of breaking all the windows in the garage. The broken windows are a mirror of Holden's feeling of inner brokenness. The violence is the sign of the anger he feels over his brother's death:
I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn't do it. It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it, and you didn't know Allie.
Holden's parents are more distant, and Holden keeps them that way on purpose. He writes in the opening of the novel, in chapter 1:
... my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're nice and all--I'm not saying that--but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything.
The novel suggests that family issues, particularly his brother's death and his desire to protect Phoebe, might be at the heart of his breakdown.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
I need to evaluate the role of family in The Catcher in the Rye. Can you please help me with quotes and chapters ?
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