Trapped in Adolescence
In James Bryan's essay, "The Psychological Structure of the Catcher in the Rye," he says, "Holden will forever be trapped in a state of adolescence due to the trauma of his brother's death." I agree with this statement and I think that James Bryan is absolutely right. Holden still thinks about his brother a lot because he loved him so much. Allie died on June 18, 1946, when Holden was about thirteen.
For example, at the beginning of the book Holden had to write a paper for his roommate Stradlater. He was supposed to write a paper describing a house or a room, but Holden couldn't think of anything that he wanted to describe. Therefore he decided to describe his brother Allie's baseball mitt. Obviously, Holden loved this mitt, because he described it so distinctly and included every detail. For example, Holden said, "Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt.
Historical Holden
S. D. Holden
English: Brother of Laurie Holden of The Walking D...He was left-handed. The thing that was descriptive about it, though, was that he had written poems all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink."(p38)
From this statement you can tell that Holden has looked at this glove many times and will never stop thinking about it. If Holden was talking about Allie, he was always saying how good of a person he was. He was always saying how much better Allie was then himself. "You'd have liked him, he was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent,"(p38) Holden said.
Holden compliments Allie and everything he did, as does everyone about someone they have lost. The difference here is that I think there is something different about the way Holden misses his brother and the way he talks about him. I mean I lost my...