Catcher in the Rye - Essay PDF

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Shirley Liang Ms. Crawford ENG3Ub 26 August 2019

Catcher in the Rye - Symbols At the beginning of the novel, Holden Caulfield reveals that his younger brother Allie has passed away due to leukemia, on July 18, 1946. He introduces Allie’s baseball glove when he is writing an assignment for Stradlater. This is one of the symbols that J.D. Salinger uses in the novel to describe Holden’s fear of change. Allie’s baseball glove is only mentioned a few times throughout the novel, but it has a significant meaning. It expresses Holden’s love for his deceased brother, as well as his uniqueness. “So what I did, I wrote about my brother Allie’s baseball mitt. It was a very descriptive subject. It really was. My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder’s mitt. He was left-handed” (Salinger 43). Holden thinks that Allie’s baseball mitt is a very descriptive topic because it is not something that he writes and talks about often. He has so much to say about it but he never does. This baseball mitt is a symbol of Holden’s emotional expression. He keeps it hidden throughout the book and close to his heart. Allie’s glove is the connection and inspiration that Holden looks to for his feelings. "Anyway, that's what I wrote Stradlater's composition about. Old Allie's baseball mitt. I happened to have it with me, in my suitcase, so I got it out and copied down the poems that were written on it. All I had to do was change Allie's name so that nobody would know it was my brother and not Stradlater's. I wasn't too crazy about doing it, but I couldn't think of anything else descriptive. Besides, I sort of liked writing about it” (Salinger 44). This proves that Allie’s baseball mitt can comfort Holden in times of need like nobody else

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can and how it can make him feel close to his brother even if he is not around anymore. Holden’s fear of change and his devotion to protecting children from the cruel world stems from the love he has for his younger siblings. Allie’s baseball mitt acts like a lucky charm for Holden. As he lovingly describes the glove in the composition he writes for Stradlater, he is infuriated by the way Stradlater so casually dismisses the topic. “For chrissake, Holden. This is about a goddam baseball glove? God damn it. He was sore as hell. All right, give it back to me then, I said. I went over and pulled it right out of his goddam hand. Then I tore it up” (Salinger 47). This quote about the composition Holden wrote for Stradlater shows how much Holden cherishes the baseball glove and what it means to him, but it also shows that other people, such as Stradlater, do not understand how important it is to Holden. To him, Allie’s baseball mitt is a sacred object that only people who are close to him can experience. “She reads a lot of poetry and all. She was the only one, outside my family, that I ever showed Allie’s baseball mitt to, with all the poems written on it. She’d never met Allie or anything because that was her first summer in Maine - before that, she went to Cape Cod - but I told her quite a lot about him. She was interested in that kind of stuff” (Salinger 87). This emphasizes how special the mitt is to Holden because out of the three roommates he has had, none of them were special enough to show the mitt to. While these are all important things that the glove represents, Holden also thinks of the glove as a language that speaks to him. Since Allie’s glove has many poems and stories written on it in green ink, Holden thinks of the glove as a way to speak to Allie in poetry. “The thing that was descriptive about it, though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he’d have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up at bat” (Salinger 38). Stories and poems to Holden

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help him make sense of the confusing things that happen to him in the seemingly cruel world that he is in. This is why he speaks to Allie whenever he is in distress. This makes him feel peace at mind and lets him speak his truths. Throughout the novel, Allie’s baseball mitt becomes a sacred item for Holden to have around as he tries to find his true identity and picture of the cruel world. It is not mentioned much by Holden in the novel, but it is always with him and close to his heart.

Works Cited Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2018....