There are plenty of side-conflicts going on in this book, but the main one would probably be him leaving his private school, Penecy. The many things that caused this to happen were that he was getting bad grades. He was failing everything except for english. He is extremely apathetic towards school. If he is annoyed by the teachers or students or doesn't like the subject, he isn't going to try. He also didn't like most of the people there. They were all "phonies" in his eyes. He got in fights every now and again, both physical and verbal, and he was just fed up with everything.
This has obviously added some major losses. First off this is another school that he has gotten kicked out of. If he wants to think about his future and wants to go to college, this is going to make things way more difficult for him. Also, his parents and family is going to very upset with him as well. He's going to have to enroll in a new school which can be a big pain as well.
There were some losses mentioned in the book, though, that didn't have to do with the major conflict I am discussing within this blog. Both of these were not happening in the story itself, but was mentioned as they happened a few years before. The first one is that his brother, Allie, died from leukemia. The other one was that a boy at one of his older schools committed suicide because some jerks were trying to make him take back what he said about one of them.
There are some gains, though. First off Holden got to go back to New York a few days sooner. He got to discover himself a little bit better. His relationship with Phoebe has improved so much. They already loved each other, but they got to have a couple big and empowering conversations. This made their relationship grow even more. Another gain is that he isn't as depressed anymore. At the end of the book he was very happy during the carrousel part, again, because of Phoebe!
Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 2001. Print.
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