THE CATCHER IN THE RYE SUMMARY
In A Nutshell
Holden Caulfield, the seventeen-year-old narrator and protagonist of the novel, addresses the reader directly
from a mental hospital or sanitarium in southern California. He wants to tell us about events that took place over
a two-day period the previous December. Typically, he first digresses to mention his older brother, D.B., who was
once a "terrific" short-story writer but now has sold out and writes scripts in nearby Hollywood. The body of the
novel follows. It is a frame story, or long flashback, constructed through Holden's memory.
Holden begins at Pencey Prep, an exclusive private school in Pennsylvania, on the Saturday afternoon of the
traditional football game with school rival, Saxon Hall. Holden misses the game. Manager of the fencing team, he
managed to lose the team's equipment on the subway that morning, resulting in the cancellation of a match in
New York. He is on his way to the home of his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, to say good-bye. Holden has been
expelled and is not to return after Christmas break, which begins Wednesday.
Spencer is a well-meaning but long-winded old man, and Holden gladly escapes to the quiet of an almost
deserted dorm. Wearing his new red hunting cap, he begins to read. His reverie is temporary. First, a dorm
neighbor named Ackley disturbs him. Later, Holden argues with his roommate, Stradlater, who fails to appreciate
a theme that Holden has written for him about Holden's deceased brother Allie's baseball glove. A womanizer,
Stradlater has just returned from a date with Holden's old friend Jane Gallagher. The two roommates fight,
Stradlater winning easily. Holden has had enough of Pencey Prep and catches a train to New York City where he
plans to stay in a hotel until Wednesday, when his parents expect him to return home for Christmas vacation.
En route to New York, Holden meets the mother of a Pencey classmate and severely distorts the truth by telling
her what a popular boy her "rat" son is. Holden's Manhattan hotel room faces windows of another wing of the
hotel, and he observes assorted behavior by "perverts." Holden struggles with his own sexuality. He meets three
women in their thirties, tourists from Seattle, in the hotel lounge and enjoys dancing with one but ends up with
only the check. Following a disappointing visit to Ernie's Nightclub in Greenwich Village, Holden agrees to have a
prostitute, Sunny, visit his room. Holden has second thoughts, makes up an excuse, and pays the girl to leave. To
his surprise, Maurice, her pimp, soon returns with her and beats up Holden for more money. He has lost two
fights in one night. It is near dawn Sunday morning.
After a short sleep, Holden telephones Sally Hayes, a familiar date, and agrees to meet her that afternoon to go to
a play. Meanwhile, Holden leaves the hotel, checks his luggage at Grand Central Station, and has a late breakfast.
He meets two nuns, one an English teacher, with whom he discusses Romeo and Juliet. Holden looks for a special
record for his 10-year-old sister, Phoebe, called "Little Shirley Beans." He spots a small boy singing "If a body catch
a body coming through the rye," which somehow makes Holden feel less depressed.
Sally is snobbish and "phony," but the two watch a play featuring married Broadway stars Alfred Lunt and Lynn
Fontanne. Sally and Holden skate at Radio City but fight when Holden tries to discuss things that really matter to
him and suddenly suggests that they run off together. Holden leaves, sees the Christmas show at Radio City Music
Hall, endures a movie, and gets very drunk. Throughout the novel, Holden has been worried about the ducks in
the lagoon at Central Park. He tries to find them but only manages to break Phoebe's recording in the process.
Exhausted physically and mentally, he heads home to see his sister.
Holden and Phoebe are close friends as well as siblings. He tells her that the one thing he'd like to be is "the
catcher in the rye." He would stand near the edge of a cliff, by a field of rye, and catch any of the playing children
who, in their abandon, come close to falling off. When his parents return from a late night out, Holden,
undetected, leaves the apartment and visits the home of Mr. Antolini, a favorite teacher, where he hopes to stay a
few days. Startled, Holden awakes in the predawn hours to find Antolini patting Holden's head. He quickly leaves.
Monday morning, Holden arranges to meet Phoebe for lunch. He plans to say good-bye and head west where he hopes to live as a deaf-
mute. She insists on leaving with him, and he finally agrees to stay. Holden's story ends with Phoebe riding a carrousel in the rain as Holden
watches.In the final chapter, Holden is at the sanitarium in California. He doesn't want to tell us any more. In fact, the whole story has only
made him miss people, even the jerks.
Characters
,Holden The protagonist and narrator of the novel, he tells his story from a sanitarium in California.
Phoebe Holden's 10-year-old sister is his most trusted link to family.
Allie Holden's younger brother died on July 18, 1946, when he was 11 and Holden was 13. When he needs help,
Holden sometimes speaks to Allie.
D.B. Holden feels that his older brother, once a terrific short-story writer, has now sold out to Hollywood by
writing screenplays.
Mother Holden's mother appears briefly in Chapter 23 to check on Phoebe during Holden's secret visit.
Charlene The Caulfield's maid.
Mr. Antolini Holden's favorite teacher while at Elkton Hills, he is now an English instructor at New York University.
His behavior at the Antolinis' apartment disturbs Holden.
Lillian Antolini Serious, older, asthmatic, intellectual, and wealthy, Antolini's wife is a somewhat enigmatic partner
for the popular young instructor.
Mr. Spencer An elderly history teacher at Pencey Prep, he may mean well but has a tendency toward
pontificating.
Mrs. Spencer The history professor's wife is known for her forbearance, kindness, and hot chocolate.
Mr. Vinson Holden's speech teacher at Pencey wants his students to unify and simplify their speeches but never
digress.
Sally Hayes Holden's date to a matinee on Sunday is attractive but shallow and artificial.
Jane Gallagher Holden likes to remember Jane as a sensitive, innocent girl with a unique approach to checkers.
She is Stradlater's date Saturday evening, which bothers Holden.
Character List
Ward Stradlater Holden's roommate at Pencey is handsome but vain and a boorish womanizer.
Robert Ackley Holden's dorm neighbor at Pencey is a regular annoyance.
Ossenburger A wealthy alum, his hackneyed speech to the Pencey students at chapel is interrupted in a creative
way by Edgar Marsalla. Holden's dorm wing is named after the mortician magnate.
James Castle A student at Elkton Hills, he jumped to his death rather than recant a statement about an arrogant
bully.
Mrs. Morrow The mother of Holden's contemptible classmate, Ernest, she shares a train ride and creative
conversation with "Rudolf Schmidt," the alias used by Holden.
Sunny A teenage prostitute at the Edmont Hotel, she is frightening despite her "little bitty voice."
Maurice To collect an extra five bucks, Sunny's pimp roughs up Holden, who is calling himself "Jim Steele" for the
hooker.
, Bernice, Marty, and Laverne Three thirtyish tourists from Seattle, they leave Holden with the tab at the Lavender
Room. Bernice is a very good dancer.
Ernie A talented pianist at his own club in Greenwich Village, he exemplifies Holden's concept of an artist who has
sold out.
Lillian Simmons All bust and no brains, she and her date ask Holden to sit with them at Ernie's. She used to date
D.B. and oozes her fake charm in hopes of making a good impression.
Horwitz The most interesting of the cab drivers in the novel, he takes Holden to Ernie's Nightclub and offers
unusual zoological insight regarding those ducks and the fish at the lagoon.
Faith Cavendish As one example of Holden's struggles with sexuality, she turns down his awkward and untimely
request for a date.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 1
As the novel opens, the narrator, Holden Caulfield, speaks directly to the reader from a mental hospital or
sanitarium in southern California. He says that he will tell us (the readers) of events occurring around
Christmastime of the previous year. First, however, he mentions his older brother, D.B., a writer who now works in
nearby Hollywood and visits Holden nearly every weekend.
Holden's story, in the form of a long flashback, begins around 3 p.m. on a Saturday in December, the day of the
traditional season-ending football match between his old school, Pencey Prep (in Agerstown, Pennsylvania) and
rival Saxon Hall. Holden, a junior at Pencey, can see the field from where he stands, high atop Thomsen Hill. He
has been expelled and is on his way to say good-bye to Mr. Spencer, his history instructor. At the end of the
chapter, Holden arrives at Mr. Spencer's house and is let in by his teacher's wife.
Analysis
In one of the best-known openings in American fiction, Salinger sets the tone for Holden's personality and
narrative style. The first paragraph of the novel is often compared to the opening lines of Mark Twain's novel The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). From the beginning, we, the readers, realize that Holden is not a
traditional narrator. He eschews details about his birth, his parents, and "all that David Copperfield kind of crap"
(referring to Charles Dickens' novel by the same name). Holden speaks in the vernacular of a teenager of his day
(the late 1940s). The literary point of view is first-person singular, unique to Holden but easily accessible to the
rebels, romantics, innocents, and dreamers of any generation.
After stating that he will just tell us about the "madman stuff" that happened the previous December, Holden
typically digresses to describe his brother, D.B., who was a "terrific" short story writer until he sold out and went
to Hollywood. The theme of Holden's favorite D.B. story, "The Secret Goldfish" (about a child who buys a goldfish
and does not allow anyone to look at it, because he has paid for it with his own money) foreshadows Holden's
consistent passion for the innocence and authenticity of childhood.
The setting for the early chapters in the flashback is Pencey Prep, a "terrible" school whose atmosphere seems as
cold as the December air on Thomsen Hill. Holden has no love for prep schools. Although he oddly respects the
academic standards of Pencey, he sees it as phony, if not evil. Magazine ads for the school, featuring
horsemanship, are misleading because, Holden claims, he has never seen a horse anywhere near Pencey. The
school's motto, concerned with molding boys into "splendid" young men, is "for the birds," according to Holden.
After all, one of the students has stolen his winter coat and fur-lined gloves.
In A Nutshell
Holden Caulfield, the seventeen-year-old narrator and protagonist of the novel, addresses the reader directly
from a mental hospital or sanitarium in southern California. He wants to tell us about events that took place over
a two-day period the previous December. Typically, he first digresses to mention his older brother, D.B., who was
once a "terrific" short-story writer but now has sold out and writes scripts in nearby Hollywood. The body of the
novel follows. It is a frame story, or long flashback, constructed through Holden's memory.
Holden begins at Pencey Prep, an exclusive private school in Pennsylvania, on the Saturday afternoon of the
traditional football game with school rival, Saxon Hall. Holden misses the game. Manager of the fencing team, he
managed to lose the team's equipment on the subway that morning, resulting in the cancellation of a match in
New York. He is on his way to the home of his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, to say good-bye. Holden has been
expelled and is not to return after Christmas break, which begins Wednesday.
Spencer is a well-meaning but long-winded old man, and Holden gladly escapes to the quiet of an almost
deserted dorm. Wearing his new red hunting cap, he begins to read. His reverie is temporary. First, a dorm
neighbor named Ackley disturbs him. Later, Holden argues with his roommate, Stradlater, who fails to appreciate
a theme that Holden has written for him about Holden's deceased brother Allie's baseball glove. A womanizer,
Stradlater has just returned from a date with Holden's old friend Jane Gallagher. The two roommates fight,
Stradlater winning easily. Holden has had enough of Pencey Prep and catches a train to New York City where he
plans to stay in a hotel until Wednesday, when his parents expect him to return home for Christmas vacation.
En route to New York, Holden meets the mother of a Pencey classmate and severely distorts the truth by telling
her what a popular boy her "rat" son is. Holden's Manhattan hotel room faces windows of another wing of the
hotel, and he observes assorted behavior by "perverts." Holden struggles with his own sexuality. He meets three
women in their thirties, tourists from Seattle, in the hotel lounge and enjoys dancing with one but ends up with
only the check. Following a disappointing visit to Ernie's Nightclub in Greenwich Village, Holden agrees to have a
prostitute, Sunny, visit his room. Holden has second thoughts, makes up an excuse, and pays the girl to leave. To
his surprise, Maurice, her pimp, soon returns with her and beats up Holden for more money. He has lost two
fights in one night. It is near dawn Sunday morning.
After a short sleep, Holden telephones Sally Hayes, a familiar date, and agrees to meet her that afternoon to go to
a play. Meanwhile, Holden leaves the hotel, checks his luggage at Grand Central Station, and has a late breakfast.
He meets two nuns, one an English teacher, with whom he discusses Romeo and Juliet. Holden looks for a special
record for his 10-year-old sister, Phoebe, called "Little Shirley Beans." He spots a small boy singing "If a body catch
a body coming through the rye," which somehow makes Holden feel less depressed.
Sally is snobbish and "phony," but the two watch a play featuring married Broadway stars Alfred Lunt and Lynn
Fontanne. Sally and Holden skate at Radio City but fight when Holden tries to discuss things that really matter to
him and suddenly suggests that they run off together. Holden leaves, sees the Christmas show at Radio City Music
Hall, endures a movie, and gets very drunk. Throughout the novel, Holden has been worried about the ducks in
the lagoon at Central Park. He tries to find them but only manages to break Phoebe's recording in the process.
Exhausted physically and mentally, he heads home to see his sister.
Holden and Phoebe are close friends as well as siblings. He tells her that the one thing he'd like to be is "the
catcher in the rye." He would stand near the edge of a cliff, by a field of rye, and catch any of the playing children
who, in their abandon, come close to falling off. When his parents return from a late night out, Holden,
undetected, leaves the apartment and visits the home of Mr. Antolini, a favorite teacher, where he hopes to stay a
few days. Startled, Holden awakes in the predawn hours to find Antolini patting Holden's head. He quickly leaves.
Monday morning, Holden arranges to meet Phoebe for lunch. He plans to say good-bye and head west where he hopes to live as a deaf-
mute. She insists on leaving with him, and he finally agrees to stay. Holden's story ends with Phoebe riding a carrousel in the rain as Holden
watches.In the final chapter, Holden is at the sanitarium in California. He doesn't want to tell us any more. In fact, the whole story has only
made him miss people, even the jerks.
Characters
,Holden The protagonist and narrator of the novel, he tells his story from a sanitarium in California.
Phoebe Holden's 10-year-old sister is his most trusted link to family.
Allie Holden's younger brother died on July 18, 1946, when he was 11 and Holden was 13. When he needs help,
Holden sometimes speaks to Allie.
D.B. Holden feels that his older brother, once a terrific short-story writer, has now sold out to Hollywood by
writing screenplays.
Mother Holden's mother appears briefly in Chapter 23 to check on Phoebe during Holden's secret visit.
Charlene The Caulfield's maid.
Mr. Antolini Holden's favorite teacher while at Elkton Hills, he is now an English instructor at New York University.
His behavior at the Antolinis' apartment disturbs Holden.
Lillian Antolini Serious, older, asthmatic, intellectual, and wealthy, Antolini's wife is a somewhat enigmatic partner
for the popular young instructor.
Mr. Spencer An elderly history teacher at Pencey Prep, he may mean well but has a tendency toward
pontificating.
Mrs. Spencer The history professor's wife is known for her forbearance, kindness, and hot chocolate.
Mr. Vinson Holden's speech teacher at Pencey wants his students to unify and simplify their speeches but never
digress.
Sally Hayes Holden's date to a matinee on Sunday is attractive but shallow and artificial.
Jane Gallagher Holden likes to remember Jane as a sensitive, innocent girl with a unique approach to checkers.
She is Stradlater's date Saturday evening, which bothers Holden.
Character List
Ward Stradlater Holden's roommate at Pencey is handsome but vain and a boorish womanizer.
Robert Ackley Holden's dorm neighbor at Pencey is a regular annoyance.
Ossenburger A wealthy alum, his hackneyed speech to the Pencey students at chapel is interrupted in a creative
way by Edgar Marsalla. Holden's dorm wing is named after the mortician magnate.
James Castle A student at Elkton Hills, he jumped to his death rather than recant a statement about an arrogant
bully.
Mrs. Morrow The mother of Holden's contemptible classmate, Ernest, she shares a train ride and creative
conversation with "Rudolf Schmidt," the alias used by Holden.
Sunny A teenage prostitute at the Edmont Hotel, she is frightening despite her "little bitty voice."
Maurice To collect an extra five bucks, Sunny's pimp roughs up Holden, who is calling himself "Jim Steele" for the
hooker.
, Bernice, Marty, and Laverne Three thirtyish tourists from Seattle, they leave Holden with the tab at the Lavender
Room. Bernice is a very good dancer.
Ernie A talented pianist at his own club in Greenwich Village, he exemplifies Holden's concept of an artist who has
sold out.
Lillian Simmons All bust and no brains, she and her date ask Holden to sit with them at Ernie's. She used to date
D.B. and oozes her fake charm in hopes of making a good impression.
Horwitz The most interesting of the cab drivers in the novel, he takes Holden to Ernie's Nightclub and offers
unusual zoological insight regarding those ducks and the fish at the lagoon.
Faith Cavendish As one example of Holden's struggles with sexuality, she turns down his awkward and untimely
request for a date.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 1
As the novel opens, the narrator, Holden Caulfield, speaks directly to the reader from a mental hospital or
sanitarium in southern California. He says that he will tell us (the readers) of events occurring around
Christmastime of the previous year. First, however, he mentions his older brother, D.B., a writer who now works in
nearby Hollywood and visits Holden nearly every weekend.
Holden's story, in the form of a long flashback, begins around 3 p.m. on a Saturday in December, the day of the
traditional season-ending football match between his old school, Pencey Prep (in Agerstown, Pennsylvania) and
rival Saxon Hall. Holden, a junior at Pencey, can see the field from where he stands, high atop Thomsen Hill. He
has been expelled and is on his way to say good-bye to Mr. Spencer, his history instructor. At the end of the
chapter, Holden arrives at Mr. Spencer's house and is let in by his teacher's wife.
Analysis
In one of the best-known openings in American fiction, Salinger sets the tone for Holden's personality and
narrative style. The first paragraph of the novel is often compared to the opening lines of Mark Twain's novel The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). From the beginning, we, the readers, realize that Holden is not a
traditional narrator. He eschews details about his birth, his parents, and "all that David Copperfield kind of crap"
(referring to Charles Dickens' novel by the same name). Holden speaks in the vernacular of a teenager of his day
(the late 1940s). The literary point of view is first-person singular, unique to Holden but easily accessible to the
rebels, romantics, innocents, and dreamers of any generation.
After stating that he will just tell us about the "madman stuff" that happened the previous December, Holden
typically digresses to describe his brother, D.B., who was a "terrific" short story writer until he sold out and went
to Hollywood. The theme of Holden's favorite D.B. story, "The Secret Goldfish" (about a child who buys a goldfish
and does not allow anyone to look at it, because he has paid for it with his own money) foreshadows Holden's
consistent passion for the innocence and authenticity of childhood.
The setting for the early chapters in the flashback is Pencey Prep, a "terrible" school whose atmosphere seems as
cold as the December air on Thomsen Hill. Holden has no love for prep schools. Although he oddly respects the
academic standards of Pencey, he sees it as phony, if not evil. Magazine ads for the school, featuring
horsemanship, are misleading because, Holden claims, he has never seen a horse anywhere near Pencey. The
school's motto, concerned with molding boys into "splendid" young men, is "for the birds," according to Holden.
After all, one of the students has stolen his winter coat and fur-lined gloves.
