Catcher In The Rye Exile Essay

Holden Caulfield’s Jan Heweliusz OR Mauldin Plea OR Holden Caulfield’s Tale of Woe “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody” (Salinger 234). These two sentences alone, from J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, explain a lot about Holden Caulfield’s character and his actions throughout his journey. One of Holden’s many struggles is his lust for human connection, but he never allows anyone to get close–breaking it off before they can leave him. When someone gets close enough to see what Holden is really like, Holden sabotages their relationship by lying, insulting, or simply leaving them. He does this because of his fear of experiencing what he felt when Allie was taken from him. Allie made Holden happy;
He doesn’t stay very long with Pheobe, but throughout the entire book Holden has mentioned several times about how much he wants to see his sister and talk to her. Holden is afraid that Pheobe, one of the people who loves him the most, is going to leave him. Holden doesn’t feel worthy of her childish, unconditional, innocuous love, and he wants to leave before she can leave him. At the climax of the book outside of the school when he plans on leaving and Pheobe tries to come with him, Holden sees how much Pheobe. He believes that Pheobe has no reason to love him. He has never done anything great for him, but she loves him without thinking. When she is holding her suitcase there, Holden matures and realizes he doesn’t have to impress everybody and he can trust certain people and that he doesn’t have to leave them because they don't want to leave him. Holden realizes that not everyone he cares about will be taken away, and leave him. After he sees Pheobe standing there he embraces her love, taking her to the zoo and standing out in the rain, watching her enjoy her youth and knows he can let people in again and makes connections. He finally can understand that the tribulations after Allie’s death don’t have to follow him around