Allie Caulfield Character Analysis in The Catcher in the Rye

Allie is Holden’s deceased younger brother. Allie died of leukemia when Holden was 13, and the memory of this loss still haunts Holden, who remembers his brother as intelligent, calm, and friendly—in short, the perfect child. On the night Allie died, Holden slept in the garage and punched out all the windows with his bare hand, causing him to miss the funeral because he needed to go to the hospital. In the aftermath of this event, his parents wanted to have Holden psychoanalyzed, but apparently never followed through with this idea. Having never resolved his feelings about Allie, then, Holden thinks about him quite frequently and even calls upon him as a protector of sorts when he feels particularly depressed.

Allie Caulfield Quotes in The Catcher in the Rye

The The Catcher in the Rye quotes below are all either spoken by Allie Caulfield or refer to Allie Caulfield. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

). Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Little, Brown edition of The Catcher in the Rye published in 2001.

I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don’t blame them. I really don’t. I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it…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.

Related Characters: (speaker),

Page Number and Citation: 50

Explanation and Analysis:

Allie Caulfield Character Timeline in The Catcher in the Rye

The timeline below shows where the character Allie Caulfield appears in The Catcher in the Rye. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...be about nearly anything. Taking this to heart, Holden decides to write about his brother Allie’s baseball mitt, which Allie covered with poems that he wrote with a green pen. Holden... (full context)

As Holden recalls the night of Allie’s death, he remembers that he responded to the news by sleeping in the garage and... (full context)

...not on what happened between him and Jane, but on the composition Holden wrote about Allie’s baseball mitt. Realizing that Holden didn’t write about a house, room, or place, he angrily... (full context)

...when he held Jane’s hand and says that she’s the only person he ever showed Allie’s baseball mitt. As he thinks these thoughts, he sits in the lobby in a chair... (full context)

Alone in his hotel room once again, Holden starts talking aloud to Allie. He does this sometimes when he feels very depressed. When Holden speaks to his dead... (full context)

...City Music Hall. He’s annoyed by the Rockettes pre-movie dance, but remembers how he and Allie used to love the man in the orchestra who played kettledrum because the musician seemed... (full context)

...catch pneumonia and die, he imagines his own funeral, which reminds him that he missed Allie’s funeral because he was still in the hospital after having smashed the garage windows with... (full context)

Finally, Holden says that he likes Allie and talking to Phoebe. Phoebe, for her part, says this doesn’t count because Allie is... (full context)

...he becomes convinced that he’s going to descend forever into the street, so he begs Allie to protect him. (full context)

...through the zoo, Holden and Phoebe start to walk toward a large carousel where Holden, Allie, and D.B. used to take Phoebe when she was little. Phoebe still isn’t talking to... (full context)