His rage is extreme and his joy is more manic. Holden’s emotions seem to be highly unbalanced. He has substantial amounts of guilt and depression and struggles to remember the details of events in his life. Holden displays many common traits of a person with PTSD following this loss. The image of his friend from the event stays with Holden, and he mentions that it creeps up when he tries to think of happy memories. Later in life, Holden witnesses the death of a friend named James Castle, and this cements the intense trauma within him. Occasionally he speaks to Allie as if he’s still there when he’s feeling intense sadness. He holds on to many mementos from his brother’s life, particularly his baseball mitt that Allie had written poems on.
It seems that Holden never fully processed this monumental event in his life, and dealt with it at the time by punching the windows in his garage. Holden speaks frequently of his late brother Allie, who was diagnosed with leukemia. Catcher in the Rye offers a great representation of the overwhelming anguish that stems from untreated trauma and mental illness. As his situation worsens, we are able to see the surfacing traits of PTSD, serious depression, and anxiety. His thoughts and actions are both confusing and erratic, and we get the sense that there is an underlying issue that hasn’t been addressed or treated. Throughout the novel, there is a sense of discomfort as Holden tries and fails many times to connect with others. He muses about nostalgic bits of his life, mentioning the death of his younger brother, Allie.
The reader joins Holden as he is expelled from his school and seems to become increasingly depressed after the fact. The book follows narrator Holden Caulfield as he explains the days preceding his entering a mental institution. Catcher In The Rye is a classic novel written by JD Salinger and is recognized as one of the most influential pieces of literature.