This book is full of many small and troublesome conflicts
and obstacles, but the main conflict takes place internally. It rages inside
Holden’s own mind. Because this conflict is internal, it is easier to see the rises
and falls of the conflict, but also difficult because Holden’s mind and
emotions are a roller coaster of uncertainty.
The basic conflict is that Holden is being pressured to
grow up and take responsibility over his life and accept a role of adulthood,
but he doesn’t feel he’s ready for that yet. He feels pressured and compressed,
and he starts not caring anymore, flunking out of schools and failing at his
education. Some of the causes of Holden’s depression and his rejection of
responsibility over his life is the past death of his brother Allie, the bad
relationship he has with his parents, the loneliness and alienation he feels from being
in a boarding school, his feeling of phoniness from the adult world, and the feeling he has of having no one care
about him. Those things are the main causes to his inner conflict. You can tell
that the death of Allie is a main contributor to the conflict when Holden talks
about him for the first time, (Salinger, pg. 38) and later when he’s having a
mental breakdown and uses Allies image to comfort him (Salinger, pg. 198). I
think that Allie’s death robbed some of his childhood from him, and Holden
wants to hold on to what he has left and his thoughts and memories of him and
Allie preserve his childhood self.
What are some of the gains of this conflict? Throughout
Holden’s struggle with this conflict, he finds out that there ARE people in his
life who care about him, and that sometimes what you need is a little home to
help you find yourself again. He finds that there are people that care about
him, like his teacher Mr. Spencer, and his sister Phoebe. And in the end, going
home to Phoebe is what starts to heal him. She understands him and he even
claims “I mean, if you tell old Phoebe something, she knows exactly what the
h*** you’re talking about.” (Salinger, pg. 67) He feels like he can tell her
anything and she comforts him. He loves her a lot and throughout the story, she’s
the one he really wants to talk too. I think that is what he realizes. He
realizes how good a friend his sister Phoebe
is to him. In the end Holden decides he’s not ready to be an adult yet.
What does Holden loose in this conflict? Holden actually
ends up losing his mind in the novel, and the authors use of first person allows
us to see his steady downfall from sanity. It’s a decline and it begins with
him just not caring. He moves from place to place, desperately trying to
connect with anyone he meets. As the story progresses, he fails more and more
to connect with people. He becomes emotionally unstable and restless as he attempts
to overcome his inner conflict. You start to see him have a nervous breakdown
and he begins to spiral toward dark thoughts, when he's in the hotel and he says " What i really felt like, though, was comitting suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probaby would've done it, too, if i'd been sure somebody'd coer me up as soon as i landed." (Salinger, pg. 104) then he asks Sally to run away with him, then when he goes to the park and
notices that he’s freezing but he doesn’t really care, later he goes to Phoebe’s
school and the Museum and keeps noticing the bad words written on the walls. He
finally passes out after that. (Salinger, pg. 204) In the end, he ends up
having to go to a recovery place because he gets himself sick and his mind has
to recover.
Salinger,
J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 1951. Print.
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