There were multiple things that led to Holden Caulfield’s mental breakdown. In the beginning of the novel, his mental state starts to unravel when he is in trouble at yet another school. The reader sees the breakdown start when Holden finds out that his roommate, Stradlater, is going on a date with his old friend, Jane Gallagher. When he finds out that his friend/roommate is going out with Jane, he grows paranoid and keeps repeating, “I should go talk to her” (Salinger ). The more that Holden thought about his old time friend going out with Stradlater, the angrier he got. This was due to the fact that in Holden’s mind, Jane is innocent, and that Stradlater is a bad man. He says, “ That Stradlater is one sexy bastard,” (Salinger ). Later that night, when Stradlater returned to the dorm from the date, he and Holden got into a physical fight over the date. Holden had implanted in his mind that Stradlater had given Jane the time and did sexual acts with her in a car. This is the start of his mental breakdown because he grows more and more paranoid while Stradlater is gone and even when Stradlater returns. Holden’s mental collapse then continues when he comes into contact with the annoyingly ill-mannered and unhygienic kid on campus. Ackley is the one person on the Pensey Prepatory School whom everyone chooses to avoid. Holden is not able to stand Ackley’s filthy habits and his constant need to get into everyone else’s problems. Ackley was never the kind of person who would get hints that people would give him to leave them alone. Also, he would always have to know what was going on with everyone around. When Stradlater and Holden got into the fight, Holden went into Ackley’s room to see if he could sleep in his roommates bed while he was out of town. At this point Jane and Stradlater are still on his mind and Ackley’s tendencies seem to put Holden in an even worse mood. Holden’s mental stability is deteriorating because he is becoming more and more irritable with...