Catcher in the Rye Notes
Context
Jerome David Salinger was born in New York City in 1919. The son of a wealthy cheese importer, Salinger grew
up in a fashionable neighborhood in Manhattan and spent his youth being shuttled between various prep schools
before his parents finally settled on the Valley Forge Military Academy in 1934. He graduated from Valley Forge
in 1936 and attended a number of colleges, including Columbia University, but did not graduate from any of them.
While at Columbia, Salinger took a creative writing class in which he excelled, cementing the interest in writing
that he had maintained since his teenage years. Salinger had his first short story published in 1940; he continued
to write as he joined the army and fought in Europe during World War II. Upon his return to the United States and
civilian life in 1946, Salinger wrote more stories, publishing them in many respected magazines. In 1951, Salinger
published his only full-length novel, The Catcher in the Rye, which propelled him onto the national stage.
Many events from Salinger’s early life appear in The Catcher in the Rye. For instance, Holden Caulfield moves
from prep school to prep school, is threatened with military school, and knows an older Columbia student. In the
novel, such autobiographical details are transplanted into a post–World War II setting.The Catcher in the
Rye was published at a time when the burgeoning American industrial economy made the nation prosperous and
entrenched social rules served as a code of conformity for the younger generation. Because Salinger used slang
and profanity in his text and because he discussed adolescent sexuality in a complex and open way, many
readers were offended, and The Catcher in the Rye provoked great controversy upon its release. Some critics
argued that the book was not serious literature, citing its casual and informal tone as evidence. The book was—
and continues to be—banned in some communities, and it consequently has been thrown into the center of
debates about First Amendment rights, censorship, and obscenity in literature.
Though controversial, the novel appealed to a great number of people. It was a hugely popular bestseller and
general critical success. Salinger’s writing seemed to tap into the emotions of readers in an unprecedented way.
As countercultural revolt began to grow during the 1950s and 1960s, The Catcher in the Rye was frequently read
as a tale of an individual’s alienation within a heartless world. Holden seemed to stand for young people
everywhere, who felt themselves beset on all sides by pressures to grow up and live their lives according to the
rules, to disengage from meaningful human connection, and to restrict their own personalities and conform to a
bland cultural norm. Many readers saw Holden Caulfield as a symbol of pure, unfettered individuality in the face
of cultural oppression.
In the same year that The Catcher in the Rye appeared, Salinger published a short story in The New
Yorker magazine called ―A Perfect Day for Bananafish,‖ which proved to be the first in a series of stories about
the fictional Glass family. Over the next decade, other ―Glass‖ stories appeared in the same magazine: ―Franny,‖
―Zooey,‖ and ―Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters.‖ These and other stories are available in the only other
books Salinger published besides The Catcher in the Rye: Nine Stories (1953),Franny and Zooey (1961),
and Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). Though Nine Stories received
some critical acclaim, the critical reception of the later stories was hostile. Critics generally found the Glass
siblings to be ridiculously and insufferably precocious and judgmental.
Beginning in the early 1960s, as his critical reputation waned, Salinger began to publish less and to disengage
from society. In 1965, after publishing another Glass story (―Hapworth 26, 1924‖) that was widely reviled by
critics, he withdrew almost completely from public life, a stance he has maintained up to the present. This
reclusiveness, ironically, made Salinger even more famous, transforming him into a cult figure. To some degree,
Salinger’s cult status has overshadowed, or at least tinged, many readers’ perceptions of his work. As a recluse,
Salinger, for many, embodied much the same spirit as his precocious, wounded characters, and many readers
view author and characters as the same being. Such a reading of Salinger’s work clearly oversimplifies the
process of fiction writing and the relationship between the author and his creations. But, given Salinger’s
iconoclastic behavior, the general view that Salinger was himself a sort of Holden Caulfield is understandable.
The few brief public statements that Salinger made before his death in 2010 suggested that he continued to write
stories, implying that the majority of his works might not appear until after his death. Meanwhile, readers have
become more favorably disposed toward Salinger’s later writings, meaning that The Catcher in the Rye may one
day be seen as part of a much larger literary whole.
,The Catcher in the Rye is set around the 1950s and is narrated by a young man named Holden Caulfield. Holden
is not specific about his location while he’s telling the story, but he makes it clear that he is undergoing treatment
in a mental hospital or sanatorium. The events he narrates take place in the few days between the end of the fall
school term and Christmas, when Holden is sixteen years old.
Holden’s story begins on the Saturday following the end of classes at the Pencey prep school in Agerstown,
Pennsylvania. Pencey is Holden’s fourth school; he has already failed out of three others. At Pencey, he has
failed four out of five of his classes and has received notice that he is being expelled, but he is not scheduled to
return home to Manhattan until Wednesday. He visits his elderly history teacher, Spencer, to say goodbye, but
when Spencer tries to reprimand him for his poor academic performance, Holden becomes annoyed.
Back in the dormitory, Holden is further irritated by his unhygienic neighbor, Ackley, and by his own roommate,
Stradlater. Stradlater spends the evening on a date with Jane Gallagher, a girl whom Holden used to date and
whom he still admires. During the course of the evening, Holden grows increasingly nervous about Stradlater’s
taking Jane out, and when Stradlater returns, Holden questions him insistently about whether he tried to have sex
with her. Stradlater teases Holden, who flies into a rage and attacks Stradlater. Stradlater pins Holden down and
bloodies his nose. Holden decides that he’s had enough of Pencey and will go to Manhattan three days early,
stay in a hotel, and not tell his parents that he is back.
On the train to New York, Holden meets the mother of one of his fellow Pencey students. Though he thinks this
student is a complete ―bastard,‖ he tells the woman made-up stories about how shy her son is and how well
respected he is at school. When he arrives at Penn Station, he goes into a phone booth and considers calling
several people, but for various reasons he decides against it. He gets in a cab and asks the cab driver where the
ducks in Central Park go when the lagoon freezes, but his question annoys the driver. Holden has the cab driver
take him to the Edmont Hotel, where he checks himself in.
From his room at the Edmont, Holden can see into the rooms of some of the guests in the opposite wing. He
observes a man putting on silk stockings, high heels, a bra, a corset, and an evening gown. He also sees a man
and a woman in another room taking turns spitting mouthfuls of their drinks into each other’s faces and laughing
hysterically. He interprets the couple’s behavior as a form of sexual play and is both upset and aroused by it.
After smoking a couple of cigarettes, he calls Faith Cavendish, a woman he has never met but whose number he
got from an acquaintance at Princeton. Holden thinks he remembers hearing that she used to be a stripper, and
he believes he can persuade her to have sex with him. He calls her, and though she is at first annoyed to be
called at such a late hour by a complete stranger, she eventually suggests that they meet the next day. Holden
doesn’t want to wait that long and winds up hanging up without arranging a meeting.
Holden goes downstairs to the Lavender Room and sits at a table, but the waiter realizes he’s a minor and
refuses to serve him. He flirts with three women in their thirties, who seem like they’re from out of town and are
mostly interested in catching a glimpse of a celebrity. Nevertheless, Holden dances with them and feels that he is
―half in love‖ with the blonde one after seeing how well she dances. After making some wisecracks about his age,
they leave, letting him pay their entire tab.
As Holden goes out to the lobby, he starts to think about Jane Gallagher and, in a flashback, recounts how he got
to know her. They met while spending a summer vacation in Maine, played golf and checkers, and held hands at
the movies. One afternoon, during a game of checkers, her stepfather came onto the porch where they were
playing, and when he left Jane began to cry. Holden had moved to sit beside her and kissed her all over her face,
but she wouldn’t let him kiss her on the mouth. That was the closest they came to ―necking.‖
Holden leaves the Edmont and takes a cab to Ernie’s jazz club in Greenwich Village. Again, he asks the cab
driver where the ducks in Central Park go in the winter, and this cabbie is even more irritable than the first one.
Holden sits alone at a table in Ernie’s and observes the other patrons with distaste. He runs into Lillian Simmons,
one of his older brother’s former girlfriends, who invites him to sit with her and her date. Holden says he has to
meet someone, leaves, and walks back to the Edmont.
,Maurice, the elevator operator at the Edmont, offers to send a prostitute to Holden’s room for five dollars, and
Holden agrees. A young woman, identifying herself as ―Sunny,‖ arrives at his door. She pulls off her dress, but
Holden starts to feel ―peculiar‖ and tries to make conversation with her. He claims that he recently underwent a
spinal operation and isn’t sufficiently recovered to have sex with her, but he offers to pay her anyway. She sits on
his lap and talks dirty to him, but he insists on paying her five dollars and showing her the door. Sunny returns
with Maurice, who demands another five dollars from Holden. When Holden refuses to pay, Maurice punches him
in the stomach and leaves him on the floor, while Sunny takes five dollars from his wallet. Holden goes to bed.
He wakes up at ten o’clock on Sunday and calls Sally Hayes, an attractive girl whom he has dated in the past.
They arrange to meet for a matinee showing of a Broadway play. He eats breakfast at a sandwich bar, where he
converses with two nuns about Romeo and Juliet. He gives the nuns ten dollars. He tries to telephone Jane
Gallagher, but her mother answers the phone, and he hangs up. He takes a cab to Central Park to look for his
younger sister, Phoebe, but she isn’t there. He helps one of Phoebe’s schoolmates tighten her skate, and the girl
tells him that Phoebe might be in the Museum of Natural History. Though he knows that Phoebe’s class wouldn’t
be at the museum on a Sunday, he goes there anyway, but when he gets there he decides not to go in and
instead takes a cab to the Biltmore Hotel to meet Sally.
Holden and Sally go to the play, and Holden is annoyed that Sally talks with a boy she knows from Andover
afterward. At Sally’s suggestion, they go to Radio City to ice skate. They both skate poorly and decide to get a
table instead. Holden tries to explain to Sally why he is unhappy at school, and actually urges her to run away
with him to Massachusetts or Vermont and live in a cabin. When she refuses, he calls her a ―pain in the ass‖ and
laughs at her when she reacts angrily. She refuses to listen to his apologies and leaves.
Holden calls Jane again, but there is no answer. He calls Carl Luce, a young man who had been Holden’s
student advisor at the Whooton School and who is now a student at Columbia University. Luce arranges to meet
him for a drink after dinner, and Holden goes to a movie at Radio City to kill time. Holden and Luce meet at the
Wicker Bar in the Seton Hotel. At Whooton, Luce had spoken frankly with some of the boys about sex, and
Holden tries to draw him into a conversation about it once more. Luce grows irritated by Holden’s juvenile
remarks about homosexuals and about Luce’s Chinese girlfriend, and he makes an excuse to leave early. Holden
continues to drink Scotch and listen to the pianist and singer.
Quite drunk, Holden telephones Sally Hayes and babbles about their Christmas Eve plans. Then he goes to the
lagoon in Central Park, where he used to watch the ducks as a child. It takes him a long time to find it, and by the
time he does, he is freezing cold. He then decides to sneak into his own apartment building and wake his sister,
Phoebe. He is forced to admit to Phoebe that he was kicked out of school, which makes her mad at him. When
he tries to explain why he hates school, she accuses him of not liking anything. He tells her his fantasy of being
―the catcher in the rye,‖ a person who catches little children as they are about to fall off of a cliff. Phoebe tells him
that he has misremembered the poem that he took the image from: Robert Burns’s poem says ―if a body meet a
body, coming through the rye,‖ not ―catch a body.‖
Holden calls his former English teacher, Mr. Antolini, who tells Holden he can come to his apartment. Mr. Antolini
asks Holden about his expulsion and tries to counsel him about his future. Holden can’t hide his sleepiness, and
Mr. Antolini puts him to bed on the couch. Holden awakens to find Mr. Antolini stroking his forehead. Thinking
that Mr. Antolini is making a homosexual overture, Holden hastily excuses himself and leaves, sleeping for a few
hours on a bench at Grand Central Station.
Holden goes to Phoebe’s school and sends her a note saying that he is leaving home for good and that she
should meet him at lunchtime at the museum. When Phoebe arrives, she is carrying a suitcase full of clothes,
and she asks Holden to take her with him. He refuses angrily, and she cries and then refuses to speak to him.
Knowing she will follow him, he walks to the zoo, and then takes her across the park to a carousel. He buys her a
ticket and watches her ride it. It starts to rain heavily, but Holden is so happy watching his sister ride the carousel
that he is close to tears.
, Holden ends his narrative here, telling the reader that he is not going to tell the story of how he went home and
got ―sick.‖ He plans to go to a new school in the fall and is cautiously optimistic about his future.
Character List:
Holden Caulfield - The protagonist and narrator of the novel, Holden is a sixteen-year-old junior who has just
been expelled for academic failure from a school called Pencey Prep. Although he is intelligent and sensitive,
Holden narrates in a cynical and jaded voice. He finds the hypocrisy and ugliness of the world around him almost
unbearable, and through his cynicism he tries to protect himself from the pain and disappointment of the adult
world. However, the criticisms that Holden aims at people around him are also aimed at himself. He is
uncomfortable with his own weaknesses, and at times displays as much phoniness, meanness, and superficiality
as anyone else in the book. As the novel opens, Holden stands poised on the cliff separating childhood from
adulthood. His inability to successfully negotiate the chasm leaves him on the verge of emotional collapse.
Read an in-depth analysis of Holden Caulfield.
Ackley - Holden’s next-door neighbor in his dorm at Pencey Prep. Ackley is a pimply, insecure boy with terrible
dental hygiene. He often barges into Holden’s room and acts completely oblivious to Holden’s hints that he
should leave. Holden believes that Ackley makes up elaborate lies about his sexual experience.
Stradlater - Holden’s roommate at Pencey Prep. Stradlater is handsome, self-satisfied, and popular, but Holden
calls him a ―secret slob,‖ because he appears well groomed, but his toiletries, such as his razor, are disgustingly
unclean. Stradlater is sexually active and quite experienced for a prep school student, which is why Holden also
calls him a ―sexy bastard.‖
Jane Gallagher - A girl with whom Holden spent a lot of time one summer, when their families stayed in
neighboring summer houses in Maine. Jane never actually appears in The Catcher in the Rye, but she is
extremely important to Holden, because she is one of the few girls whom he both respects and finds attractive.
Phoebe Caulfield - Phoebe is Holden’s ten-year-old sister, whom he loves dearly. Although she is six years
younger than Holden, she listens to what he says and understands him more than most other people do. Phoebe
is intelligent, neat, and a wonderful dancer, and her childish innocence is one of Holden’s only consistent sources
of happiness throughout the novel. At times, she exhibits great maturity and even chastises Holden for his
immaturity. Like Mr. Antolini, Phoebe seems to recognize that Holden is his own worst enemy.
Read an in-depth analysis of Phoebe Caulfield.
Allie Caulfield - Holden’s younger brother. Allie dies of leukemia three years before the start of the novel. Allie
was a brilliant, friendly, red-headed boy—according to Holden, he was the smartest of the Caulfields. Holden is
tormented by Allie’s death and carries around a baseball glove on which Allie used to write poems in green ink.
D. B. Caulfield - Holden’s older brother. D. B. wrote a volume of short stories that Holden admires very much,
but Holden feels that D. B. prostitutes his talents by writing for Hollywood movies.
Sally Hayes - A very attractive girl whom Holden has known and dated for a long time. Though Sally is well
read, Holden claims that she is ―stupid,‖ although it is difficult to tell whether this judgment is based in reality or
merely in Holden’s ambivalence about being sexually attracted to her. She is certainly more conventional than
Holden in her tastes and manners.
Mr. Spencer - Holden’s history teacher at Pencey Prep, who unsuccessfully tries to shake Holden out of his
academic apathy.
Carl Luce - A student at Columbia who was Holden’s student advisor at the Whooton School. Luce is three
years older than Holden and has a great deal of sexual experience. At Whooton, he was a source of knowledge
about sex for the younger boys, and Holden tries to get him to talk about sex at their meeting.
Mr. Antolini - Holden’s former English teacher at the Elkton Hills School. Mr. Antolini now teaches at New York
University. He is young, clever, sympathetic, and likable, and Holden respects him. Holden sometimes finds him
a bit too clever, but he looks to him for guidance. Like many characters in the novel, he drinks heavily.
Read an in-depth analysis of Mr. Antolini.
Maurice - The elevator operator at the Edmont Hotel, who procures a prostitute for Holden.
Sunny - The prostitute whom Holden hires through Maurice. She is one of a number of women in the book with
whom Holden clumsily attempts to connect.
Context
Jerome David Salinger was born in New York City in 1919. The son of a wealthy cheese importer, Salinger grew
up in a fashionable neighborhood in Manhattan and spent his youth being shuttled between various prep schools
before his parents finally settled on the Valley Forge Military Academy in 1934. He graduated from Valley Forge
in 1936 and attended a number of colleges, including Columbia University, but did not graduate from any of them.
While at Columbia, Salinger took a creative writing class in which he excelled, cementing the interest in writing
that he had maintained since his teenage years. Salinger had his first short story published in 1940; he continued
to write as he joined the army and fought in Europe during World War II. Upon his return to the United States and
civilian life in 1946, Salinger wrote more stories, publishing them in many respected magazines. In 1951, Salinger
published his only full-length novel, The Catcher in the Rye, which propelled him onto the national stage.
Many events from Salinger’s early life appear in The Catcher in the Rye. For instance, Holden Caulfield moves
from prep school to prep school, is threatened with military school, and knows an older Columbia student. In the
novel, such autobiographical details are transplanted into a post–World War II setting.The Catcher in the
Rye was published at a time when the burgeoning American industrial economy made the nation prosperous and
entrenched social rules served as a code of conformity for the younger generation. Because Salinger used slang
and profanity in his text and because he discussed adolescent sexuality in a complex and open way, many
readers were offended, and The Catcher in the Rye provoked great controversy upon its release. Some critics
argued that the book was not serious literature, citing its casual and informal tone as evidence. The book was—
and continues to be—banned in some communities, and it consequently has been thrown into the center of
debates about First Amendment rights, censorship, and obscenity in literature.
Though controversial, the novel appealed to a great number of people. It was a hugely popular bestseller and
general critical success. Salinger’s writing seemed to tap into the emotions of readers in an unprecedented way.
As countercultural revolt began to grow during the 1950s and 1960s, The Catcher in the Rye was frequently read
as a tale of an individual’s alienation within a heartless world. Holden seemed to stand for young people
everywhere, who felt themselves beset on all sides by pressures to grow up and live their lives according to the
rules, to disengage from meaningful human connection, and to restrict their own personalities and conform to a
bland cultural norm. Many readers saw Holden Caulfield as a symbol of pure, unfettered individuality in the face
of cultural oppression.
In the same year that The Catcher in the Rye appeared, Salinger published a short story in The New
Yorker magazine called ―A Perfect Day for Bananafish,‖ which proved to be the first in a series of stories about
the fictional Glass family. Over the next decade, other ―Glass‖ stories appeared in the same magazine: ―Franny,‖
―Zooey,‖ and ―Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters.‖ These and other stories are available in the only other
books Salinger published besides The Catcher in the Rye: Nine Stories (1953),Franny and Zooey (1961),
and Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). Though Nine Stories received
some critical acclaim, the critical reception of the later stories was hostile. Critics generally found the Glass
siblings to be ridiculously and insufferably precocious and judgmental.
Beginning in the early 1960s, as his critical reputation waned, Salinger began to publish less and to disengage
from society. In 1965, after publishing another Glass story (―Hapworth 26, 1924‖) that was widely reviled by
critics, he withdrew almost completely from public life, a stance he has maintained up to the present. This
reclusiveness, ironically, made Salinger even more famous, transforming him into a cult figure. To some degree,
Salinger’s cult status has overshadowed, or at least tinged, many readers’ perceptions of his work. As a recluse,
Salinger, for many, embodied much the same spirit as his precocious, wounded characters, and many readers
view author and characters as the same being. Such a reading of Salinger’s work clearly oversimplifies the
process of fiction writing and the relationship between the author and his creations. But, given Salinger’s
iconoclastic behavior, the general view that Salinger was himself a sort of Holden Caulfield is understandable.
The few brief public statements that Salinger made before his death in 2010 suggested that he continued to write
stories, implying that the majority of his works might not appear until after his death. Meanwhile, readers have
become more favorably disposed toward Salinger’s later writings, meaning that The Catcher in the Rye may one
day be seen as part of a much larger literary whole.
,The Catcher in the Rye is set around the 1950s and is narrated by a young man named Holden Caulfield. Holden
is not specific about his location while he’s telling the story, but he makes it clear that he is undergoing treatment
in a mental hospital or sanatorium. The events he narrates take place in the few days between the end of the fall
school term and Christmas, when Holden is sixteen years old.
Holden’s story begins on the Saturday following the end of classes at the Pencey prep school in Agerstown,
Pennsylvania. Pencey is Holden’s fourth school; he has already failed out of three others. At Pencey, he has
failed four out of five of his classes and has received notice that he is being expelled, but he is not scheduled to
return home to Manhattan until Wednesday. He visits his elderly history teacher, Spencer, to say goodbye, but
when Spencer tries to reprimand him for his poor academic performance, Holden becomes annoyed.
Back in the dormitory, Holden is further irritated by his unhygienic neighbor, Ackley, and by his own roommate,
Stradlater. Stradlater spends the evening on a date with Jane Gallagher, a girl whom Holden used to date and
whom he still admires. During the course of the evening, Holden grows increasingly nervous about Stradlater’s
taking Jane out, and when Stradlater returns, Holden questions him insistently about whether he tried to have sex
with her. Stradlater teases Holden, who flies into a rage and attacks Stradlater. Stradlater pins Holden down and
bloodies his nose. Holden decides that he’s had enough of Pencey and will go to Manhattan three days early,
stay in a hotel, and not tell his parents that he is back.
On the train to New York, Holden meets the mother of one of his fellow Pencey students. Though he thinks this
student is a complete ―bastard,‖ he tells the woman made-up stories about how shy her son is and how well
respected he is at school. When he arrives at Penn Station, he goes into a phone booth and considers calling
several people, but for various reasons he decides against it. He gets in a cab and asks the cab driver where the
ducks in Central Park go when the lagoon freezes, but his question annoys the driver. Holden has the cab driver
take him to the Edmont Hotel, where he checks himself in.
From his room at the Edmont, Holden can see into the rooms of some of the guests in the opposite wing. He
observes a man putting on silk stockings, high heels, a bra, a corset, and an evening gown. He also sees a man
and a woman in another room taking turns spitting mouthfuls of their drinks into each other’s faces and laughing
hysterically. He interprets the couple’s behavior as a form of sexual play and is both upset and aroused by it.
After smoking a couple of cigarettes, he calls Faith Cavendish, a woman he has never met but whose number he
got from an acquaintance at Princeton. Holden thinks he remembers hearing that she used to be a stripper, and
he believes he can persuade her to have sex with him. He calls her, and though she is at first annoyed to be
called at such a late hour by a complete stranger, she eventually suggests that they meet the next day. Holden
doesn’t want to wait that long and winds up hanging up without arranging a meeting.
Holden goes downstairs to the Lavender Room and sits at a table, but the waiter realizes he’s a minor and
refuses to serve him. He flirts with three women in their thirties, who seem like they’re from out of town and are
mostly interested in catching a glimpse of a celebrity. Nevertheless, Holden dances with them and feels that he is
―half in love‖ with the blonde one after seeing how well she dances. After making some wisecracks about his age,
they leave, letting him pay their entire tab.
As Holden goes out to the lobby, he starts to think about Jane Gallagher and, in a flashback, recounts how he got
to know her. They met while spending a summer vacation in Maine, played golf and checkers, and held hands at
the movies. One afternoon, during a game of checkers, her stepfather came onto the porch where they were
playing, and when he left Jane began to cry. Holden had moved to sit beside her and kissed her all over her face,
but she wouldn’t let him kiss her on the mouth. That was the closest they came to ―necking.‖
Holden leaves the Edmont and takes a cab to Ernie’s jazz club in Greenwich Village. Again, he asks the cab
driver where the ducks in Central Park go in the winter, and this cabbie is even more irritable than the first one.
Holden sits alone at a table in Ernie’s and observes the other patrons with distaste. He runs into Lillian Simmons,
one of his older brother’s former girlfriends, who invites him to sit with her and her date. Holden says he has to
meet someone, leaves, and walks back to the Edmont.
,Maurice, the elevator operator at the Edmont, offers to send a prostitute to Holden’s room for five dollars, and
Holden agrees. A young woman, identifying herself as ―Sunny,‖ arrives at his door. She pulls off her dress, but
Holden starts to feel ―peculiar‖ and tries to make conversation with her. He claims that he recently underwent a
spinal operation and isn’t sufficiently recovered to have sex with her, but he offers to pay her anyway. She sits on
his lap and talks dirty to him, but he insists on paying her five dollars and showing her the door. Sunny returns
with Maurice, who demands another five dollars from Holden. When Holden refuses to pay, Maurice punches him
in the stomach and leaves him on the floor, while Sunny takes five dollars from his wallet. Holden goes to bed.
He wakes up at ten o’clock on Sunday and calls Sally Hayes, an attractive girl whom he has dated in the past.
They arrange to meet for a matinee showing of a Broadway play. He eats breakfast at a sandwich bar, where he
converses with two nuns about Romeo and Juliet. He gives the nuns ten dollars. He tries to telephone Jane
Gallagher, but her mother answers the phone, and he hangs up. He takes a cab to Central Park to look for his
younger sister, Phoebe, but she isn’t there. He helps one of Phoebe’s schoolmates tighten her skate, and the girl
tells him that Phoebe might be in the Museum of Natural History. Though he knows that Phoebe’s class wouldn’t
be at the museum on a Sunday, he goes there anyway, but when he gets there he decides not to go in and
instead takes a cab to the Biltmore Hotel to meet Sally.
Holden and Sally go to the play, and Holden is annoyed that Sally talks with a boy she knows from Andover
afterward. At Sally’s suggestion, they go to Radio City to ice skate. They both skate poorly and decide to get a
table instead. Holden tries to explain to Sally why he is unhappy at school, and actually urges her to run away
with him to Massachusetts or Vermont and live in a cabin. When she refuses, he calls her a ―pain in the ass‖ and
laughs at her when she reacts angrily. She refuses to listen to his apologies and leaves.
Holden calls Jane again, but there is no answer. He calls Carl Luce, a young man who had been Holden’s
student advisor at the Whooton School and who is now a student at Columbia University. Luce arranges to meet
him for a drink after dinner, and Holden goes to a movie at Radio City to kill time. Holden and Luce meet at the
Wicker Bar in the Seton Hotel. At Whooton, Luce had spoken frankly with some of the boys about sex, and
Holden tries to draw him into a conversation about it once more. Luce grows irritated by Holden’s juvenile
remarks about homosexuals and about Luce’s Chinese girlfriend, and he makes an excuse to leave early. Holden
continues to drink Scotch and listen to the pianist and singer.
Quite drunk, Holden telephones Sally Hayes and babbles about their Christmas Eve plans. Then he goes to the
lagoon in Central Park, where he used to watch the ducks as a child. It takes him a long time to find it, and by the
time he does, he is freezing cold. He then decides to sneak into his own apartment building and wake his sister,
Phoebe. He is forced to admit to Phoebe that he was kicked out of school, which makes her mad at him. When
he tries to explain why he hates school, she accuses him of not liking anything. He tells her his fantasy of being
―the catcher in the rye,‖ a person who catches little children as they are about to fall off of a cliff. Phoebe tells him
that he has misremembered the poem that he took the image from: Robert Burns’s poem says ―if a body meet a
body, coming through the rye,‖ not ―catch a body.‖
Holden calls his former English teacher, Mr. Antolini, who tells Holden he can come to his apartment. Mr. Antolini
asks Holden about his expulsion and tries to counsel him about his future. Holden can’t hide his sleepiness, and
Mr. Antolini puts him to bed on the couch. Holden awakens to find Mr. Antolini stroking his forehead. Thinking
that Mr. Antolini is making a homosexual overture, Holden hastily excuses himself and leaves, sleeping for a few
hours on a bench at Grand Central Station.
Holden goes to Phoebe’s school and sends her a note saying that he is leaving home for good and that she
should meet him at lunchtime at the museum. When Phoebe arrives, she is carrying a suitcase full of clothes,
and she asks Holden to take her with him. He refuses angrily, and she cries and then refuses to speak to him.
Knowing she will follow him, he walks to the zoo, and then takes her across the park to a carousel. He buys her a
ticket and watches her ride it. It starts to rain heavily, but Holden is so happy watching his sister ride the carousel
that he is close to tears.
, Holden ends his narrative here, telling the reader that he is not going to tell the story of how he went home and
got ―sick.‖ He plans to go to a new school in the fall and is cautiously optimistic about his future.
Character List:
Holden Caulfield - The protagonist and narrator of the novel, Holden is a sixteen-year-old junior who has just
been expelled for academic failure from a school called Pencey Prep. Although he is intelligent and sensitive,
Holden narrates in a cynical and jaded voice. He finds the hypocrisy and ugliness of the world around him almost
unbearable, and through his cynicism he tries to protect himself from the pain and disappointment of the adult
world. However, the criticisms that Holden aims at people around him are also aimed at himself. He is
uncomfortable with his own weaknesses, and at times displays as much phoniness, meanness, and superficiality
as anyone else in the book. As the novel opens, Holden stands poised on the cliff separating childhood from
adulthood. His inability to successfully negotiate the chasm leaves him on the verge of emotional collapse.
Read an in-depth analysis of Holden Caulfield.
Ackley - Holden’s next-door neighbor in his dorm at Pencey Prep. Ackley is a pimply, insecure boy with terrible
dental hygiene. He often barges into Holden’s room and acts completely oblivious to Holden’s hints that he
should leave. Holden believes that Ackley makes up elaborate lies about his sexual experience.
Stradlater - Holden’s roommate at Pencey Prep. Stradlater is handsome, self-satisfied, and popular, but Holden
calls him a ―secret slob,‖ because he appears well groomed, but his toiletries, such as his razor, are disgustingly
unclean. Stradlater is sexually active and quite experienced for a prep school student, which is why Holden also
calls him a ―sexy bastard.‖
Jane Gallagher - A girl with whom Holden spent a lot of time one summer, when their families stayed in
neighboring summer houses in Maine. Jane never actually appears in The Catcher in the Rye, but she is
extremely important to Holden, because she is one of the few girls whom he both respects and finds attractive.
Phoebe Caulfield - Phoebe is Holden’s ten-year-old sister, whom he loves dearly. Although she is six years
younger than Holden, she listens to what he says and understands him more than most other people do. Phoebe
is intelligent, neat, and a wonderful dancer, and her childish innocence is one of Holden’s only consistent sources
of happiness throughout the novel. At times, she exhibits great maturity and even chastises Holden for his
immaturity. Like Mr. Antolini, Phoebe seems to recognize that Holden is his own worst enemy.
Read an in-depth analysis of Phoebe Caulfield.
Allie Caulfield - Holden’s younger brother. Allie dies of leukemia three years before the start of the novel. Allie
was a brilliant, friendly, red-headed boy—according to Holden, he was the smartest of the Caulfields. Holden is
tormented by Allie’s death and carries around a baseball glove on which Allie used to write poems in green ink.
D. B. Caulfield - Holden’s older brother. D. B. wrote a volume of short stories that Holden admires very much,
but Holden feels that D. B. prostitutes his talents by writing for Hollywood movies.
Sally Hayes - A very attractive girl whom Holden has known and dated for a long time. Though Sally is well
read, Holden claims that she is ―stupid,‖ although it is difficult to tell whether this judgment is based in reality or
merely in Holden’s ambivalence about being sexually attracted to her. She is certainly more conventional than
Holden in her tastes and manners.
Mr. Spencer - Holden’s history teacher at Pencey Prep, who unsuccessfully tries to shake Holden out of his
academic apathy.
Carl Luce - A student at Columbia who was Holden’s student advisor at the Whooton School. Luce is three
years older than Holden and has a great deal of sexual experience. At Whooton, he was a source of knowledge
about sex for the younger boys, and Holden tries to get him to talk about sex at their meeting.
Mr. Antolini - Holden’s former English teacher at the Elkton Hills School. Mr. Antolini now teaches at New York
University. He is young, clever, sympathetic, and likable, and Holden respects him. Holden sometimes finds him
a bit too clever, but he looks to him for guidance. Like many characters in the novel, he drinks heavily.
Read an in-depth analysis of Mr. Antolini.
Maurice - The elevator operator at the Edmont Hotel, who procures a prostitute for Holden.
Sunny - The prostitute whom Holden hires through Maurice. She is one of a number of women in the book with
whom Holden clumsily attempts to connect.
