Holden Caulfield is depressed

The argument

Holden Caulfield goes on a reckless three-day journey through New York City because he is mentally unstable. At the beginning of the novel, he reveals to readers that he is in a psychiatric hospital, where he is narrating the story from. That disclosure governs how everything after it is read: the events are not presented as they happened to a boy at large in a city, but as they are recalled by someone who has since been hospitalised, so the narrative is framed from the outset as the account of a breakdown rather than of an adventure. His past traumas and current issues have led him to depression. In the beginning, Holden tells readers about the two deaths he experienced. His younger brother, Allie, died of leukemia three years prior, which greatly impacted him emotionally. Additionally, a classmate of Holden's previous school committed suicide. The novel places both of these at the start rather than disclosing them later, which has the effect of supplying the cause before the behaviour it explains, so what follows reads as a consequence of unresolved loss rather than as unexplained recklessness. The entire novel, Holden struggles to come to terms with growing up. He desperately tries to protect people he considers innocent while simultaneously trying to prove to readers how he can act like an adult. These two projects cannot both succeed, and that is the source of the pressure he is under: protecting innocence requires him to stand outside adulthood, while proving himself an adult requires him to enter it, so every advance in one direction is a defeat in the other. Depression sets in as he continuously fails at both. The failure is structural rather than a matter of effort, which is why his condition deepens across the book instead of resolving, and why the novel returns him at the end to the hospital from which he has been speaking all along.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Holden Caulfield didn't run away to New York City because he was depressed; he did it because he's irresponsible. After being kicked out of Pencey Prep, he does not have an adult to guide his decisions. He knew that his parents will be angry about him being expelled so he wanted to avoid going home immediately. Holden acts like a typical unsupervised teenager by sneaking into bars, flirting with women, and spending a ton of money. Therefore, he is only being reckless because he has the freedom to.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P4] Holden Caulfield doesn't explicitly say he was diagnosed with depression.