Holden's Unreliable Narration in The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye by J, D. Salinger is told from the point of view of 17-year-old Holden Caulfield, and therefore the narration of the story is highly unreliable. The novel is narrated by Holden‘s train of thought, often going off topic and sharing his usually pessimistic opinions on every event and person he describes. It is also shown that Holden is still very attached to his brother Allie, who died four years earlier, and this has given him a very negative outlook on his life and the people in it.

Holden’s storytelling, since it is told through his thought process, is often influenced by his emotions, and therefore may not recount events accurately. The unreliability of Holden Caulfield’s narration illustrates that some people may distance themselves from others to deal with loss. After the loss of his best friend, his brother Allie, Holden Caulfield begins distancing himself from everyone else in his life, Holden speaks very highly of his brother, showing just how much he adored him.

He says, “He was terrifically intelligent… But it was just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in a lot of ways. He never got mad at anybody”. After Allie died of Leukemia when Holden was thirteen, he remembers that he, “broke all the goddam windows with my fist” (Salinger, 39). The way he lashed out in reaction to the death of his brother indicates just how close Holden was to his brother, and how upset it made him.

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Throughout the story, Holden is often finding ways to alienate himself from the other people in his life, even if he cares about them, in an attempt to prevent himself from ever caring as much for someone as he cared for Allie. This alienation was a way to keep himself safe; if Holden never got attached to anyone, he wouldn’t have to worry about being hurt again as badly as he was when he was thirteen.

This shows that self-alienation can be a coping mechanism for those who are struggling to deal with loss. Aside from his brother, there is one other person Holden speaks very highly of several times throughout the novel, and this person is Jane Gallagher. However, he never meets up with her, or even speaks with her, throughout the entire course of the story. Holden avoids contact with Jane in an attempt to alienate himself so he won’t become attached to her. When the reader first hears about Jane, Holden’s friend Stradlater is getting ready to go on a date with her, and Holden will not stop talking about her. He recalls details about her, like, “she used to practice [dancing] about two hours every day’ and how “Her mother belonged to the same club we did (and) was married to some booze hound” (Salinger. 32), When Holden finally finishes rambling, he thinks. “I couldn’t get her off my mind, I really couldn’t”.

This indicates that Holden is attached to Jane in some way, and may have some kind of feelings for her. On the same page, Holden goes on to say. “I oughta go down and say hello to her, at least” and when Stradlater asks him why he doesn’t, he replies that he’s “not in the mood right now”. Every time Holden thinks about calling Jane he manages to convince himself not to, in an unconscious attempt to distance himself from her. He validates his actions by making himself believe that it’s too late at night to give someone a call, or that he doesn’t really want to talk to her, despite spending the entirety of chapter eleven thinking about nothing but her. Holden was greatly affected by Allie’s death, and it is reasonable to expect that he would want to keep himself from experiencing yet another tragedy like that. Because Holden lies to himself to validate his own alienation, it is obvious that Holden Caulfield is a very unreliable narrator.

Holden tells his sister Phoebe that what he would want to, if given the choice. be what he calls a catcher in the rye. He says, “I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye… And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff… l have to catch everybody if they start going over the cliff… That’s all I’d do all day… I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be”. Holden’s ideal may seem odd, but it’s his own way of coping with the loss of his brother and, in a way, the loss of his own innocence, The children in Holden’s are a personification of his innocence. He wants to keep them from going over the cliff; he wants to save them from experiencing death at such a young age as Holden did, and in doing so. preserve their innocence.

Unfortunately for Holden. however, he will never truly be the catcher in the rye. There is no way for Holden to save himself from going over the cliff and, on some level he knows this. Since he has no way to reverse his tragic experience, he instead reverses his relationships. He keeps others from becoming important to him, and in doing so drastically alienates and isolates himself from human interaction, in this way, Holden’s loneliness turns him into a highly unreliable narrator.

Holden is constantly isolating himself from his peers out of fear of being hurt by tragedy. He does this by lying to himself and convincing himslef that things are worse than they are to make himself seem better than he feels. With a worldview framed by pessimism brought on by terrible tragedy, Holden’s depressing outlook on life warps his storytelling to prove that he is a dreadfully unreliable narrator. Through Holden’s actions, it is underpinned again and again that self—alienation can be a coping mechanism and a form of self~preservation when dealing with loss.