Falling Into Fantasy: Holden’s Struggle To Process Trauma (The Catcher In The Rye)

📌Category: Books, The Catcher in the Rye
📌Words: 595
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 24 June 2021

An estimated 1 in 14 children lose a parent or sibling before they reach adulthood. Childhood grief is often associated with developmental disruption, mental health issues, and substance abuse. (Experience Camps). Holden, the protagonist of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye struggles with all of these following the death of his younger brother Allie. Over the course of the novel Holden turns to alcohol, isolates himself, and fails out of yet another school all as a result of his trauma. In an unsuccessful attempt to cope with the death of his brother Allie, Holden fantasizes about being the “catcher in the rye”.

Expressly, Holden’s desire to catch the children falling off the cliff represents his desire to protect the innocent. While Holden is walking around near a church he hears a young child singing a song: “‘If a body catch a body coming through the rye.’ It made me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed anymore” (Salinger 129). As is revealed later in the novel, Holden misheard what the boy was singing, as the real lyric is meet and not catch. This misinterpretation gives an indication of Holden’s state of mind, as he finds comfort in a body being caught and therefore protected from danger. Holden’s younger brother Allie died of leukemia, and his inability to protect him has caused Holden to develop a fixation on the importance of childhood. Holden also recalls a boy that he knew at school named James Castle, who jumped out of a building when he was cornered in his room. Holden clarifies that he did not know James very well, but he is still able to remember him. This is likely due to Holden’s desire to “catch” those who are falling, and have not been adequately protected. Later, during his conversation with Phoebe, Holden asks her if she knows about that song, referring to what the young boy was singing. She corrects him, telling him that it is a poem and that the verse says “‘If a body meet a body coming through the rye’” (191). He disregards this and tells her how he “‘[keeps] 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...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’” (191). Not only does Holden mishear what the boy was singing, he also creates a fantasy in his head where he is the person who saves children from falling off the cliff. Holden’s disregard of Phoebe’s correction also represents his inability to mature, as he would much rather live in the fantasy world where he could catch children from falling off the cliff, falling off the cliff being an allegory for maturing. Holden, afraid of encountering more grief in his life, equates maturing with pain and loss. He feels that he needs to protect the children from maturing and encountering more grief, and he expresses this through his fantasy of saving the children from falling off the cliff. The comparison between saving children from falling off a cliff and preventing them from growing up exemplifies the extent to which Holden values innocence. 

The distress that Holden experiences in his childhood continues to plague him throughout his adolescent years. It is very common for people to adopt certain coping mechanisms to deal with past loss. Some healthy coping mechanisms for loss include joining support groups and engaging in professional help. Holden does not engage in these at first, instead turning to drugs, alcohol, and isolation. However, Holden is telling the story from a psychiatric ward which means that he is receiving the help that he needs. 

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