- Position‹2 of 5›
- The Catcher in the Rye is about death
- Argument‹2 of 2
Holden Caulfield's suicidal thoughts
Holden displays intense emotion and turbulent behavior throughout the novel, suggesting he is deeply discontented and depressed. As a result, he routinely says that he must commit suicide and often fantasizes about it.
The argument
On this reading the novel's subject is announced less by its plot than by the preoccupations of its narrator, and Holden Caulfield's preoccupation is dying. Proponents note that he tells the reader repeatedly that he wishes he were dead, and that these are not isolated outbursts but a recurring habit of mind that surfaces across the whole narration. The form of the book matters to the argument: because Holden speaks directly to the reader, what he returns to unprompted is a reliable index of what the book is about, and a majority of what he chooses to say concerns death. He dwells not only on dying but on its aftermath – on how others would react to his passing, who would be sorry, what his absence would look like from outside. That is the imagination of someone rehearsing his own death rather than idly invoking it. The argument then supplies the cause. Holden has lost his younger brother and, separately, a former classmate, and on this view those two deaths are the wound from which the rest of his behaviour follows. They have given him a fixed habit of reflecting on mortality and they have damaged his mental health, producing the depression with which the suicidal thoughts run in tandem. The loneliness he reports feeling even in the company of others belongs to the same pattern: cut off from the people around him, he concludes he would be better off dead, which is why the isolation and the death-wish appear together rather than as separate complaints. Taken together, proponents argue, these are not incidental shadings of a coming-of-age story. Death is what has happened to Holden, what he thinks about, and what he wants for himself, and a book organised around a narrator in that condition is a book about death.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Holden Caulfield only tells readers about wanting to die, but he does not act on his words. He expresses these thoughts when he is feeling at his lowest, but continues on with life. Repeatedly he reaches out to past friends, teachers, and family to seek comfort and support, proving he wants to live.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P2] This does not necessarily mean Holden actually wants to die.