Depression; A mental health disorder characterized by persistently depressed mood or loss of interest in activities, causing significant impairment in daily life. I believe Holden suffers from depression. This causes him to act the way he does in his daily life. He sees life as just something he does with no meaning and love toward it. Golden pushes it too much even though he does suffer from depression he wants everyone to know and to feel bad for him. Which is one of the main reasons why people dislike him.
The reason Holden fails to lead a good happy life is his stress-depression, immaturity, lies, and his pessimistic view toward his life. Holden’s stress toward things that harm him is what causes a lot of his depression. When his big brother dies it changes his life for good. Allie did die from cancer and cancer is something that not all people survive from, so Holden should have had a bit of a heads up. But still his brother died that’s not something easy to handle.
But still even years after his death Holden expects people to still feel bad for him as it was yesterday that he died (in other words he pushes it too much which also has to do with maturity). In the Catcher In The Rye, not everything Holden says is true. For instance when he says he didn’t really flunk Elkton Hills, “One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That’s all. They were coming in the goddam window. For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life”. Holden lies about not really flunking Elkton Hills when he really gets expelled.
Holden lies so much that a lot of his life is full of lies he’s told so many times he believes them himself. Which makes him kind of want them to be true. Even though Holden acts like he’s old, mature and full of knowledge he’s not mature like he tries to show people. Holden looks stupid while he does this, and tries to push so much that he’s “mature” that it makes him look immature. Also a mature person knows when to do things and when not too.
Holden doesn’t think of when he should or shouldn’t and it affects his relationships with people, a great example of this is when he is in Mr. Antolini’s house and instead of talking with him he begins to argue with him which results in a big argument. Which changes the way him and Mr.
Antolini looked at each other. It’s clear that Holden has psychological problems and needs help if not his future wouldn’t end well. My diagnosis for Holden were that he has neurodevelopmental disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and disorder, suicidal problems and immaturity.
The best solution I believe is that Holden shouldn’t return to any boarding school and study at a school close to his house and live with his family.
