Allie Caulfield

Holden's digression into Allie's baseball mitt is a fantastic example of how narration works in The Catcher in the Rye. It all starts when Holden agrees to write an English composition for his roommate, and before you know it, we have all this crucial information about Allie Caulfield: he died of leukemia on July 18, 1946. He was eleven and Holden was thirteen. The night of his death, Holden broke all the windows in the garage and had to be hospitalized. Allie was red-haired and left-handed. He wrote poems on his glove in green ink.

The information Holden gives us may seem overly-factual or even sparse, but it's incredibly telling. Allie was left-handed – he was a unique individual. He had red hair – he really stood out from everyone else. He wrote poems on his glove – he was sensitive and emotional, and he did so in green ink – again, he was a unique individual.

Holden's rendering of this information also tells us a lot of about the way he thinks about Allie: he idealizes him. We don't doubt that Allie was a great kid, but according to Holden, he's the most intelligent, nicest, sweetest, most endearing kid with the best sense of humor you'll ever meet. In Holden's love for his brother and in his pain over Allie's death, Holden has glorified Allie into something of a saint.

This makes sense when we think about Holden's mindset. Allie died when he was eleven years old – while he was still a child, and still "innocent." Having never been corrupted by the world of sex and adults, Allie is possibly the only person Holden could catch in a field of rye, the only person who never has to "go over the edge" of the great cliff. This is why, when Phoebe asks Holden to name one thing he likes, he responds with "Allie."

Of course, being a saintly and perpetually-young deceased person makes Allie a great go-to security blanket for Holden in times of distress which, we have to say, are none too infrequent. For having passed away years ago, Allie certainly makes a lot of appearances in the novel. Seriously – check out his timeline. Those are all the instances Holden stopped to think about or talk to his dead brother. See anything in common? It looks like Holden turns to his brother when times are worst. Allie ends up being a red flag for us, the reader, to know when things are bad for Holden. Just think about the disappearing-while-crossing-the-street incident.

Allie also plays into the way Holden thinks about his own mortality. We even get to see the two explicitly connected in the drunk-and-stumbling, searching-for-ducks scene in the park. Mostly, and this is incredibly telling about Holden's compassion, he worries about how others – his mom and his kid sister in particular – will feel if he dies. He remembers the pain of Allie's death and wouldn't want his family to have to go through that again.

Of course, if Allie is so important, why doesn't Holden just start talking about him right away? Why do we have to accidentally stumble into the topic via Stradlater's English composition, or a reminiscence about Bobby Fallon, or pneumonia? To answer that, we direct you to Holden's conversation with Mr. Antolini, when he declares that "you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most." (Check out "Tone" and "Writing Style" for more on this.)