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Unreliable Narrator
Explanation and Analysis—Unreliable Holden:
Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye, is a famously unreliable narrator. His partial and often skewed narration colors the entire novel with his perspective and his biases. For example, a notable marker of his unreliability is his delayed—and very casual—mention of his brother Allie's death. He initially withholds this detail from the reader, even though it would have provided useful context to explain a good deal of his otherwise strange behavior. When he does mention it, he quips: “He’s dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You’d have liked him.” This nonchalant revelation and others like it imply that Holden is trying to suppress or downplay the impact Allie's death has on him. It’s too hard to admit how important this event was, so he skirts around it. It’s easier to like and find Holden relatable as the novel goes on because the reader is able to sympathize with him when these hidden things catch the light.
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