Catcher In The Rye And Hamlet Comparison Essay

“I can accept the idea of my own demise, but I am unable to accept the death of anyone else...Disbelief becomes my close companion, and anger follows in its wake” (Angelou). This emphasizes how the death of a loved one can cause grief and mistaken actions. This quote can be applied to the characters of Holden and Hamlet too. Holden loses his brother, Allie, to leukemia at a very young age, which greatly upsets Holden, making him believe that Allie lost his innocence. Holden grieves over the death of his brother, taking radical actions and frequently thinking of him throughout the novel. Hamlet also has a close relative die; his beloved father. The aforementioned quote is also applicable to Hamlet because his father comes back from the dead
In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden develops complicated grief disorder over the death of his younger brother Allie. Holden’s specific symptoms involve having great difficulty to move on after this death and forming bitterness and anger from his depression. Holden finds it hard to move on from Allie and constantly thinks of him throughout the novel. Holden’s feelings of love towards Allie cause bitterness for the world that strips children of their innocence and makes Holden go mad obsessing over how to be the “catcher” for everyone. Likewise, Hamlet is bitter towards Claudius who murdered his father, but expresses his feeling differently than Holden. Hamlet reaches a point where he becomes so depressed over his father’s murder and its effects on Denmark and its people that Hamlet even questions life and death, believing that life is a meaningless dream. Ultimately, Holden and Hamlet both lose important loved ones in their lives that cause them great depression, becoming their “inciting incidents” as their anger turns into madness, resulting in the development of their complicated grief