often
refers to , his brother who died several years ago of leukemia. His death, which seems
meaningless and cruel to Holden, has thrown him into a deep depression. Some quotes that speak
to his depression are as follows. In the first one, Holden reacts to Allie's death in a way that
alarms his parents about his mental health:
I was only
thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows
in the garage....It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I
was doing it, and you didn't know Allie.
Even when
Holden get depressed about events that, on the surface, aren't directly about Allie, the state
of being depressed leads him to think about his dead brother. This suggests that the root of his
depression is Allie's death and the survivor's guilt he feels over it. In the quote below,
Holden is trying to relive a scene from the past in which he wouldn't let Allie join him hunting
with BB guns. Now he wishes...
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