The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
Dramatic Structure
The Catcher in the Rye
Ch. 1
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"If you really want to hear about it," begins the narration. You can tell right away you're
going to get a lot of attitude from this first-person narration, so you'd better be ready to
deal with it if you're going to read The Catcher in the Rye.
The first thing you hear from this young guy is that his parents wouldn't want him to tell
you about his personal life. Doesn't matter. He's going to tell us all about "this madman
stuff" that happened last Christmas.
He says he's got a brother named D.B. who's out in Hollywood "being a prostitute,"
which we know means "writing scripts," since D.B. used to write short stories (such as
"The Secret Goldfish," a tale about a boy who wouldn't let anyone else look at his pet
goldfish).
Anyway, the narrator hates "phonies," which is what his brother is now since he made "a
lot of dough" and bought a Jaguar.
Our narrator also hates the movies. He hates a lot of things, so get used to it.
Back to this story of "last Christmas." The narrator says he'll start off with day he left
Pencey Prep. Pencey is an annoying, snobby East-coast Prep school in Pennsylvania.
Our narrator is disgusted by it and its phoniness.
The day in question is a Saturday, and Pencey is hosting a big-deal football game
against rival Saxon Hall. The narrator doesn't feel like watching the game, so he hangs
out up on a hill and watches the crowd from a distance.
He digresses about Selma Thurmer, the headmaster's daughter and the only girl around
the place. Her father is a "bastard," the narrator says, but she's decent because she
knows as much. She also wears "falsies" (fake breasts).
So why isn't our narrator watching the football game? It seems he is 1) the manager of
the fencing team, and 2) the guy who, earlier this Saturday, left all the fencing equipment
on the subway. So no match + a mob of angry fencers = necessary isolation.
Additionally, the narrator wants to go say good-bye to his history teacher, Mr. Spencer,
before he (the narrator) leaves the school.
And why is he leaving the school? Mostly because… he got kicked out. Because he
failed all his classes, they "gave [him] the ax," which it seems they do quite frequently.
So now he's hanging around on the hill (and freezing because some "crook" at school
stole his camel hair coat) and trying to feel some sort of good-bye for the place. He says,
"When I leave a place, I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse."
In order to get the emotion of a proper good-bye, the narrator reminisces about tossing
around a football with two friends of his one evening on campus. They played even after
it was too dark to see.
This is just the sort of things he needs. A round of nostalgia later, he heads off toward
Mr. Spencer's, but slowly, as running proves difficult for this "heavy smoker."
We get another hint as to where the narrator is in the present time (as he's telling us this
story about leaving Pencey last Christmas): he reveals that last year he "grew six and a
half inches" and "practically got t.b." and "came out here for all these goddamn checkups
and stuff." We think he is in some sort of institution or hospital.
He gets to the Spencers' and, as he is greeted by Mrs. Spencer, we learn our narrator's
name: Holden.
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The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
Ch. 2
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The Spencers are about seventy years old, and, as Holden informs us, they "get a big
bang out of things" such as buying an old Navajo blanket.
Also, Holden's last name is Caulfield. Holden Caulfield. Nice ring to it, isn't there?
As soon as Holden makes it into Mr. Spencer's room, he regrets having come at all. Mr.
Spencer is sitting reading the Atlantic Monthly and surrounded by Vicks Nose Drops.
He is in fact wearing a ratty bathrobe, which isn't the most aesthetically pleasing sight.
The two discuss Mr. Spencer's grippe (hence the nose drops) and Mr. Thurmer, the
headmaster.
They talk about life being a game – Thurmer's advice to Holden. Holden remarks to us
(not to Mr. Spencer) that, sure, it is a game – if you're on the side of all the hot-shots.
Otherwise, "no game."
Holden tells Spencer that his parents are going to be pretty irritated when they find out
he's gotten the ax, since this is the fourth school he's been booted from.
Holden reveals to us some key information about himself: he shakes his head a lot, he
says "Boy!" a lot, was sixteen at the time of the story (when he's leaving Pencey) and is
seventeen now (as he's telling us the story from his hospital/ward/institution place), has
gray hair, often acts like he's twelve, but occasionally acts older, except no one notices
when he does.
Spencer picks his nose.
We learn that Holden hates the word "grand," on account of it being "phony."
He decides he'd better "get the hell out of there" because he feels a "lecture coming on."
And he is right. Spencer opens with, "What's the matter with you, boy?" Ugh.
Holden admits that he took five classes and failed all but one – English, and only
because he'd read all the books before, at another school (before he was kicked out of
that one).
Spencer then resorts to low-blows: he reads Holden's final exam essay (in history) out
loud, which is utter garbage about the Egyptians and ends with a note that (roughly
speaking) says, "I know this is junk, so it's OK if you flunk me, don't worry about it."
Holden is livid that Old Spencer made him read the essay out loud.
Spencer wants to know why Holden left his previous schools (like Whooton and Elkton
Hills).
Holden isn't very forthcoming to his history teacher, but he tells us everything we want to
know (and more). He left because he was "surrounded by phonies" and the headmaster
was a "bastard." Sound familiar?
Spencer wants to know if Holden has any concerns for his future. He says Holden will,
someday – when it's too late. Holden finds this depressing.
Holden gets out of there after that. As he heads out the front door he thinks he hears
Spencer yelling something like "Good luck!" after him, which Holden also finds to be
depressing.
Ch. 3
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"I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life." Holden opens Chapter Three with this
declaration. He gives a short discourse on lying, and then we learn that Holden lives in a
dormitory donated by an alumnus named Ossenburger, who made all his money with
cheap funeral parlors.
Holden doesn't like the guy (Ossenburger came to Pencey to give a big, "corny speech"
about praying to Jesus). In fact, the only good part of the speech was when someone in
the audience let one rip. (Or "passed gas," as they say.)
Holden ends up back in his dorm and puts on a red hunting cap – he's partial to the thing
and wears it with the peak swung around to the back.
Holden chills out and reads Out of Africa, which he got by mistake from the library.
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The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
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This brings is to a discourse on books. Holden's brother D.B. is his favorite author (or
Ring Lardner, who writes sports-related stories), but mostly Holden just likes books
where you can laugh once in a while, books that, after you read them, you wish the
author was a friend of yours that you could just call up and talk to. Having read The
Return of the Native, he wouldn't mind calling old Thomas Hardy up.
Anyway, a few pages into Out of Africa, this guy Robert Ackley "barges" in. He's a tall
guy with dirty teeth and pimples.
Ackley looks around to make sure Holden's roommate, named Stradlater, isn't there. The
two don't get along.
Ackley wants to talk and hang out. Holden clearly does not. So Ackley does the next
best thing, which is to walk around Holden's room, pick up all his stuff, examine it, and
put it back in the wrong place.
One such item is Holden's picture of a girl he "used to go around with" named Sally
Hayes. (Relationships were complicated back then; "go around with" was somewhere in
between "hanging out" and "together.")
Holden, after reading the same sentence twenty times, gives up and puts his book down.
He starts "horsing around," which he admits he does "quite a bit." In this particular case,
"horsing around" means pulling a hunting cap over your eyes and pretending to be blind.
Ackley asks about Holden's red hat, informing him that it's a deer-hunting hat.
Holden responds that it's a people-shooting hat.
Ackley proceeds to cut his toenails and leave the clippings all over the floor. Ew.
The boys go back to talking about Stradlater, who is out on a date. Ackley is really not a
fan of this guy, but it seems the reason is because Stradlater told him he should really
brush his teeth once in a while.
Holden admits that Stradlater is conceited, but defends him. He says if Stradlater was
wearing a tie you really liked, he'd just take it off and give it to you.
Speak of the devil, here comes Stradlater – he wants to borrow Holden's hound's-tooth
jacket.
Ackley takes off and Holden gives up his jacket, asking Stradlater not to stretch it out
with his "godamn shoulders," which are very broad.
Stradlater takes off his shirt and tie so he can have a shave and show off his fantastic
body. Meanwhile, his date is waiting in the annex.
Ch. 4
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Holden, who doesn't have anything better to do, goes along with Stradlater to the
bathroom to bug him while he (Stradlater) shaves and demonstrates his poor whistling
abilities.
Holden remarks that Stradlater is a "secret slob" – he always looks put together and
smells nice and all that jazz, but secret things, like his razor blade, are all crumby and
filled with hair and rust.
Stradlater is attractive, he says, but mostly in the good-yearbook-photo way.
Holden is still wearing his red hat, which he gets a "real bang out of."
Stradlater needs a big favor. Hotshot people who are in love with themselves always
need a big favor, Holden remarks (to us, not Stradlater).
Anyway, the big favor is that Stradlater needs Holden to write him a composition, only a
so-so one – not one with the commas all in the right place and so forth.
This is a pain. Holden hates it when people like Stradlater try to pretend the only reason
they're bad at English essays is commas, when really they're just not good at English.
Holden responds by doing a tap dance like you see in the movies, which he hates but
gets a bang out of imitating. He makes a point of telling us that Stradlater laughs.
Stradlater compliments the red hunting hat, but only so he can butter up Holden to ask
him again to write his English composition (which has to describe something – anything).
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The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
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Holden asks about a girl (Fitzgerald) that Stradlater was dating at one point. Stradlater
says she's too old for Holden, and Holden responds by trying to put Stradlater in a half
nelson.
Stradlater ("a very strong guy") pushes Holden ("a very weak guy") away.
Back to the girl-talk. Stradlater says his date's name is Jean Gallagher, and Holden
"nearly [drops] dead." He says her name is Jane, not Jean, and he practically grew up
next door to her.
Stradlater obviously knows nothing about this girl, but Holden goes on about how she
used to dance ballet when she was little, and how, when they played checkers, she
would never move her kings from the back row because "she […] liked the way they
looked."
Holden admits that most people aren't interested in such details. Stradlater is obviously a
member of that majority.
Holden keeps remarking that he should go down and say hello. Stradlater gives Holden
the go-ahead, but instead Holden sticks around and talks about Jane's stepfather, an
alcoholic who used to run around the house naked all the time.
This interests Stradlater.
Holden tells him to give his regards to Jane, but he knows Stradlater is the kind of guy
that never does give regards, even when you make a point of asking him to.
Suddenly very nervous, Holden asks Stradlater just what he plans on doing with Jane on
their date.
Stradlater responds that they can't do much, since she only signed out of her dorm (at
her own nearby boarding school) until 9:30pm.
Of course, this irritates Holden, who figures Stradlater is probably thinking that if Jane
knew what a "sexy bastard" she was going on a date with, she probably would have
signed out until three in the morning.
Stradlater is indeed thinking as much. He reminds Holden about the essay and heads
out of the bathroom.
Ackley comes back. Holden is happy "for once" to see him, despite the fact that all the
guy does is sit around and pick pimples, because it takes his mind off the other stuff
(namely, Stradlater potentially having sex with Jane).
Ch. 5
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Saturday night the boys at Pencey always get steak for dinner. Primarily, Holden tells us,
this is because everyone's parents come to visit on Sunday, and this way, when they ask
what their son had for dinner last night, he'll say "steak."
Holden and his friend Mal Brossard take the bus into town for the night. He convinces
Mal to let Ackley come along with them (because otherwise the kid will sit in his room
and pick his pimples all night).
It's snowing (since it's December in Pennsylvania) and Holden packs a snowball. He
tries to throw it at about ten different objects but keeps changing his mind, and finally just
carries it around until they get on the bus and the driver tells him to ditch it.
They don't end up going to the movie theater after all, since Mal and Ackley already saw
it and Holden doesn't like watching movies with people that laugh at stuff that isn't even
funny.
When they get back to the dorm, Ackley sits on Holden's bed and picks his pimples and
won't leave after a barrage of hints that, really, he should leave. Ackley then proceeds to
tell a fake sex story (and we can tell it's fake because it contains inconsistencies).
Once Ackley leaves, Holden puts on pajamas, a bathrobe, and his red hunting hat to
write Stradlater's composition.
It's supposed to be a descriptive work, but Holden can't think of a room or a house or
anything like that as he was supposed to write. All he can think of is his brother Allie's
baseball mitt.
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The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
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Allie was left-handed and (accordingly) had a left-handed fielder's mitt. The thing about it
is that it was covered in poems that Allie had written on in green ink so that he'd have
something to do (that is, read the poems).
Allie's dead now, Holden tells us. He died from leukemia in 1946 (which we can infer to
be three years before the events taking place, and four years before Holden's telling us
this story). He (Allie) was intelligent and good-natured and had red hair – the kind you
could see from a mile away. He used to laugh so hard he'd fall off his chair. Holden then
gets to some Pretty Important Stuff: The night that Allie died, he (Holden) went into the
garage and broke all the windows with his fist – "just for the hell of it." He tried to break
all the windows on the car, too, but his hand was already broken. He still can't make a
good fist, but whatever – it's not like he's going to be a violinist or something, he says.
So that's what Holden writes the composition about – the baseball glove. He listens to
Ackley snoring and feels "a little sorry for the crazy sonuvabitch."
Ch. 6
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It's still Saturday night. Holden is awake and worrying about Jane and the possibility of
Stradlater getting it on with her.
Stradlater finally comes back (remember, he's Holden's roommate), returns the hound'stooth jacket, and notably says nothing about his date.
He reads the English composition Holden wrote for him and complains that it's not about
a room or a house or something like he said. He berates Holden for doing everything "as-backward" and says this is exactly why he (Holden) is flunking out.
Holden rips it all up and throws the pieces away, which only makes Stradlater angrier.
(Because Holden wrote it on a typewriter, this was the only copy.)
Holden lights up a cigarette, which he informs us is something Stradlater hates. It's
against the rules, and Stradlater never breaks any rules.
Finally, he asks about Jane. He notes that Stradlater got back pretty d--n late
considering she had only signed out until 9:30pm.
Stradlater cuts his toenails and doesn't really address the question until Holden keeps
pressing.
Finally, he says he didn't go anywhere with Jane – they just hung out in a car. Ed
Banky's car, actually (he's the basketball coach, who likes Stradlater because he's on
the team and isn't a terrible player).
Finally, Holden asks outright: "What'd you do? Give her the time in Ed Banky's godd--n
car?"
Again, Stradlater refuses to answer. Holden flips out and tries to hit him. Stradlater pins
him down, demanding to know what is wrong.
Holden keeps insulting him. It's clear that Stradlater doesn't want to hurt him, but he's
also not going to take this lying down (or kneeling, as he is on Holden's chest).
Once Stradlater finally lets him go, Holden calls him a "dirty stupid sonuvab---h of a
moron." Stradlater smacks Holden a good one in the nose, resulting in quite the bloody
mess.
Holden just keeps sobbing and calling him a moron. He sits on the floor until Stradlater
leaves the room, then puts on his hunting hat and stares at himself in the mirror.
Looking at his bloody reflection, Holden thinks he looks tough and remarks that he's only
ever been in about two fights in his life and lost both.
He heads off to Ackley's crumby old room.
Ch. 7
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Holden gets to Ackley's room and is all, "How about playing Canasta?" and Ackley is all,
"Stop bleeding all over my room."
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The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
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Because Ackley's roommate Ely is out of town, Holden asks to sleep in his bed, probably
so he doesn't have to go back and face Stradlater.
Ackley refuses, since he doesn't know what time his roommate is going to get back.
He does want to know what the fight was about, however, and Holden jokes he was
defending Ackley's honor to his roommate.
Holden lies in Ely's bed and thinks about Jane – more specifically, about Jane with
Stradlater in the back of Ed Banky's car. He says most of the guys at Pencey just talk
about sex, but Stradlater actually does it.
Holden recounts a night when he double-dated with Stradlater in the very same car.
Holden was in the front with his date and Stradlater in the back with his. He says all night
he could hear Stradlater coercing his date, with a very quiet, sincere voice, while she
said things like "No – please. Please don't" and so on and so forth.
By now, Ackley has fallen asleep. Holden wakes him up and asks him what's the deal
with joining a monastery, and if you have to be Catholic to do it. He adds that he'd
probably join the wrong kind of monastery, anyway – the kind with a bunch of "stupid
bastards."
Ackley resents this seeming attack on his religion (we now know he's Catholic – he
talked earlier about going to Mass the next day, Sunday).
Holden leaves snippily.
Walking down the empty (and depressing) dorm corridor, Holden figures now is as good
of time as any to leave Pencey.
He packs up quickly (without waking Stradlater) and gets depressed about the ice skates
that his mother sent him a few days earlier. She bought him the wrong kind, but he still
feels guilt that he got the ax again at school. Besides, he says, every time he gets a
present, it makes him sad.
Holden sits down to count up his money (he says "dough").
But about this dough: Holden has a decent chunk since his grandmother just sent him
money for his birthday, which she does about four times a year.
Holden goes down the hall and sells his ninety-dollar typewriter for twenty bucks.
Just as he's leaving, Holden, "sort of crying," puts on his red hunting hat and yells down
the corridor at the top of his lungs, "Sleep tight, ya morons!" He almost trips on some
peanut shells one of those morons left all over the stairs.
Ch. 8
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Holden walks in the cold to the train station. He likes trains at night, since it's the only
time he can read those dumb stories in the cheap magazines without puking.
He takes his hat off. (Are you paying attention to this hat? We certainly are.)
Holden meets an attractive woman on the train who is about forty or forty-five years old.
She sees the Pencey sticker on his Gladstone suitcases and strikes up a conversation,
since her son Ernest Morrow goes there, too.
Holden lets us know that Ernest is the biggest jerk in the history of mankind.
He lies to the woman, telling her his own name is Rudolf Schmidt (the janitor in his
dorm). Then he goes on and on about what a wonderful boy Ernest is.
Holden offers the woman a cigarette, but she declines, as the train isn't a smoker.
Holden convinces her to take a cigarette anyway, and he admires the way she smokes.
She asks about Holden's nose (which has just started bleeding again), and he tells her
he got hit in the face by a snowball.
He makes up more stories about what a wonderful guy Ernest is and offers to buy Mrs.
Ernest's Mom a drink. She gives him the, "Um, what are you, twelve?" in the nicest way
possible.
The woman then asks why Holden is going home for Christmas so early (it's Saturday,
and the kids are supposed to leave Wednesday). She looks worried, which Holden says
means really she's just nosy.
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The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
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Holden (a.k.a. Rudolf) details that he has to have an operation to remove a tumor on his
brain. He then has to start reading a timetable he's got in his pocket because it's the only
way he can stop himself from lying.
The woman goes back to reading Vogue, but before they part ways, she invites Holden
(or Rudolf) to come visit her son Ernest in Massachusetts sometime during the summer.
He replies that, no, this summer he has to go to South America with his grandmother,
which means that timetable did nothing to stop his lying.
Besides, he wouldn't visit Ernest Morrow for anything.
Ch. 9
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Holden gets off at Penn Station (in New York City) and decides it's just about time to give
someone a buzz on the payphone. The only question is…who to call?
He ponders the possibilities: his brother D.B., his kid sister Phoebe, Jane Gallagher's
mother, and finally this girl Sally Hayes he used to go around with.
Sally recently wrote Holden a "long, phony letter," the gist of which was an invitation to
help trim her Christmas tree.
Unfortunately, Sally's mother thinks Holden is "wild" and would have a conniption if he
called her house, not to mention she'd call Holden's mother and blab about how he's in
New York four days early, which means he got kicked out of school, which his parents
don't know yet.
So he ends up not calling anyone.
Instead, Holden gets a cab and accidentally gives his home address. About halfway
there, he remembers he can't go home until Wednesday. Then he asks the driver about
the ducks in the lagoon near Central Park: he wants to know where they go in the winter
when the water freezes over.
The driver can't answer. Holden decides that, since this guy is corny, he should act
corny, too. He has the driver take him to the Edmont Hotel, and the driver declines
Holden's invitation to have a cocktail there.
Holden notes that he took his hunting cap off before going into the lobby, so as to not
look like a "screwball," even though he later found out there were "screwballs all over the
place."
Holden feels bad for the 65-year-old man who carries his suitcases up the room. What a
crumby job, he thinks.
He looks across to the other side of the hotel and sees distinguished-looking gentleman
putting on women's fine clothing and prancing about in high-heels.
In the room above that, he sees a man and a woman squirting water out of their mouths
at each other.
Holden finds both occurrences to be entirely perverted. Stradlater, he thinks, would have
been the King of a sexed-up place like this.
Which gets us right into a little digression on sex. Holden admits that the woman across
the hotel is really attractive. He could go for some water-squirting himself, come to think
of it.
Except the idea stinks. Holden says if you really care about a girl, you shouldn't horse
around with her at all in such a crumby way. (Crumby = dirty, from what we can tell.)
He used to know a "crumby" girl himself, so crumby that he made a rule not to horse
around with any girls anymore, which lasted about ten minutes.
Either way, he "doesn't understand" sex.
Holden contemplates calling Jane at her school. It's late, so he has a whole story
planned out to tell whomever picks up the phone (it involves an uncle and a dead
woman).
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The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
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Holden's "felling pretty horny" by now, so he gets his wallet and digs out the address of a
girl who isn't "exactly a whore or anything," but always good for a fun time. He got said
address from a guy he knows that goes to Princeton.
So he calls up this girl, Faith Cavendish, tells her he's a friend of this Princeton guy,
Eddie, whom at first she doesn't remember, tries to make his voice sound deeper than it
is, and asks her out for a cocktail.
She's all, "Hmm, how about tomorrow?" and Holden is all, "Now or never!" so the upshot
of the whole deal is that Holden gets nothing.
Ch. 10
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Holden changes his shirt so he can go downstairs to the Lavender Room. He wishes he
could call his little sister Phoebe, except it's late and she's probably sleeping.
Apparently Phoebe is the smartest kid ever. Actually, so is D.B., and so was Allie, so
Holden is the only one who isn't, he tells us.
Phoebe's ten and "roller-skate skinny." The good thing about her is that she always
knows what you're talking about and can tell the difference between a good movie and a
bad one. She's very emotional, he adds, and writes short stories about a girl named
Hazel ("Hazle," she spells it).
Basically, she's amazing and "really kills" Holden and in fact anybody with any sense.
Holden makes it down to the Lavender Room, is disgusted by the band, and gives a
blonde across the room the up-down.
He tries to order a drink and once again gets the old "What are you, twelve?" So he ends
up with a coke.
Holden goes back to eyeing the blonde, who's sitting at a table with two other giggling
women. He finally walks over and asks if anyone would like to dance, even though the
three of them are a bunch of "morons."
The blonde is one of the best dancers partners Holden's ever had (which reminds us –
she's the one who got up at his request).
However, because she's a "moron," she doesn't really listen to his compliments. Instead,
she talks about how she and her girlfriends saw an actor, Peter Lorre, buying a
newspaper the other night.
Holden, still impressed with her dancing, if not her conversational abilities, kisses her on
the top of "her dopey head," which irritates the girl.
He asks her where she's from (Seattle), and tells her (ironically) that she's a good
conversationalist. She doesn't get it, so he lets it go.
When she asks how old he is, Holden swears and then has to apologize for his
language.
That's what he hates about girls – every time they do something cute he ends up half in
love with them, even though they're "sort of stupid."
He ends up sitting down with the girls, even though they forget to invite him. He says his
name is Jim Steele, and has a hard time getting them to talk about anything intelligent at
all, especially the blonde (whose name is Bernice).
The other two girls (Marty and Laverne) are not attractive. Holden asks if they're sisters,
which insults both of them, since neither wants to think she's as unattractive as the other.
Holden ends up dancing with all three of them and amusing himself by pretending to see
movie stars all over the place. As in, "Look! Gary Cooper! Aw, you just missed him."
He buys them all drinks.
Finally, they all take off and stick Holden with the tab – thirteen bucks, which was a lot
back then (remember, he sold his typewriter for twenty). He says they should have
offered to pay for the drinks they had before he got there, not that he would have let
them.
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The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
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Mostly, he's depressed that they came all the way from Seattle, Washington to wear an
ugly hat in New York City and get up early the next morning to see the first show at
Radio City Music Hall. It's possibly the most depressing thing he's ever heard.
So he leaves.
Ch. 11
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Back in the Lobby, Holden again starts thinking about Jane Gallagher – and again, more
specifically about her sitting in Ed Banky's car with Stradlater.
He's pretty certain there was no sex, but still.
He says he never hooked up with Jane, but they saw each other all the time (played golf,
etc.) so he knew her really well.
He recalls how he met her: Holden's mother got upset that the Gallagher's dog kept
peeing on their lawn, so she called them up and complained.
A few days later, when Holden tried to say hello to Jane, she was an ice princess about
it. He had to convince her that he personally didn't care where the dog relieved itself.
They ended up going golfing together. Jane lost eight balls. Holden, on the other hand, is
an amazing golfer.
Then he gets into a nice long description about this girl. She's not exactly beautiful, he
says, but she really knocks him out, especially the way her mouth moves when she
talks. He says she's the only person to whom he's ever shown Allie's baseball mitt.
Holden's mother doesn't like Jane, probably because she squabbles all the time with
Jane's mother.
OK, so there was this one afternoon where he and Jane almost hooked up. It was a
rainy Saturday and they were playing checkers on her porch. Her drunk stepfather came
out and asked Jane if there were any cigarettes. She refused to look up or answer, even
when he asked repeatedly.
Finally, after he went back into the house, Jane started crying. Holden moved over so sit
right next to her and started kissing her everywhere – her nose, eyes, ears – everywhere
except her mouth.
They ended up going out for a movie; Holden asked if the stepfather (Mr. Cudahy) had
ever tried anything with her. She said no, and he's never really figured out what the deal
was.
They just held hands. Jane is an excellent hand-holder.
Which reminds him of this time in the movie theater. Jane reached over and put her
hand on the back of his neck. It's something you always see older people do, Holden
remarks, like a mother to her husband or her kid or something, but when a girl Jane's
age does it, "it's so pretty it just about kills you."
Anyway, Holden's done reminiscing and the lobby is getting depressing, so he decides to
get out of there and go to Greenwich Village, where D.B. used to take him once in a
while to listen to this guy Ernie play the piano.
Ch. 12
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Holden gets into a "vomity" cab with a driver named Horwitz. He's depressed about the
empty New York streets, but asks anyway about the ducks and where they go in the
winter when the lagoon freezes over.
Horwitz doesn't know. He does add, however, that the fish stay right where they are.
Their pores open up, he insists, and they take in nutrients from all the seaweed and stuff
around them, even while they're frozen right there in place.
Holden asks the guy if he wants to have a drink with him, but Horwitz replies that he has
no time.
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The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
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As Holden exits the cab, Horwitz insists that the fish are taken care of, because Mother
Nature wouldn't leave them to fend for themselves. He's quite worked up about the
whole thing.
Holden shows up to old Ernie's where everyone is intently listening to the piano. The
crowd is just a bunch of morons, the kind who laugh at movies that aren't funny. Ernie
even bows, which Holden finds disgusting.
He finds a seat and orders a scotch and soda, adding that no matter how old you are,
you can always drink at Ernie's.
Holden listens in on the conversation of these two people sitting next to him. The guy is
giving the girl a play-by-play of the last football game he was in. The only reason she
has to listen to that dull conversation, according to Holden, is that she's not attractive.
On his other side is a very preppy, good-looking couple. To be exact, they are a "Joe
Yale-looking-guy" and a "terrific looking girl with him." (By the way, Holden informs us, he
wouldn't go to Yale or Princeton even if he was dying).
Also, he's feeling her up under the table while she protests and while he talks about this
guy in his dorm that committed suicide.
As a better alternative to watching this display, Holden sends a message via the waiter
asking Ernie to join him for a drink.
Just then a girl with a terrific body named Lillian Simmons greets Holden by name and
comes over to this table. She used to date Holden's brother D.B., and now she's with a
naval officer.
Lillian asks about D.B. and introduces her date. Holden remarks that nobody really likes
this girl, even the guy that's dating her.
Holden resents having to say, "Glad you have met you" to the naval guy whom he isn't
remotely glad to have met.
Then he has to leave; he tells Lillian he can't join her because he's meeting somebody
else. "People are always ruining things for you," he says.
Ch. 13
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Holden walks 41 blocks back to his hotel, on the grounds that sometimes, you just feel
like walking.
It's cold, so he puts his hunting hat back on, noting that he doesn't care how he looks.
He wishes he had his gloves, which someone at Pencey stole. Holden admits he's rather
a coward, and that even if he did know who stole his gloves, he wouldn't have had the
guts to beat the guy up like he deserved. Instead, he would have tried to look tough.
He's not particularly partial to fistfights, he continues; he'd much rather push someone
out a window than sock them in the jaw.
Heading into yet another bar for yet another drink (#4), Holden assures us he has a
great tolerance for alcohol. He puked once, but only because he wanted to. Not because
he had to.
He changes his mind, though, when he sees some smelly, drunk men coming out of the
bar. Holden ends up back at the hotel, which once again he finds depressing.
As soon as he gets into the elevator, the elevator man asks him if he's up for a good
time.
Actually, the elevator man wants to set him up with a woman. And by "set up," we mean
he wants to pimp out a prostitute for five bucks.
Holden, who by the way has told the elevator man he is 22, says OK. When he gets
back to his room, he changes his shirt and brushes his teeth.
Actually, now that the time has come, Holden informs us he's a virgin. Not that he hasn't
had a few opportunities, it's just that he never got around to it.
He says the problem is, most girls always tell you to stop. Most guys just keep going, but
Holden actually stops.
So he figures, now is the chance to get in some practice.
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The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
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Right on time, the girl shows up at his door. She's not bad-looking, and asks Holden if
he's the guy that Maurice (the elevator man) is sending her to.
When Holden confirms, she takes off her coat and sits down on his bed in her green
dress. She looks nervous, probably because she's about Holden's age.
Holden introduces himself as Jim Steele, and the prostitute, obviously not one for the
chit-chat, takes her dress off. This, of course, only makes Holden even more nervous.
He asks her for her name (Sunny) and then wants to know if they can just chat for a
while.
She's all "whatever" and asks him to hang up her dress in the closet. This depresses
Holden, since he can imagine her buying it in a store where no one knew that she was
really a prostitute.
Sunny is a bad conversationalist and just wants to get the sex over with already.
Holden's not up for it, so he makes up a story about having had a recent operation on his
clavichord, which isn't so much a part of the body as it is a musical instrument. Sunny
doesn't know this.
She does, however, think Holden is cute, much like a guy in the movies. So she sits in
his lap.
When he doesn't immediately throw her down and go at it, she gets irritated. She
demands the money, so Holden gives her the five dollars that Maurice said it would cost.
Sunny says no, it costs ten. When Holden refuses, she shrugs, puts her dress back on,
and leaves.
Ch. 14
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Holden is depressed, so he smokes some cigarettes, watches the dawn, and talks aloud
to his brother Allie, which he sometimes does when he's feeling not-so-great.
This leads us into another reminiscence, this time about an incident with one of Holden's
childhood friends, Bobby Fallon. Allie wanted to go with the two boys (Holden and
Bobby) to play, and Holden said no, since Allie was too little.
He regrets this now, so he keeps saying out loud to Allie, "Okay. Go home and get your
bike and meet me in front of Bobby's house."
Finally, Holden gets into bed. He wishes he could pray, but he's sort of an atheist since
people like the disciples annoy him so much, since, according to Holden, they were so
useless to Jesus.
He used to argue about it all the time with a Quaker named Arthur Childs in one of the
prep schools he attended.
Holden used to argue that Jesus wouldn't have sent Judas to hell, even though the guy
betrayed him. So the disciples never even got what they deserved.
He reveals to us that all the kids in his family are atheists, and that if there's one thing he
can't stand, it's a minister, since they always give sermons in phony voices.
While Holden lies around still smoking, there comes a persistent knocking on his door.
It's Maurice and Sunny, and they want five more dollars.
Holden refuses, as they told him it would only cost five. They argue a bit, and Sunny
finally takes Holden's wallet off dresser and removes the money.
Holden starts to cry. Maurice gives him a shove, and Sunny says to leave the kid alone.
In a spectacular demonstration of how not to improve a situation, Holden calls Maurice a
"goddam dirty moron."
When asked to repeat it, Holden obliges. With more adjectives.
Maurice punches him hard in the stomach. Holden staggers around and into the
bathroom, pretending (in his own mind) that he's taken a bullet to the gut and is dying.
He imagines coming back at Maurice with an automatic, calling Jane, and having her
bandage up his guts.
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The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
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Disgusted with himself, Holden notes that the movies can really ruin you.
Getting back into bed, Holden says he'd jump out the window, if he wouldn't end up with
a bunch of rubbernecks staring at his gory body.
Ch. 15
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Holden wakes up around 10am, smokes some cigarettes, and thinks about Jane.
Basically, nothing has changed.
He does end up giving Sally Hayes a call. He says she's not too intelligent, but he got
tricked into thinking so for a while since she knew a lot about theater and literature and
all that stuff. Also, he spent a lot of time making out with her, which can obscure the
facts.
Once has her on the phone, they set a date to see a matinee. Then she tells him all
about these boys that are just crazy over her, which isn't exactly a tactful thing to do.
After he hangs up, Holden looks out his window at the "perverts" across the way, but
they all have their shades pulled down.
It's only Sunday and he knows he can't go home until Wednesday, or at the very earliest,
maybe Tuesday, so gets in a cab and heads for Grand Central Station so he can leave
his bags in a locker there.
He counts his money and realizes he's spent a ton since he left school, which is nothing
new, but still makes him feel bad. We also get some insight here into Holden's family – it
seems his father does in fact make a lot of money, as a corporation (corporate) lawyer.
After dropping his bags off, Holden has a light breakfast at a counter, noting that the
reason he's so skinny is that he never eats enough.
Holden lends a hand to two nuns nearby who don't seem to know what to do with their
inexpensive suitcases.
Which leads Holden into a digression on…inexpensive suitcases.
At Elkton Hills (one of his many previous boarding schools), Holden roomed with a guy
named Dick Slagle who had very inexpensive suitcases. He was embarrassed about it,
so he used to keep them under the bed instead of on the luggage rack.
Of course, this was depressing to Holden, who himself had very expensive suitcases. So
he put his under the bed, too.
The funny thing was, Dick kept taking Holden's suitcases out and putting them back on
the rack – so that people would think they were his. Even so, he kept insulting them,
calling them "bourgeois." They both ended up getting new roommates.
Holden adds that "it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are
much better than theirs."
But back to the nuns. One of them is carrying one of those Salvation Army-type baskets
for other people to donate money.
He asks if they're taking up a collection, as he would make a contribution. He's mostly
depressed that they're eating toast and coffee while he's eating bacon and eggs.
He finally gives them ten dollars, though they keep asking if he's sure he can afford to do
that.
Holden strikes up a conversation, and we find out that the nuns, in addition to being
nuns, are schoolteachers from Chicago who have just come to New York.
One of the nuns teaches English, and Holden wonders how she feels about the sexy bits
of books she has to teach, considering she is a nun – like Eustacia Vye in The Return of
the Native, for example.
So they start talking about English (Holden's best subject).
Holden details the books he's read: Beowulf, Lord Randal My Son, Return of the Native,
Romeo and Juliet, etc.
The nun gets all excited about Romeo and Juliet, which Holden thinks isn't exactly nunappropriate. But he indulges in a discussion of it anyway.
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The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
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What bothered him most in the play wasn't when Romeo and Juliet died; it was when
Mercutio died. He had a hard time liking Romeo after that. He hates it when someone
dies and it isn't even his fault.
Holden tries to pay the nuns' bill before they part ways, but the women won't let him.
He reflects that he would've had a lot better time talking to them if he wasn't so afraid
they were going to ask him if he was Catholic, especially since he has an Irish last
name.
His father was Catholic at one point, he tells us.
He remembers a kid named Louis Shaney that he used to know at school, someone he
had a good conversation with until Louis tried to subtly find out if he was Catholic.
This, he tells us, is much like the suitcases issue.
After accidentally blowing smoke in the nuns' face as they say goodbye, Holden
apologizes, is embarrassed, and generally feels depressed by the whole thing,
especially the money part.
Ch. 16
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Holden keeps thinking about the collection basket as he heads off to meet Sally for their
matinee date. He pictures the different people he knows having to hold a collection
basket; Sally's mother, for one, would only do it if everyone had to kiss her butt to make
a contribution.
It makes him sad that, while Sally's mother would use the money to go to a swanky
lunch, the nuns never get to go to a swanky lunch.
Holden heads to Broadway Street to try to pick up a record for his sister Phoebe called
"Little Shirley Beans." It's about a kid who lost her two front teeth and is too embarrassed
to leave her house.
Holden sees a sort of poor-looking family come out of church and walk in front of him.
The mother and father aren't really paying attention to their six-year-old kid, who is
singing, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye."
This makes Holden feel better – not so depressed.
He makes it to a crowded Broadway street by about noon, irritated by the fact that
everyone so obviously wants to go the movies. It's one thing if there's nothing else to do,
but actually wanting to go is nuts.
Holden makes it to a record store and pays five dollars for an apparently rare copy of
"Little Shirley Beans."
He then makes it into a phone booth to call Jane, but hangs up when her mother
answers the phone.
Instead, he buys orchestra seats for a show called "I Know My Love," which he figures
Sally will go nuts over because it has the Lunts (famous actors) in it.
This leads Holden into a digression on show actors. Most of them suck, and if they don't,
then they know it, and that makes them bad. Case in point, Sir Laurence Olivier playing
Hamlet. Holden says Hamlet is supposed to be a sad, screwed-up guy, not a
commanding general-type like Olivier played it.
Holden heads over to the Mall (as in an outside area without cars, not as in an indoor
shopping mall) hoping to run into Phoebe in the park.
He runs into a little kid about his sister's age and asks her if she knows Phoebe
Caulfield.
She does, but isn't sure where Phoebe is. Holden helps her tighten her skates. She's a
nice kid, and he asks her if she wants to have hot chocolate, but she declines, as she
has to go meet her friend. Holden thinks this is just awesome.
Holden heads over to the Museum of Natural History (the little girl in the park disclosed
that there have been some recent field trips here). He remembers going himself on
Saturdays when he was a kid. Mostly, he learned about Columbus.
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The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
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Holden has always been a big fan of the museum, especially "the Indian Room," a long,
quiet hallway you walk through with Native American displays on either side. The best
thing is that everything would stay as it would – you kept changing, but the displays
wouldn't.
Holden puts his red hunting hat on, adding that he's sure he won't see anybody who
knows him anyway.
Certain things, he muses, ought to be able to stay just as they are, without having to
change.
He passes two unbalanced kids on a seesaw and tries to even out their weight by
putting his hand on the side of the skinnier kid. He can tell they don't want him around,
though, so he leaves.
When he finally gets to the museum, it doesn't appeal to him anymore. So he gets in the
cab and heads for the Biltmore – not that he wants to go, but he promised Sally.
Ch. 17
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Holden arrives early to meet Sally, so he sits around in the lobby and watches some girls
while he waits.
It's a little depressing to wonder what's going to happen to all these girls in the future,
especially since most of them will probably marry dopey guys, or boring guys, whom
Holden doesn't understand.
He knew a boring guy, actually, at one of his prep schools, whose only redeeming quality
was his being the greatest whistler ever.
Sally shows up. She looks so cute that Holden, who admits he doesn't even really like
her, feels like marrying her that very minute.
But then she greets him in a loud, attention-seeking voice.
She's all excited about the show they're going to see (as expected).
The two get in a cab and fool around on the way to the show, with Holden being
"seductive as hell."
Then he tells her he loves her, and she replies that she does too. Of course, she does
want him to grow his hair longer because his current hairstyle is out-dated.
Anyway, they get around to actually watching this show. Holden says it's not the worst
thing he's ever seen, but it still isn't great. He feels like the actors are doing more
showing off than real acting, much like Ernie playing the piano in Greenwich.
At the end of the first act, Holden and Sally go out for smokes with all the "phonies" and
"jerks" who stand around and talk about the play.
Sally, of course, knows one of the jerks. He's an Ivy League-type named George who
went to Andover. He's the kind of guy that, when Sally asks him about the play, he has to
step back and give himself room to answer.
George and Sally proceed to engage in phoniness and general name/location dropping.
By the time the show is over and they're back in the cab, Holden is fed up with her. Still,
when she asks to go roller skating at Radio City, he agrees (begrudgingly).
Mostly, Sally just wants to rent one of those little skating skirts that just barely covers her
butt. A cute butt, Holden concedes, but still.
They're both horrible skaters, so the activity lasts only as long as Sally's ankles can take
it. Then they go for a drink. Non-alcoholic, of course.
Sally still wants to know if Holden is intending on coming over to help her trim the
Christmas tree.
He changes the subject; he wants to know if she ever gets fed up with life.
This is interesting: Sally keeps telling Holden not to shout, and Holden keeps insisting (to
us) that he's not shouting. Hmm.
He's angry about people that discuss how many miles per gallon their car gets, about the
phonies at his boarding schools and their social cliques.
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The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
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Finally, he asks Sally to run away with him. He wants to drive up to Massachusetts and
Vermont and live in a log cabin together.
Sally insists that you can't do something like that, again tells Holden to stop screaming at
her, and says they'll be plenty of time for such escapades after college.
Holden counters that that isn't true: after college, you have to follow all the rules and play
along with all the games.
Then he says "you give me a royal pain in the ass." After this, she "hit the ceiling" and
wouldn't accept anything from him, even his profuse apologies. She's even crying, which
makes him feel awful.
When she refuses to let him take her home, Holden finds the whole situation to be funny.
He laughs, which we can assure you is never a good move in front of a girl you just
made cry.
Holden wonders (to himself) why he asked her to go with him to live in a log cabin, since
she's not exactly his ideal girl. But he admits that he meant it when he asked her, which
in his eyes makes him a little bit of a madman.
Ch. 18
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To the Shmooper: READ THIS CHAPTER. It's only seven paragraphs, and it's pretty
amazing. Just read it.
Holden leaves the skating rink, has lunch, and thinks some more about giving Jane a
call.
He thinks about taking her dancing. He saw her once, dancing with another "moron"
named Al Pike who used to used to wear tight bathing suits and jump off the high dive to
show off his muscles.
Later, once they were friends, he asked her about why she would ever hang around with
a guy like that. Jane said it's because he had an inferiority complex and she felt sorry for
him.
In Holden's opinion, that doesn't stop him from being a jerk.
He says if a girl likes a guy, she'll say he has an inferiority complex, no matter how much
of a jerk he is, and if she doesn't like him, she'll say he's conceited, no matter how nice a
person he is.
Ponderings aside, he gives Jane a call and hangs up when no one answers.
He does need some company for the evening, though, so he looks through his address
book. Unfortunately, there are only three numbers in it: Jane, a former teacher named
Mr. Antolini, and his father's office.
So he ends up giving Carl Luce a call, a guy he used to go to school with at Whooton
before he got kicked out.
Carl, who goes to Columbia University, agrees (over the phone) to meet Holden for a
drink, even though, Holden informs us, he (Holden) once called the guy a "fat-assed
phony."
With nothing else to do until he needs to meet Carl at ten, Holden goes to the movies at
Radio City.
This, of course, is dissatisfying. He can't enjoy the roller-skating comedian, because all
he does is envision the guy practicing. He can't see anything religious or pretty in the
angels singing carols, since all the actors playing the angels are really just thinking about
going to smoke a cigarette afterward.
He remembers the previous year, when Sally said they were beautiful, and Holden said
Jesus probably would've puked to see it. According to Holden, if Jesus were going to like
anyone, it would be the guy playing the kettle drums. Holden and Allie used to watch him
all the time when they were little.
After the show, the movie comes on. It's all about an English guy that loses his memory
after the war, and falls in love even though he was already engaged. Holden concludes,
"don't see it if you don't want to puke all over yourself."
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The Catcher in the Rye
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The worst part is that he is sitting next to a woman who cries at all the phony bits, which
makes her look like a kind person, except she has a little boy with her who is super
bored and has to go to the bathroom, but she just ignores him.
After the movie, Holden heads out to the Wicker Bar where he's supposed to meet Carl.
Then he starts thinking about war, since that's sort of what got the movie story rolling.
Holden is not up for being in a war anytime soon himself. It wouldn't be so bad if they
just shot you, he says, but having to stay in the Army so long really kills him.
His brother D.B. was in the war – landed on D-Day and all – and he hated the Army, not
the war.
When D.B. used to come home on leave, he would just lie on his bed the whole time. He
said if you ever really had to shoot someone, you wouldn't know which direction to point
your gun, that the Army is full of "bastards" just like the Nazis.
D.B. made the point to Allie that you don't need to be in the war to be a good war writer.
Holden thinks the part he wouldn't be able to stand was having to look at the guy's neck
in front of you (which reminds us of how he can't sock someone in the jaw, because he
doesn't like looking at their face).
Holden didn't like A Farewell to Arms, which D.B. loved and made him read. Or The
Great Gatsby, which D.B. said he was just too young to appreciate.
Either way, Holden's glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. This way he can just sit
right on top of it.
Ch. 19
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The Wicker Bar is located in the swanky Seton Hotel. Holden doesn't go there as much
anymore because it's got "phonies […] coming in the window."
Not to mention the two French girls that do an entertaining act there.
So Holden gets there early, has a few scotch and sodas, and listens to the guy next to
him trying to work his date by telling her she's got "aristocratic hands."
Carl shows up, and Holden gives us the back-story: Luce was supposed to be his
student advisor at Whooton, but all he did was give all the boys talks about sex and who
was a "flit" (i.e., who was gay). According to Luce, nearly everyone was.
This led Holden to believe that, perhaps, Luce himself was gay.
Luce sits down at the bar, says he can only stay a few minutes, and orders a dry martini.
Holden is surprisingly energetic in his attempts at conversation. He asks right away
about Carl's sex life, college major, etc.
Luce doesn't want to play that game, nor is he interested in giving Holden any advice.
He just wants to have a quiet drink.
They end up talking about a "sculptress" in "the Village" that Luce is dating, who is
apparently in her late thirties.
Holden responds: "No kidding, they [meaning older women] are better for sex and all?"
Carl is obviously trying incredibly hard to come off as mature and sophisticated, so he
refuses to answer any of these "typical Caulfield questions."
Luce reveals that the woman is Chinese, and after some more badgering by Holden, that
he prefers the Eastern point-of-view that sex is both a spiritual and physical experience.
Holden feels the same way – he thinks. He gets excited at the prospect, and Luce
berates him for being too loud.
Holden admits (to us) that he does sometimes get too loud when he's excited (which
reminds us of his conversation with Sally, when she kept telling him not to yell).
He's confused about how sex should be that way, but how he can't make it feel that way
with every girl. As Holden continues to press the issue, Luce refuses to talk about it
further.
Holden hates how Luce is the kind of the guy that wants everybody to listen to him talk
about other people's personal lives, but refuses to answer questions about himself. And
he always has to be the big shot.
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Luce tells Holden he's immature.
Holden agrees. He says the problem is that he can't get really sexy with a girl that he
likes a lot. He asks what Carl's father (who is a psychoanalyst) would think about that.
Carl says his father would help Holden recognize the patterns in his mind. His father did
as much for Carl himself.
Luce pays his check and says he's got to go, even though Holden asks him to stay for
another drink. After he's gone, Holden says he's "strictly a pain in the ass."
Ch. 20
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Holden sits around and keeps drinking and waits for the two French women to come out
and sing. Instead, this new woman named Valencia comes out.
Holden, getting "drunk as hell," gives her the eye, which she ignores; after she's gone he
asks the bartender to give her a message, but knows the guy probably won't.
By 1am, Holden is really drunk. So he starts pretending (again) that he's got a bullet in
his guts and is doing an amazing of job concealing that fact from the rest of the world.
Blind drunk, he ends up in a phone booth and gives Sally Hayes a call.
Unfortunately, her grandmother picks up.
Somehow or another, Sally does end up the phone. Holden tells her he'll come over and
trim her Christmas tree, rambles on about how the mob got him, and hangs up. Or
rather, gets hung up on.
He wished he had never phoned her.
Holden ends up in the men's room. He fills the sink with cold water and dunks his head
into it. Then he just sits shivering by the window.
The guy that played the piano to accompany Valencia comes into the bathroom. Holden
tries to get him to deliver a message to her, but once again gets a "What are you,
twelve?" sort of response.
The piano player is one of those annoying, handsome guys like Stradlater, who combs
his hair a bunch in the mirror and then just leaves you alone in the bathroom.
Crying and depressed, Holden heads for the hat-check room to get his coat and Little
Shirley Beans record. He chats with the hat-check girl and tries to make a date with her
even though she's old enough to be his mother.
He shows her his red hunting hat, and she makes him wear it outside (since he's
dripping cold water and it's December).
Back outside, he decides to go check out the lagoon and see if the ducks are there.
And then – he drops the Little Shirley Beans record. It breaks into "about fifty pieces." He
picks them up and puts them back into his pocket, almost crying.
In the pitch black dark of the late night/early morning, Holden finds his way through the
park to the lagoon. He looks everywhere, but no ducks.
So he sits down on a bench and shivers. Maybe he'll get pneumonia and die, he thinks.
(He's still incredibly drunk, by the way.)
Holden imagines his funeral and how all his aunts would come, like they did for Allie's
funeral.
He wasn't allowed to go, since he was still in the hospital for his hand, but D.B. told him
one aunt kept saying how peaceful Allie looked.
Mostly, he'd feel sorry for his mother, who isn't even over Allie's death yet.
If he does die, he hopes they just chuck him in a river. Who wants flowers on their grave
when they're dead?
Holden doesn't like visiting Allie's grave; he doesn't think his brother should be there
surrounded by all those dead guys.
The worst, he says, was when he was visiting the grave and it started to rain. They could
all run for their cars or umbrellas, but Allie couldn't.
To get his mind off the subject, Holden counts his money, which is a little more than three
bucks. He skips the change across the water where it isn't frozen.
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Holden figures, if he did get pneumonia and die, Phoebe would miss him a lot. So he
had better go visit her, even if it is the middle of the night.
Ch. 21
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Luckily for Holden, Pete the elevator boy isn't on duty when he gets to his actual home.
Instead, it's some new guy that won't recognize him.
He takes off his hunting hat before he goes in, so as "not to look suspicious."
Informing the elevator boy that he's the Dicksteins' nephew, he's taken up to one of the
neighboring apartments. This somehow includes a made-up story that he's got an
injured leg.
Holden sneaks into Phoebe's room, but she's not there. He remembers she likes to
sleep in D.B.'s room, as it's the biggest and she can "spread out," which is funny for a
little kid who has nothing to spread out.
Before he wakes her up, he looks at her for a minute. Kids, he thinks, are cute when
they sleep, even if they drool all over the pillow. Adults, on the other hand, always look
"lousy."
Holden looks around at her clothes, which are neatly arranged. His mother, he knows,
has great taste in clothes – Phoebe always looks great.
He checks out the stuff she's got lying on her desk; in one of her math books, she wrote
"Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield," even though her middle name is "Josephine." She's
just always trying to change it, he says.
Among several workbooks is Phoebe's own notebook, with little scribbles of her own and
notes to/from her friends. Holden reads the whole thing. It's really quite adorable. You
should check it out.
Finally, he lights a cigarette and wakes Phoebe up.
She's all excited to see him and throws her arms around his neck. He tries to get her to
keep her voice down, but she says their parents are out anyway at a party. She tells him
all about a Christmas Pageant in which she's Benedict Arnold.
Phoebe rattles on and tells Holden all about this movie she saw, The Doctor, about a
man who suffocates a crippled child. The question is whether mercy killing is wrong or
not.
Holden interrupts her, asking if she knows when their parents are going to get back.
Hearing that they're not going to be home any time soon, he stops to smell the roses,
and by "smell the roses": we mean "look at the red elephants on the collar of Phoebe's
pajamas."
He tells her about the broken record, and her response is: "Gimme the pieces. I'm
saving them."
Holden asks whether D.B. is coming home for Christmas, but Phoebe says he might
need to stay in Hollywood to write a movie about Annapolis, which of course some very
famous actor is going to be in.
After asking about a bandage on her arm, Holden finds out she got pushed down the
stairs by a boy. She thinks he hates her. Holden says he's probably got a crush on her.
Finally, Phoebe stops being a chatty cat and realizes that, if Holden is home early, he
must have gotten kicked out of school again. "Daddy'll kill you!" she says.
Holden assures her everything's going to be fine – he'll just run away to a ranch on
Colorado. Or something.
Phoebe's only response is to collapse on her bed and put a pillow over her head. She
won't take it off, either.
Holden leaves for the living room to get some cigarettes; he's all out.
Ch. 22
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The Catcher in the Rye
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Once Holden comes back to Phoebe's room, she tries to ignore him. He assures her
he's going to be fine on his ranch in Colorado, and harasses her about a stupid haircut
somebody gave her.
She asks him why he got the ax.
A million reasons, Holden replies – mostly, everyone there was mean and phony. He can
tell Phoebe is listening, even though she refuses to turn around and face him.
Even the teachers were phony, he continues, like the way Mr. Spencer would kill himself
making jokes when the headmaster was sitting in on his class, or the alumni that would
come back on Veteran's Day to see if the initials they carved into the bathroom wall were
still there. He just didn't like it.
Phoebe counters that Holden never likes anything, which makes him feel (perhaps
rightfully so) depressed. She makes him name just one thing he likes a lot.
Holden finds that he can't concentrate on this question. All he can think about are the
two nuns and their collecting baskets.
Or a boy he knew at Elkton Hills named James Castle, a "skinny little weak-looking guy"
who called someone else (Phil) conceited. Phil and his entourage did something
"repulsive" to try to make James take it back; instead of apologizing, James jumped out
the window and killed himself.
Holden remembers that James was wearing his (Holden's) turtleneck sweater at the
time. And the guys that were harassing James didn't even have to go to jail.
Since Phoebe's still waiting for an answer about what he really likes, Holden says "Allie."
Phoebe counters that Allie's dead, and that shouldn't count, but Holden says you don't
stop liking somebody just because they die. Besides, he also likes sitting there with her.
Phoebe doesn't think that should count, either. She wants to know what he wants to be,
like a lawyer or a scientist or something.
Holden says he'd be fine with lawyers if they saved innocent guys' lives all the time, but
really all they do is drink martinis and play golf.
Finally, he asks Phoebe if she knows the song he heard the little boy singing earlier, "If a
body catch a body comin' through the rye."
Phoebe corrects him. It's not a song, she says, it's a poem by Robert Burns, and it goes,
"If a body meet a body," not "catch a body." (We don't know why a little kid would know
about Robert Burns.)
There's no way we can say this better than the author in a summary, so here it is,
Holden's response to Phoebe:
"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye
and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around – nobody big, I mean – except me.
And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch
everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they're running, and they don't look
where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do
all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing
I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."
Phoebe thinks for a bit, but all she can say is that their father is really going to kill him.
Holden decides to phone Mr. Antolini (one of the three numbers in his address book),
who used to be an instructor at Elkton Hills but now teaches English at N.Y.U.
Before he leaves, Phoebe sits up (looking so pretty, Holden tells us) and demonstrates
the fruits of her recent labor in belching class. It's not much, but Holden tells her it's
good.
Ch. 23
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Holden calls up Mr. Antolini, who tells him he's welcome to come on over.
He then digresses, telling us Mr. Antolini is the greatest teacher he's ever had. He's a
young guy (not much older than D.B.) and the kind of teacher you can kid around with a
bunch.
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When that James Castle jumped out of the window, Holden tell us, Mr. Antolini was the
only one to actually do anything about it (check his pulse and carry the body over the
infirmary), even though it meant his coat got all bloody in the process.
When Holden gets back to Phoebe's room, she's turned on the radio. The two of them
dance for a bit. Phoebe, of course, is an awesome dancer.
She's busy demonstrating how she can make her forehead feel feverish when they hear
the front door opening. Holden tries to fan the smoke away before jumping into the
closet.
Their mother comes into the room, asking why Phoebe's awake at this hour and if she
was smoking a cigarette.
Phoebe says she just took one puff and then threw it out the window. Her mother doesn't
approve, but there's no crazed screaming since smoking wasn't that big of a deal back
then.
There's some chit-chat over aspirins and lamb chops, and finally Mrs. Caulfield leaves
for bed.
Holden comes out of the closet and asks Phoebe if she's got any money (he's broke,
and leaving again).
All she's got is her Christmas money, for shopping, which Holden doesn't want to take
from her. She insists that he take the eight dollars and eighty-five cents.
Then she clarifies – it's only eight dollars and sixty-five cents, since she spent some
already.
This pretty much does it for Holden; he cries and cries. Phoebe just puts her arm around
his neck and won't let go until stops. He gives her his red hunting hat before he goes.
Holden doesn't see the elevator boy on his way out. The guy probably thinks he's still up
at the Dicksteins'.
Ch. 24
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Holden heads for Mr. Antolini's house. He used to see the guy quite frequently after he
left Elkton Hills. Once Mr. Antolini got married, the three of them used to play tennis
together.
Mrs. Antolini is "about sixty years older than Mr. Antolini" (which we take with a grain of
salt, as Holden is prone to exaggeration) and apparently has a lot of money.
A cab ride later, Mr. Antolini opens the door, dressed in a bathrobe, wearing slippers, and
holding a highball in his hand.
Mrs. Antolini is out in the kitchen; Holden notes that they're never both in the same room
at the same time. (Hmm.)
Holden has a cigarette with Mr. Antolini, noting (to us) that he still feels rather dizzy (the
reasoning behind his taking a cab instead of walking).
Mr. Antolini wants to know all about Holden's classes. He says he passed English, but
flunked Oral Expression because you were supposed to avoid digressions and Holden, if
you hadn't noticed by now, is quite the fan of a good digression. He feels like that's when
people tell you the really good stuff – by accident.
Holden doesn't really feel like explaining himself any further, not to mention his
burgeoning headache.
But Mr. Antolini counters with the point that there is a time and a place for everything. If
someone starts telling you about one topic, they should stick to that, and tell you
whatever the digression is later.
Holden replies that you never know what's most interesting, what it really is that you
need to talk about, until you get going.
Mrs. Antolini finally comes in from the kitchen with coffee for everyone, looking old and
quite unattractive (curlers in her hair and all).
She heads off to bed; Mr. Antolini gives her a kiss, which Holden says they do quite
frequently in public. (Hmm again.)
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Mr. Antolini keeps drinking, and Holden wonders that he may someday be an alcoholic.
He then tells Holden that he had lunch with his (Holden's) dad a few weeks ago; both
men are concerned about him, which we're sure has much to do with his getting the ax
at so many prep schools.
We feel a lecture coming on…
Indeed, this is the case. Mr. Antolini worries that Holden will end up thirty years old and
hating everyone.
Holden says no, he really doesn't hate that many people, and if he does really hate
them, like Stradlater, he only hates them for a little while.
Mr. Antolini continues, however. He thinks Holden is in for some kind of "fall" – a
"special" and "horrible" fall. He worries that Holden will "die nobly" for an "unworthy
cause."
So he hands Holden a quote he's written down, a quote from a psychoanalyst named
Wilhelm Stekel, which reads: "The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die
nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for
one."
Holden thanks him and puts it in his pocket, but to be honest he'd rather be sleeping off
his headache than playing quotable quotes with this guy.
Mr. Antolini argues that once Holden finds what he's passionate about, he'll be able to
allow himself to be in love with knowledge and just forget about the Oral Expression
classes that at the moment irritate him to no end.
Then he gets all poetic about how men have felt exactly this way before, but when
people can teach and learn from one another, it's a "beautiful reciprocal arrangement,"
etc., etc.
He says it's not that you need to be educated to change the world, but that men who are
brilliant and creative and also educated tend to be more valuable than those who are
merely brilliant and creative.
Basically, he's just trying to convince Holden, through a variety of points, that education
is worth the time.
Holden yawns, much to his own embarrassment, but we'll cut the guy some slack since
he's been to hell and back over the last 24 hours.
The two of them make up the couch for Holden to sleep on, with a few more hints that
Mr. Antolini sure is drinking a lot.
He asks Holden how Sally Hayes and Jane are doing. Holden answers vaguely that
they're all right.
Mr. Antolini heads to bed. Since he doesn't have any pajamas, Holden just gets under
the covers with his shorts on.
Holden says that, after that, something happened to him that he doesn't even like to talk
about.
He wakes up when he feels someone's hand on his head – Mr. Antolini is sitting next to
the couch (in the dark) and sort of petting Holden's head.
It terrifies Holden, who jumps up with a "What the hellya doing?"
Mr. Antolini responds that he's just "sitting here, admiring–"
But Holden is having none of it. Though Mr. Antolini acts very casual about the whole
thing, Holden grabs up all his stuff and insists that he's got to go because he left all his
bags at the station (in the locker, remember?) and he has to go get them back.
As he's leaving, Mr. Antolini tells him he's "a very, very strange boy," which Holden sees
right through.
Holden ends the chapter telling us, "When something perverty like that happens, I start
sweating like a bastard. That kind of stuff's happened to me about twenty times since I
was a kid. I can't stand it."
Ch. 25
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Dawn is breaking (Monday morning) right around the time Holden makes it outside. He
doesn't want to spend Phoebe's money by staying at a hotel, so he decides to get his
bags and sleep at the train station.
Don't ever try it, he cautions, since it's depressing.
Then he thinks about the episode that just passed. At first he wonders what Mr. Antolini
will tell his wife, but mostly he just worries about the "flitty pass" he just experienced.
But then he's not sure if it was a flitty pass or not. Maybe the guy just likes to pat people
on the head while they're sleeping. How can you tell?
He feels guilty then, since it was nice of the Antolinis to have him come over so late at
night. Maybe he shouldn't have left like that, he thinks.
To get his mind off matters, Holden picks up a magazine someone left in the station and
reads an article about how you're supposed to look if your hormones are working right.
Holden thinks he looks just like the guy who has lousy hormones, which concerns him.
It also says that if you have any sores in your mouth that haven't healed in a while, you
probably have cancer (or at least, this is Holden's interpretation of the article).
He has a sore in his mouth, so he believes he has cancer, too. Lousy hormones and
cancer.
Holden goes for a walk, figuring that, even if he's not hungry, he really ought to eat some
breakfast by now.
He has a good laugh at two men hoisting up a Christmas tree, but then he feels like
vomiting.
He finds breakfast a difficult task, since it's hard to swallow when you're depressed
about something.
Walking down a Christmas-y Fifth Avenue, Holden looks around for the nuns he met
earlier, in case they're around someplace taking up a collection.
He remembers going shopping with Phoebe around this time last year, and how she
tried on about twenty pairs of those shoes that take hours to lace up and drove the
salesman mad.
Then Holden starts getting this feeling, every time he crosses a street, that as soon as
he steps off the curb he'll go "down, down, down" and disappear before he ever reaches
the other side.
He's so nervous that he keeps talking aloud to his brother Allie, saying over and over,
"Allie, don't let me disappear." Then, when he does get to the other side, he thanks Allie.
By the time he gets to the Sixties streets, he has to sit down and rest, he's been so
worked up about the whole thing.
That's about the time he decides he's really fed up with everything. He'll just give
Phoebe back her money, and then hitchhike out West. He could pretend to be a deafmute, and that way everyone would leave him alone. Especially if he married a deafmute girl.
So he goes into a store to put a pad and pencil to write Phoebe a good-bye note. Then
he heads off to her school to deliver the note.
Phoebe's school is the same one Holden went to when he was a kid. He says it's exactly
the same as he remembers.
There's no one really around – no adults, anyway – since everyone's in class.
Holden sits down and writes the note to Phoebe, detailing that he can't wait around until
Wednesday and that she should meet him at the museum during her lunch so he can
return her Christmas money. (The museum is right next to the school.)
Holden folds the note up so that no nosy people will open it. He plans on giving it to
someone in the principal's office to pass it on to Phoebe.
He sits down on the stairs (to wait for his nausea to pass) and is disgusted that someone
has written "fuck you" on the wall. It makes him crazy that there's a bunch of kids that
will ask what that means, and then some dirty kid will tell them, and then they'll have to
think about it, even worry about it for days.
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He wants to kill whomever wrote it, but he knows that, if given the chance, he probably
wouldn't have the guts to smash his head on the concrete. This is even more depressing
than the "fuck you" that's written on the wall.
Holden rubs it off the wall, but is nervous that someone will see him doing it and think he
wrote it.
There's no one around the principal's office except for an elderly woman who appears to
be a receptionist. He hands her the note, chats for a while, doesn't correct her
assumption that Pencey is a good school, and leaves.
He passes another "fuck you" sign on the way out, but can't rub out this one, as it's
scratched in. He reflects that, with all the time in the world, you could never rub out even
half the "fuck you" signs in the world.
Because he has some time to kill before meeting Phoebe, Holden contemplates giving
Jane a buzz. Not at all to our surprise, he declines to do so.
While he's hanging around the museum waiting for Phoebe, two little kids run up and ask
him about the mummies.
Holden informs one of the kids that his fly's unzipped, but the kid just zips it up, totally
unfazed.
They want to know where the mummies from the "toons" (tombs) are.
Holden horses around with them a bit; turns out they're brothers, and one does all the
talking. He leads them to the Egyptian wing of the museum and explains how
mummification worked.
As he's taking them down the rather spooky hallway to get to the mummies room, the
kids get scared and end up taking off.
On his way out, Holden sees another "fuck you" written in red crayon on the wall. He
takes this as proof that there's nothing really peaceful or sacred around. If he were
buried, for example, somebody would probably write "fuck you" on his tombstone.
Holden heads to the bathroom and sort of passes out as he's leaving. But after that, he
says, he feels just dandy.
While he waits for Phoebe, he thinks about how, if he does run away, he might not see
his family for at least a couple years.
When Phoebe finally gets there, she's late, wearing his red hunting hat, and dragging a
huge suitcase along behind her. She informs Holden that she's running away with him.
Holden, feeling dizzy again, tells her she can't. They argue for a bit until he yells at her to
"shut up" and she starts crying.
He reminds her that she's got to stick around to be in the play, and she cries even
harder. He tells us that he's glad she's crying – that he almost hates her at that moment.
He thinks he "[hates] her most because she [won't] be in that play any more if she [goes]
away with [him]."
Finally, Holden tells her to get up off the steps (they're still outside the museum) and
come with him. She won't, so he takes the suitcase and checks it inside. He wants to
walk her back to school, but she's having none of it. All she does is take off his hunting
hat and chuck it in his face.
She refuses to go back to school and tells him (for the first time in her life, Holden says)
to shut up.
Holden gives a little and says he'll let her skip school if she comes to the zoo with him,
but her answer is ambiguous as to whether or not that's sufficient. She just runs across
the street.
Holden starts walking to the zoo, since he knows she'll follow him. She's still in a huff, as
she walks on the other side of the street from him and won't laugh at anything.
After checking out the sea lions and so forth, they go through a tunnel to get to the
carousel, which Holden is happy to see is still playing the same music it did when he
was a kid.
Though Phoebe says she's "too big," Holden gets her to ride the carousel. He tries to
give her the rest of her money back after he buys the ticket, but she won't let him.
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She asks him to "please" keep it for her, which Holden finds depressing.
He watches all the kids go around on the carousel; Phoebe keeps trying to grab for the
gold ring, which makes him nervous that she'll fall off.
That's the thing, though, he says, if a kid wants to grab for the gold ring, you have to let
them.
She tries to get him to ride next, telling him she's not mad at him anymore, but he says
she should ride again.
Phoebe gives him a kiss and puts the red hunting hat back on his head as it starts to
rain.
She makes him promise he's not going to run away before she gets back on the
carousel for another ride.
Holden sits around in the pouring rain, watching Phoebe ride while everyone else heads
in for cover. He says he's near crying, that's how happy it makes him to watch Phoebe
going around and around on the carousel.
Ch. 26
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"That's all I'm going to tell you about," Holden says, which means we're starting the last
chapter much as we started the first.
He says he's not going to talk about how he went home after that, how he got sick, and
what school he's going to go to next year "after [he gets] out of here."
He says there's one psychoanalyst around who keeps asking if he's going to apply
himself next year – how should he know?
D.B. is there at the moment, too, having driven up along with an English woman in order
to see Holden.
He asks Holden a lot of questions, but in particular what he thinks about all this business
(the stuff we just read, basically).
Holden doesn't know. He does miss everyone he told us about, even jerks like
Stradlater.
That's the thing, Holden concludes: "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start
missing everybody."
Protagonist
Holden Caulfield
Holden and the Rest of the World
Holden is everybody's favorite judgmental cynic. He also has a bit of a problem: he's completely
alone and he knows it – we stopped count at about 22 when we tried to track the number of
times he admits to being lonely. The clear conflict here is that he judges and hates everyone,
but at the same time wants them to join him for a drink and chat it up for the evening. He seems
perpetually caught in this very limbo: judging a person, making a half-hearted attempt to reach
out, and then being disappointed when that person isn't there to support him, talk with him, or
try to understand him.
Often, Holden can't even get to the point of reaching out at all. His passivity and indecision take
over at key moments. Check out the very first thing he does when he gets off the train in New
York City – he goes into a phone booth. He knows he wants to call someone, but proceeds to
veto all of his options: D.B. is in Hollywood, Phoebe is sleeping, he "doesn't feel like" calling
Jane's mother, he's afraid Sally's mom will pick up at her house, and he "doesn't like" Carl Luce.
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Holden steps out of the phone booth after twenty minutes, having not called anyone. This is the
story of his life. Or at least the story of The Catcher in the Rye.
When Holden does end up interacting with people, he usually gets the short end of the stick. He
invites Ackley along to the movies, but Ackley won't return the favor by letting Holden sleep in
his roommate's bed. He writes Stradlater's composition for him, and in return gets yelled at (and
socked in the nose, but technically that was for different reasons). He even had to type that
essay on a junky old typewriter because he had lent his own to the guy down the hall. He gives
up his hound's-tooth jacket for the night, knowing it'll get stretched out in the shoulders. He gets
stuck with the tab for the three "moronic" girls' drinks in the Lavender Room at his hotel. He
pays Sunny even though he doesn't have sex with her, and ends up getting cheated out of five
more dollars (and socked in the stomach, although technically this, too, was for different
reasons).
Despite all this instances, Holden never makes himself out to be a victim. He doesn't seem to
notice that he gets taken advantage of – repeatedly. This is part of his own youth and naïveté.
Despite his judgmental exterior, Holden is surprisingly eager to please – and to make friends.
Holden and the Phonies
OK, but how can Holden be enthusiastic about meeting people when he deems everyone and
their mother (literally – he encounters quite a few mothers in this story) to be phony? In his
mind, everyone is a social-climber, a name-dropper, appearance-obsessed, a secret slob, a
private flit, or a suck-up. Holden finds any semblance of normal adult life to be "phony." He
doesn't want to grow up and get a job and play golf and drink martinis and go to an office. and
he certainly doesn't want anything to do with the "bastards" that do. Except that, really, he sort
of does. So what's the catch?
Basically, if Holden calls everyone a phony, he can feel better when they reject him. It's not his
fault the three girls in the Lavender Room weren't terribly interested in giving him the time of
day; they were just phonies who couldn't carry on a conversation. He can't feel bad if Ackley
doesn't want to let him stay and chat; Ackley's just a pimply moron. If Stradlater doesn't want to
hang out, it's because he's a jerk. We prefer not to use tired, old terms like "defense
mechanism," but we're certainly tempted to in this case.
Holden: Crazy or not?
So far, Holden doesn't sound too different from a typical, disaffected youth. We all know people
like this. We've probably all felt like this at one point or another. But there are definite hints in the
text that Holden isn't just another normal teenager.
For one, we know he had to take some sort of "rest" from regular life to go through therapy and
get psychoanalyzed. We know he's prone to violent outbreaks, like breaking all the windows in
the garage the night Allie died, or tackling Stradlater after his date with Jane, or screaming at
Sally in public (he claims he's not yelling, but she repeatedly asks him to "stop screaming" at
her). He's flunked out of multiple boarding schools. He's admittedly depressed all the time.
By the end of the novel, Holden's depression/anger starts to take physical form: he's nauseous,
he has a headache, he feels dizzy, and he eventually passes out. His comments at the
beginning of the novel suggest that his breakdown or whatnot was in fact physical: he says he
"practically got t.b. and came out here for all these goddam check-ups and stuff." So we can
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pretty sure there's something up with Holden – something more than average teenage
disillusionment.
Holden and Mortality
One way we can understand Holden's abnormality is to look at the traumatic events in his
childhood, most importantly the death of his brother Allie. Holden's confession that he broke all
the windows in the garage the night Allie died is an important one – it tells us right off the bat
that Allie's death has had a huge impact on Holden's life. That Allie pops up over and over
throughout the course of the narrative confirms this. The death of James Castle, too, seems to
be significant, since it was the second time Holden had a close and personal encounter with
death.
Because of these events, Holden is plagued with thoughts of mortality. Half the symbols we
discuss in "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory" have to do with death.
The way Holden deals with his own mortality is interesting. At times he is self-destructive and
seems to possess almost a death wish. After all, he talks about suicide after the Maurice and
Sunny (prostitute) incident, and he says he'd volunteer to sit on top of the next atomic bomb.
Other times, he seems terrified at the thought of his own death, as when he prays to Allie while
crossing the street not to let him disappear. Even more strange, he's sometimes indifferent and
objective to the notion, like when he sits in the freezing cold park after looking for the ducks and
wonders what his family would think and what his funeral would be like if he got pneumonia and
died. Such morbid thoughts do color the way Holden sees the world, and we're guessing they
are at least partially responsible for his jaded cynicism.
Holden and Sexuality
Of course, you can't talk about Holden Caulfield without talking about sex. We'd like to start with
Holden's hugely revealing digression in Chapter Nine. The digression is spurred on by the
scenes Holden witnesses looking out of his hotel window into other rooms, namely, a
"distinguished-looking" man prancing about in women's clothes, and a couple squirting water or
highballs or something into each other's mouths. Holden declares the hotel is "full of perverts"
and launches into his thoughts on sex and perverts in general. His problem, he admits, is that if
you really like a girl, you wouldn't want to "do crumby stuff" to her.
It looks as though Holden sees sex as inherently degrading, no matter how it's done. If he cares
about a girl, like Jane for instance, he can't have a sexual relationship with her because it would
turn her into an object. This means Holden has to either fulfill his sexual urges with girls he
doesn't care about, or not fulfill them at all.
Holden's second problem, he says, is that when he's fooling around with a girl and she suggests
they stop, he actually stops. Other guys, he says, just keep going, but Holden actually stops. As
we talk about in Stradlater's "Character Analysis," Holden isn't really talking about rape. Keep in
mind that this is 1951 and before today's levels of sensitivity. Remember Holden's earlier
argument about sex being somehow degrading; he can't find a balance between respecting a
woman (and her saying "no") and taking sexual control of a situation where – maybe – the
woman wants him to.
Moving on to our other sensitive topic, we have to cover the issue of sexual molestation with
regards to Holden and Jane. We go into the nuanced, argumentative details in Mr. Antolini's
"Character Analysis" and also in Jane's, but what does it mean for Holden? He either did or did
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not experience a come-on at the hands of his former teacher, and he either did or did not have
"perverty" stuff happen to him "about twenty times since [he] was a kid." And Jane either did or
did not get molested by her stepfather.
Why all this ambiguity? Can't you just tell us what's going on!? Well, yes, an omniscient, thirdperson narrator could. But the fact is, Holden isn't sure. The Antolini incident, much like the
situation with Jane and her stepfather, is ambiguous. Why? Because all this sex stuff is often
ambiguous. Especially when you're sixteen. This ambiguity is what makes sex so confusing to
Holden, who openly admits he "just [doesn't] understand it."
Lastly, there's a theory out there that Holden is gay. That's one solution to why he feels
confused and alienated and so forth. If you want to argue for this theory, pay attention to the
way Holden often focuses on the physicality of the male body (like with Stradlater, Ackley, or Mr.
Spencer). You could say he reads homosexuality into others when it actually may not be there
(like Carl Luce or Mr. Antolini). And he's not comfortable with the thought of having sex with a
woman.
Holden, Religion, and Money
If you want some gory details on Holden's view of religion, check out the "Character Analysis"
on the two nuns. For now we'll just say that Holden dislikes money and religion for the same
reason – they create social barriers between people. Education isn't too far off that mark, either,
since it's part of classism.
We also think Holden views religion and education similarly, since he doesn't seem to have a
problem with personal spirituality or the pursuit of knowledge per se, but rather is upset at the
institutions that promote them. In other words, believing in God would be fine if there weren't
rules and people (like "phony" priests) trying to tell you what to think. And learning would be fine
(look at the way Holden talks about books) if there weren't all these rules and people (like
teachers) telling you what to think. See the connection?
Holden = Yoda
Speaking of knowledge, we happen to be under the impression that Holden is one wise kid.
Sure, he says he's not that intelligent, and he keeps failing all his classes, and some call him
"ignorant" and "troubled," but when you actually read The Catcher in the Rye, you'll see that
Holden comes up with a slew of Yoda-like statements that really knock our socks off. Examples:
•
•
•
"If [girls] like a boy, no matter how big a bastard is, they'll say he has an inferiority
complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is […], they'll say he's
conceited."
"Lots of times you don't know what interests you most till you start talking."
"You hate to tell new stuff to somebody about a hundred years old. They don't like to
hear it."
Now, this isn't exactly Algebra or Ancient Egyptian History, but there's a real emotional
intelligence here. Holden understands people: how they think, how they act, and why they do
what they do. In fact, we've even seen it argued that Salinger's one flaw in this novel is making
Holden too emotionally mature. Who would've thought.
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Holden: The Catcher in the Rye
Last and certainly not least, let's talk about Holden's grand ambition to be…the catcher in the
rye. We already talked about the irony here in "What's Up With the Title?" So you already know
the deal: Holden's ambitions = impossible. There are just too many "Fuck you" signs in the
world.
But why does he have this fantasy in the first place? Why is Holden so obsessed with
innocence? To answer this question, you have to take into account e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g we just
said up there in Holden's "Character Analysis." That's why we put this section last. Does it have
to do with his feelings on and past (bad) experiences with sexuality? Probably. Does it also have
to do with the fact that Allie died when he was ten years old? It's highly likely. Is it related to
Holden's feelings on adult phoniness, his brewing madness, his emotional intelligence and
eschewing of societal constructs? We think yes, sure thing, and indeed. But we're done here.
It's all you now – take it away.
Themes
Innocence
The narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an adolescent obsessed with saving children from the
dirtiness he sees in the adult world. The novel deals with innocence in many forms, but focuses
often on the sexual. Because the narrator sees sex in any form as dirty, he feels the need to
sequester children (and himself, somewhat) from it, instead of easing into it as a natural step to
becoming an adult.
Questions About Innocence
1.
2.
3.
Is Holden's desire to protect children from the "dirty" things of the adult world (sex) an
impossible one?
Is Holden innocent?
Why is Holden so obsessed with innocence?
Mortality
The Catcher in the Rye explores that traumatic effects that first-hand experiences with death
can have on an individual. The narrator, seventeen-year-old Holden Caulfield, lost a younger
brother to leukemia four years before the story is told. He was also witness (at least by ear) a
young boy's suicide at prep school. These events leave him – and therefore, the story he
narrates – plagued with nearly constant thoughts of death and mortality. The Catcher in the Rye
is riddled with symbols of death and disappearance, which Holden often focuses on to avoid
interacting with the real and living world around him.
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Questions About Mortality
1.
2.
3.
There are two major events in Holden's past related to death: his brother Allie dying from
leukemia, and James Castle's suicide at Elkton Hills. How has each of these affected
Holden and his thoughts about mortality?
Where does Holden envision his brother Allie to be now?
Why is Holden so bothered by Allie's burial in a cemetery?
Youth
The Catcher in the Rye presents a clear distinction between the world of children and that of
adults. Children are genuine, caring, and kindhearted, whereas adults are "phony," selfcentered, and generally "bastards." Because the story of told from the point-of-view of a
disillusioned seventeen-year-old, we of course have to challenge the bias inherent in this
perspective. The novel examines the grey area between these two worlds – namely
adolescence – and the painful process of transitioning from one to the other.
Questions About Youth
1.
2.
3.
What is it about children that Holden finds so much more appealing than adults?
Is Holden more of a kid, or more of an adult? What defines these categories in The
Catcher in the Rye?
How is Holden like the teenagers around him – Ackley, Stradlater, Sally, etc.? Is he as
different as he thinks he is?
Isolation
Isolation in The Catcher in the Rye refers to the personal, social, and mental isolation of one
individual, seventeen-year-old Holden Caulfield, from the rest of the world. The novel explores
the tension between the desire to observe, judge, and alienate with the need to meet, converse,
and connect. We constantly see the desire to reach out mitigated by hesitation and passivity.
Questions About Isolation
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Is Holden lonely because others alienate him, or because he alienates others?
What prevents Holden from alleviating his loneliness?
Holden interacts with a lot of people during his two days (or so) in New York. Does he
form a real, genuine connection with anyone?
We can probably all agree that Holden and Phoebe have a real, personal connection
with each other. What makes their relationship different from the relationships Holden
has with others in the novel?
Which events or scenarios make Holden feel particularly lonely? Why might this be?
6. Is Holden more or less isolated (or the same) at the end of the novel
than he was at the beginning?
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Sexuality
Sexuality is a big concern for narrator and protagonist Holden Caulfield, a seventeen-year-old
boy. He presents the point of view that sexuality is inherently degrading for a woman, and
therefore cannot reconcile acting sexually toward a woman that he respects. The Catcher in the
Rye also includes mention of possible childhood molestation, and examines the way in which
such events affect young adults as they try to understand their own sexuality.
Questions About Sexuality and Sexual Identity
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Why does Holden sabotage it every time he has the opportunity to have sex?
What is Holden's attitude toward women? Toward men?
What does Holden consider "perverty" behavior? Is this a reasonable definition?
Is Holden in love with Jane Gallagher?
We only see Jane Gallagher in flashbacks. What is the effect of Salinger's choice never
to show her to us?
Is Holden able to distinguish between love and lust?
Sadness
Sadness permeates The Catcher in the Rye. Main character Holden Caulfield finds nearly
everything depressing, from receiving gifts to hearing people say "please." The conclusion
drawn, however, is that isolation and alienation from others is the greatest source of
unhappiness. The difficulty comes from the fact that escaping this isolation is a battle in itself –
one that can often be, unfortunately, quite depressing.
Questions About Sadness
1.
2.
3.
Check out all those things that make Holden depressed. Do they have anything in
common?
Holden is most happy at the end of Chapter Twenty-Five, while he watches Phoebe go
around on the carousel. In fact, he's so happy that he's "damn near bawling." What's up
with that? Why does this, of all things, make him happy?
From the tone of his narration, does Holden sound like he's still sad, now that he's
seventeen and telling the story? Or is it more of a, "Sure, I was sad then, but I'm OK
now" sort of deal?
Wisdom and Knowledge
The Catcher in the Rye implicitly gets at the question of knowledge vs. wisdom. How relevant is
formal education as compared to the experiences one gains by simply living life? Several points
of view are presented within the novel: that institutional education is only intended to teach kids
how to make money; that there is an inherent value to knowledge and learning that formal
education is a necessary step by which to avoid squandering native talent. The conclusion is left
up to the reader.
Questions About Wisdom and Knowledge
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1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
What is it that Holden hates about these prep schools? Is it education, the institution, or
the people running the institution? Does he distinguish between these? Can we?
Does the ending to The Catcher in the Rye suggest that Holden will indeed "apply
himself" in his next school, or does it hint that he'll just fail again?
Is that even a relevant question, considering what we've just learned by reading The
Catcher in the Rye?
Is Holden convincing in his argument that education leads to snobbery and phoniness?
Check out Mr. Antolini's big speech about education. Does the tone with which this is
presented suggest that Salinger agrees with this, or is it presented in mockery of those
who would promote it as a personal outlook?
Does The Catcher in the Rye make the argument that knowledge is best obtained
through experience, rather than formal education?
Madness
The big question in The Catcher in the Rye is whether or not the central character is crazy. The
story begins with a seventeen-year-old Holden Caulfield telling his own story of a year earlier,
with mentions of his having come "out here" to "rest up." What is normal adolescent behavior,
and what is psychotic? This novel explores that very question, but the conclusion is left up to the
reader.
Questions About Madness
1.
2.
3.
And now for the million-dollar question… Is Holden crazy? What specific actions of
Holden's might indicate that he's deviated from normality?
Holden says right off the bat (while still at Pencey) that his "nerves [are] shot." Does this
mean some sort of pacified madness is par for the Holden Caulfield course?
When Holden heads over to Mr. Spencer's house in Chapter One, he says, "It was that
kind of a crazy afternoon, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you
crossed a road." What do you make of this, given Holden's climactic street-crossing
episode in Chapter Twenty-Five? Does this mean that his "breakdown" (or "episode")
was latent and therefore inevitable from the beginning?
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