6. Allie´s Death

The Catcher in the Rye


“When Holden writes a composition for Stradlater we learn about his brother Allie’s death. How you think Allie’s death affected him?”

Allie is Holden´s younger brother; he is described by Holden as a unique individual, an emotional and sensible person, someone that always stands up for the others, Holden also perceives him as the most intelligent, special, funny, etc. So he´s obviously very affected.

When Allie died of leukemia at the age of 11 Holden was emotionally devastated, his younger brother and role model was dead. A short time after allies dead Holden had an emotional crisis, he broke all the windows in the garage and he even hurt himself; This shows how much Allies dead affected him but in the whole story there is evidence that Allies dead had a very important effect on Holden´s mental state.
Every time Holden talks about Allie he idealizes him as some kind of saint; he describes him as funny, helpful, very special, extremely intelligent, sensitive, and emotional. That glorification of Allies figure is the cause of the impact on Holden´s daily life.
Holden shows the effect of Allies dead every day, for example when he has to do his roommate’s composition he does it on Allie´s baseball mitt, and he does it in a very descriptive way. Other effect of Allie´s death on Holden´s daily life is that, every time he has a problem he appeals to his death brother to ask him for a solution.
We can assume that his brother´s death is maybe the most shocking event in Holden´s life and that he has it always present and that it affects his life in a lot of ways.