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Reflection On Catcher In The Rye

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When you’re a kid you get asked this one particular question a lot. It really gets kind of annoying. “ What do you want to be when you grow up?” Adults are hoping for answers like “ I want to be an astronaut” or “When I grow up I want to be a Neurosurgeon”. Adults and their imaginations. But Holden Caufield is different. He just simply wants to be a 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 …show more content…

Holden adores Allie and is very distressed about his premature death when Holden was thirteen because of leukemia. It is easy to say that Allie’s death was the beginning of a downward spiral in Holden’s life. According to Holden, Allie was one of the most lovable people. “You’d have liked him… He was terrifically intelligent… But it wasn’t just that he was the most intelligent member of the family. He was also the nicest”. Holden loved his brother more than anything and when he died, he punched out all the windows in the garage. He said that "my hand still hurts me once in a while." This is symbolic of the love he had and still has for his little brother; he even quotes later that "you don 't stop loving someone because they die" proving that he still cares for him. He may even think he had something to do with his death or he caused it. Sometimes little kids think stuff like that. Holden also says that " I can 't make a real fist any more-not a tight one." If his fist represents his love for his brother or his heart then maybe he can 't love again. When he meets up with Sally he said he felt like marrying her than he discards it by saying "I don 't even like her much." Holden is afraid to love again because of the way his heart and fist was broken when Allie died. As Holden gets more and more upset throughout his days in New York, Allie is a recurring thought. Holden seems to use Allie as a sort of medicine. Thinking of Allie both comforts him and upsets him. Holden feels guilty about some things with Allie. One particular instance that holden dwells on is a summer day when Allie wanted to accompany Holden and a friend on a bike ride. “Allie heard is talking about it, and he wanted to go, and I wouldn’t let him. I told him he was a child.” Now Holden replays this situation in his head, only this time he includes Allie. Allie will always remain a

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