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Question: Question about disappearing in the catcher in the rye!?
In the end of the book, when he feels like he will disappear off of every curb, what is the significance of that!? and why is it important that he asks allie to help him and allie does not let him disappear!?

thanks to anyone who has an idea!Www@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Allie dying young, and thus never growing up himself, is a big part of Holden's fears!. Because Allie will never be an adult, Holden clings to youth!. He sees Allie as an ideal person, unspoiled by the trappings of adulthood!. The curbs are just metaphors for the unknown future and the trackless plain of life that lies before him!. He knows that he himself is doomed to go on and he turns to Allie to help hold him in the reality that he would prefer to maintain!. Allie is all he can count on to remain the same and recognizable in a world which he fears and despises!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I can't believe that you're reading Catcher in the Rye!. Didn't you know that Sara Palin had recommended that book be banned from the library!. Are you un-American!? Let me see your ID card!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Don't you mean Phoebe!? Allie, as you surely know, was dead!. Maybe it was Allie, a memory of him!. I haven't read the end of that book for a few months now!.
The main thing I remember about the end is!.!.!.
Well, why don't you read it the last couple of chapters again and straighten all this out!?

ADD: Came back and see you addition!. Sorry for any misinterpretation on my part!. Yes, of course I know Holden was having a breakdown!. I did include the fact I could've been wrong regarding Allie!. But you want 'interpretation' and that fact I didn't get from your question!.

Regarding that, I think you answered your own question in your note to me about why Holden felt he was 'disappearing!.'
He was having a breakdown, and during it, any fences he'd built before: calling many others phoney, drinking, saying he didn't care he flunked out (again), and more: all those fences disappeared-- like curbs which could no longer support Holden himself as real!.

Thanks for the heads-up on Allie!. Still can't find my tattered copy of this book, though I'll continue my former sentence of the ending I recall that resonated for me!.

Holden cautions people (readers in this case) to 'never tell' stories of their past as he had just done, because that makes '[you] miss 'em, all of 'em, even Stradlater' --a paraphrase that may also include a wrong spelling of the student in the dorm Holden formerly thought of (at best) only as a nuisance!.

My interpretation of this: by revisiting places/people/things Hollden may have treated wrongly or unfairly or had no control over, Holden was hurt anew, because a lot of what he found in his recounting of those days, he then 'missed,' and sharply, because they were not things he could revisit and/or change!.
A very interesting note on which to end this fine book!.Www@QuestionHome@Com