Catcher in the Rye Depression Quotes

When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down that goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don’t know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice, “Sleep tight, ya morons!” I’ll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out. Some stupid guy had thrown peanut shells all over the stairs, and I damn near broke my crazy neck.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield in Chapter 7. Holden has been expelled from Pencey for failing classes. Here he describes his exit. He cries as his feelings of depression and lonliness crash down on him at once. Holden’s red hunting hat is one of the main symbols in the novel. It represents individuality and his alienation and escape from life.

New York’s terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can hear it for miles. It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed. I kept wishing I could go home and shoot the bull for a while with old Phoebe.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Chapter 12. Holden is experiencing a sense of isolation and longs for human connection. He misses a time when he was not so depressed. His sister Phoebe is one of the non-phonies that helps him keep his fragile connection with the world.

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’d be different.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Chapter 17, Holden visits the Museum of Natural History with his sister Phoebe. This is one of his favorite places to visit because no matter what he knows that it will always be the same and history will not have changed. Holden is fighting to hold onto his childhood in fear of growing up.

Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that’s impossible, but it’s too bad anyway.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Chapter 16, Holden is walking through Central Park and strikes up a conversation with a little girl, who suggests that he look at the Museum of Natural History with the Indians in it. He sets off in that direction, thinking of the field trips he took there as a kid, when everything was sweet and innocent, and the museum never seemed to change. Holden simply hates growing up. Part of his depression is the knowledge that his desire to keep things the way they are is impossible.

He was singing that song, “If a body catch a body coming through the rye.” He had a pretty little voice too. He was just singing for the hell of it, you could tell. The cars zoomed by, the brakes screeched all over the place, his parents paid no attention to him, and he kept on walking next to the kerb and singing “If a body catch a body coming through the rye.” It made me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed anymore.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield in Chapter 16.

What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would’ve, too, if I’d been sure somebody’d cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn’t want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Chapter 14. Holden is after being beaten by a pimp who comes banging on his hotel room door to demand full payment for the prostitute he hired but didn’t have sex with. While he doesn’t attempt suicide in the novel, Holden’s depressed state tends to lead him to suicidal thoughts.

“It’d be entirely different,” I said. I was getting depressed as hell again.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Chapter 17. The thought of growing up drives Holden into bouts of depression. Here Holden is trying to persuade Sally Hayes, an attractive girl he has known and dated in the past, into marrying him and going away with him. She thinks the idea proposterous as “we’re both practically children. And did you ever stop to think what you’d do if you didn’t get a job when your money ran out? We’d starve to death. The whole thing’s so fantastic.”

While I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody’d written “Fuck you” on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they’d wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them – all cockeyed, naturally – what it meant, and how they’d all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever’d written it. I figured it was some perverty bum that’d sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall. I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I’d smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody. But I knew, too, I wouldn’t have the guts to do it. I knew that. That made me even more depressed.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Chapter 25. Holden has a tough time understanding that everyone has to grow up. He does not want children to grow up because he feels that adults are corrupt. Here he tries to take away bad words from the walls of an elementary school where his sister Phoebe attended.

I kept walking and walking up Fifth Avenue, without any tie on or anything. Then all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening. Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I’d never get to the other side of the street. I thought I’d just go down, down, down, and nobody’d ever see me again. Boy, did it scare me. You can’t imagine. I started sweating like a bastard – my whole shirt and underwear and everything. Then I started doing something else. Every time I’d get to the end of a block I’d make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I’d say to him, “Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear. Please, Allie.” And then when I’d reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I’d thank him. Then it would start all over again as soon as I got to the next corner. But I kept going and all. I was sort of afraid to stop, I think – I don’t remember, to tell you the truth. I know I didn’t stop till I was way up in the Sixties, past the zoo and all. Then I sat down on this bench. I could hardly get my breath, and I was still sweating like a bastard. I sat there, I guess, for about an hour.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Chapter 25. Holden is at rock-bottom here. He thinks about his dead brother Allie and his own mortality and pleads with Allie not to let him disappear. Holden has these imaginary conversations with Allie, it is a form of escapism for him.

Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them – if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Mr. Antolini in Chapter 24. Mr. Antolini explains to Holden that he is not alone in his feelings of disgust for human behavior, but many people have shared the same concerns about the honesty and integrity of the culture they live in. Holden went to Mr. Antolini in the first instance because he feels he can trust and confide in him. But his interaction with his former teacher becomes the event that precipitates his full-blown breakdown. He is left unsettled, confused and unsure. Not just because of what he interprets as a homosexual come-on from Mr. Antolini, but also because of the conversation they have.

This fall I think you’re riding for – it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Mr. Antolini in Chapter 24. Mr. Antolini describes Holden as heading for a psychological breakdown, a kind of free fall where he will never reach the bottom. Where he will be disconnected from his environment, having searched for something there that he failed to find, and so ends up giving up.

That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write ‘F*** you’ right under your nose. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it’ll say ‘Holden Caulfield’ on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it’ll say ‘F*** you.’ I’m positive, in fact.

– J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye. Chapter 25, Holden is at rock bottom. At Phoebe’s school he sees ‘F*** you’ written in two places, and at the museum sees the profanity written for a third time. The quote speaks to Holden’s quest to save innocence and make the world a more attractive place. He realizes with a sadness he does not fully understand that he cannot find a place of innocence in an imperfect world.
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