J.D SALINGER
Jerome David Salinger(1919-2010) is an American author best known for his novel 'The Catcher in the Rye' and his reclusive nature. He was born in New York City and raised in Manhattan. The success of The Catcher in the Rye led to public attention and scrutiny: Salinger became reclusive, publishing new work less frequently.
Historical
The catcher in the rye is set in the 1950's, during the end of World War II. I believe that this had a big influence on The Catcher In The Rye, as Salingers experience in World War II cast a shadow over Holden's opinions and experiences in the book. World War 2 robbed millions of young men and women of their youthful innocence, and this is shown through Holden's character. Holden is used to reflect Salingers views as he himself witnessed the slaughter of thousands at Normandy- one of the war's bloodiest battles.
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Geographical
The book is set in both New York and Pennsylvania.
Holden begins his story in Pennsylvania, at his former school, Pencey Prep. He then recounts his adventures in New York City, which is similar to the author of the book J.D Salinger who was born in New York and went to school in Pennsylvania.
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Literary
Before the novel was published
Not much is known about what influenced J.D Salinger to write The Catcher in the Rye. It is difficult to trace any particular authors influence because it's such a fresh and unique voice. During World War II, Salinger met with Ernest Hemingway in Paris, which hints that Salinger admired Hemingway's work. Even if that's true, it's difficult to say any authors had influenced the book because it's written with an honest and open attitude which may have been unheard of in American fiction which is what made J.D Salinger unique.
After the novel was published
Until another author can produce a literary work capable of doing a better job than The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger's novel will remain in 1st place in the western literary canon in the future. The novel has had a lasting influence as it remains as a bestseller.
Related Literary Works:
Novels which were influenced by The Catcher in the Rye:
Postmodernism
The Catcher in the Rye falls under postmodernism category. This refers to a historical period that began in the 1940's, a style of literature which was based on the situation of Western society in a late capitalist or post capitalist age.
When The Catcher in the Rye was published,it came as shocking to some people because it contained sex and profanity, which was taboo at the time. Over time more and more people came to like the book and it inspired many people to change their views on life and become more open to new opinions and behaviour which might have been an aspect in forming the mind-set in the 1960's.
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Biographical
Jerome David Salinger born January 1st 1919 in New York City was an American author who is best known for his novel The Catcher in the Rye. Despite his slim body of work a reclusive lifestyle he is one of the most famous authors of the 20th century. His most famous landmark novel The Catcher in the Rye set a new course for literature in the post World War II and his short stories many of which were published in the New Yorker inspired the early careers of many upcoming writers such as Phillip Roth, John Updike and Harold Brodkey.
Salinger was the youngest of two children and was the only boy born to Sol Salinger the son of a rabbi who ran a thriving cheese and ham business with his Scottish born wife Miriam. At the time of Salingerls childhood mixed marriages like these were looked down upon by society, and so his mothers non Jewish heritage was hidden, and it was hidden so well that it was only after a young Salinger's bar mitzvah at the age of fourteen that he learned of his mothers roots.
Despite his apparent intelligence, Salinger who was known as Sonny wasn't much of a student, and often truanted his lessons. After flunking out of McBurney school near his home in New York's Upper West Side,he was shipped by his parents to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennysylvania.
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Socio Economic
Throughout the 1950's both unemployment and inflatation remained low because at this time the war was over and many women were allowed to keep their careers. This resulted in the total number of females employed to increase by 18%. The overall standard of living during the fifties also steadily rose. Most people invested in new cars and houses so there children would have a better future. The American population was shifting from the country to the city, then to the suburbs. More people moved from the Northeast and Midwestern sections of the country to the West and South. Each year, one out of every five families packed up and left for somewhere else. The 1950's in America was an uneventful period, explains why the economy did not experience any major problems or breakthroughs. The recession then came in the third quarter of 1948 and lasted until the second quarter of 1950.
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Before the novel was published
Not much is known about what influenced J.D Salinger to write The Catcher in the Rye. It is difficult to trace any particular authors influence because it's such a fresh and unique voice. During World War II, Salinger met with Ernest Hemingway in Paris, which hints that Salinger admired Hemingway's work. Even if that's true, it's difficult to say any authors had influenced the book because it's written with an honest and open attitude which may have been unheard of in American fiction which is what made J.D Salinger unique.
After the novel was published
Until another author can produce a literary work capable of doing a better job than The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger's novel will remain in 1st place in the western literary canon in the future. The novel has had a lasting influence as it remains as a bestseller.
Related Literary Works:
Novels which were influenced by The Catcher in the Rye:
- Bret Easton Ellis - Less Than Zero
- Miriam Toews - A Complicated Kindness
- Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
- Judith Guest - Ordinary People
Postmodernism
The Catcher in the Rye falls under postmodernism category. This refers to a historical period that began in the 1940's, a style of literature which was based on the situation of Western society in a late capitalist or post capitalist age.
When The Catcher in the Rye was published,it came as shocking to some people because it contained sex and profanity, which was taboo at the time. Over time more and more people came to like the book and it inspired many people to change their views on life and become more open to new opinions and behaviour which might have been an aspect in forming the mind-set in the 1960's.
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Biographical
Jerome David Salinger born January 1st 1919 in New York City was an American author who is best known for his novel The Catcher in the Rye. Despite his slim body of work a reclusive lifestyle he is one of the most famous authors of the 20th century. His most famous landmark novel The Catcher in the Rye set a new course for literature in the post World War II and his short stories many of which were published in the New Yorker inspired the early careers of many upcoming writers such as Phillip Roth, John Updike and Harold Brodkey.
Salinger was the youngest of two children and was the only boy born to Sol Salinger the son of a rabbi who ran a thriving cheese and ham business with his Scottish born wife Miriam. At the time of Salingerls childhood mixed marriages like these were looked down upon by society, and so his mothers non Jewish heritage was hidden, and it was hidden so well that it was only after a young Salinger's bar mitzvah at the age of fourteen that he learned of his mothers roots.
Despite his apparent intelligence, Salinger who was known as Sonny wasn't much of a student, and often truanted his lessons. After flunking out of McBurney school near his home in New York's Upper West Side,he was shipped by his parents to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennysylvania.
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Socio Economic
Throughout the 1950's both unemployment and inflatation remained low because at this time the war was over and many women were allowed to keep their careers. This resulted in the total number of females employed to increase by 18%. The overall standard of living during the fifties also steadily rose. Most people invested in new cars and houses so there children would have a better future. The American population was shifting from the country to the city, then to the suburbs. More people moved from the Northeast and Midwestern sections of the country to the West and South. Each year, one out of every five families packed up and left for somewhere else. The 1950's in America was an uneventful period, explains why the economy did not experience any major problems or breakthroughs. The recession then came in the third quarter of 1948 and lasted until the second quarter of 1950.
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Chapter 1
In Chapter 1 Salinger introduces Holden."If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know know where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap...". From the opening of the first chapter, I can see that the book is written in first person, with a brief use of colloquial language('kind of crap'). Holden vaguely mentions his family and then goes on to talk about his brother D.B. D.B is wealthy writer in Hollywood who owns a jaguar. Whereas most people would be quite impressed with D.B's success, Holden's views towards his brother are negative - "Now he's out in Hollywood,D.B.,being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me". However before Holden calls his brother a prostitute, he mentions about how D.B used to be a regular writer, who wrote a terrific book of short stories called The Secret Goldfish. Which suggests that the reason Holden's so negative towards his brother now, is because of the fact D.B went to Hollywood and started to make movies.
Holden then goes on to tell us about the day he left his school in Pennsylvania - Pencey Prep, which he is also quite dis-sentient towards. The day in question is a Saturday, and Pencey is hosting a big-deal football game against rival Saxon Hall. Holden doesn't feel like watching the game, so he hangs out up on a hill and watches the crowd from a distance. We find out that Holden is; the manager of the fencing team,the guy who earlier this Saturday left all his fencing equipment on the subway, so no match and an angry mob of fencers calls for necessary isolation.
Additionally, Holden wants to say goodbye to his history teacher before he leaves. He find out the reason he is leaving is because he got kicked out due to failing all of his classes. In order to create the emotion of a proper goodbye, Holden reminisces about tossing a football around with two friends of his,Robert Tichener and Paul Campbell on campus.
Holden heads off towards 'Old Spencer's' slowly, as running proves difficult for him due to him being a heavy smoker.
When he finally arrives a Mr Spencer's house, he is greeted by Mrs Spencer who opens the door.
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Chapter 2
Chapter 2 is based on Holden's visit at Mr Spencer's house. The Spencer's are about seventy years old, and Holden informs us that they 'get a big bang out of things' such as buying an old Navajo blanket. From the second chapter we also discover that Holden's surname is Caulfield. Soon as Holden arrives, he regrets going, we can sense a feeling of awkwardness as if he is uncomfortable yet it seems as if the the Spencer's are pleased about his arrival due to the greeting they gave Holden. Despite the fact that Holden's thoughts suggest that he does not want to be there, he sits on the end of Old Spencer's bed anyway. The way that Spencer talk's to Holden, is the way a father would talk to his son. It is not a normal conversation, it is more so Spencer giving Holden lectures about the fact he failed school and got kicked out, and about a history essay on the Egyptians which Holden failed, Spencer reads out the essay to Holden, which Holden isn't too satisfied about. The majority of the time, Spencer refers to Holden as "boy", which is also another feature which suggests that Spencer treats Holden like his son. 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.
- and 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.
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- Chapter 3
"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 - the Ossenburger hall, named after a graduate at Pencey Prep, who made all his money with cheap funeral parlors. Holden doesn't like Ossenburger("Ossenburger came to Pencey to give a big, "corny speech" about praying to Jesus") Holden chills out and reads Out of Africa, which he got by mistake from the library.He is then interrupted by Ackley who lives in the dorm next to him, which is only separated by a single shower curtain. Holden describes Ackley as being a tall guy with dirty teeth and pimples. Ackley wants to talk yet Holden does not, showing that Holden is not very fond of Ackley. After lots of hints from Holden for Ackley to leave, he finally does only when Holden's room mate Stradlater arrives back to the dorm to get ready for his date, which he has waiting in the annex. Stradlater asks Holden to borrow his hound-tooth jacket, although Holden isn't particularly too pleased about this and initially says no, as Holden will stretch it, he then gives it to Stradlater.
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Chapter 4
Chapter 3 is continued into chapter 4. 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 then starts to do a comparison on Stradlater and Ackley and states how they are both slobs but in different ways("You remember I said before that Ackley was a slob in his personal habits? Well, so was Stradlater,but in a different way). "Stradlater is attractive" he says, "but mostly in the good-yearbook-photo way". Stradlater needs a big favor. "Hotshot people who are in love with themselves always need a big favor" Holden remarks to us. The big favor is that Stradlater needs Holden to write him a composition whilst he goes on his date. Holden then asks Stradlater about a girl(Fitzgerald), who Holden assumed was going with Stradlater, but then found it it was not her, Stradlater then told Holden that it was in fact a girl called "Jean Gallagher" who he was taking out. Holden was completely shocked("Holden nearly drops dead"), he then corrected Stradlater by telling him that her name was Jane not Jean, and that he knew her very well, as they were next door neighbours. Holden's reaction to hearing about Jane suggests that he has a very strong history with her. Stradlater doesn't seem to be too interested in how Jane and Holden knew each other, he mainly just focused on getting himself ready, which portrays his vanity. Holden carry's on rabbiting on about Jane, and tells Stradlater to give his regards to her, even though Stradlater is not the type to pass on the message, more than likely he'll be too busy focusing on himself the whole night to even think of Holden. Holden seems very excited. Stradlater then reminds Holden about the essay and leaves for his date, leaving Holden thinking about Jane, until Ackley arrives who quite surprisingly Holden seems quite pleased to see, as it means taking his mind of the idea of Stradlater out with Jane.
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Chapter 5
In Chapter 5, it's a Saturday night and the boys at Pencey always get steak for dinner. Primarily, Holden tells us this is because everyone's parents come to visit on Sunday. Holden and his friend Mal Brossard take a bus into town for the night, and convinces Mal to let Ackley come along, only because he was sympathetic towards him, not because he particularly wanted him to come( "because otherwise the kid will sit in his room and pick his pimples all night"). The three of them ended up eating a meal, playing some pinball and then returning back to the dorm(they were meant to go see a movie, but Holden had already seen it, that is why they ended up just eating out and playing pinball). 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.
- 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. Allie died of 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). Holden describes his brother Allie in a very loving and positive way " He 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". He then describes the night that he found out Allie had passed away. 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.However this show's that Holden was deeply affected by his brothers death, which is why he chose to deal with the pain in the way he did through smashing the windows. So that's what Holden writes the composition about – the baseball glove. By choosing to write Stradlater's composition on Allie, this also suggests that he reminisces about his brother from time to time. The chapter ends with Holden listening to Ackley snoring and feeling "a little sorry for the crazy sonuvabitch."
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Chapter 6
In Chapter 6 Stradlater arrives home from his date and barges into the room.He reads Holden's composition and makes it obvious that he is not impressed with it, by being spiteful towards Holden saying how it has nothing to do with the assignment, and no wonder he's being expelled. Holden becomes extremely angry by this and tears up the composition and throws it away. He then lights himself a cigarette and smokes it in the room in order to annoy Stradlater, as he hates it when people smoke in the room. Holden then asks Stradlater about his date with Jane, and the tension begins to increase. When Stradlater refuses to tell Holden about his date, Holden then attacks him, but Stradlater takes control and pins Holden to the floor in order to calm him down. However Stradlaters method in order to calm Holden fails, as Holden carries on insulting Stradlater, provoking him to punch Holden in the nose in the nose which then starts to pour with blood. This doesn't phase Holden. He still continues to carry on insulting Stradlater until Stradlater leaves the room. Holden then gets up and goes into Ackleys room with his face covered in blood.
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Chapter 7
Chapter 7 is a continuation of chapter 6. Ackley has heard the whole fight between Stradlater and Holden and is keen on finding out about what happened("What the hell was the fight about,anyhow?"). Ackley then see's that Holden's nose is covered in blood and then asks again "Jesus, what the hell happened to you". Holden gives a rough explanation of the fight between him and Stradlater, however it seems that he just wants to stop talking about it as his mind is somewhere else. His mind still seems to be focused on Jane Gallagher. He then asks Ackley if he can sleep in Ackleys roomate Ely's bed, as he is away for the weekend, yet Ackley seems hesitant - "I cant't just tell somebody they can sleep in his goddam bed if they want to". Holden seems extremely annoyed by this, and gets sarcastic with Ackley, "You're a real prince.You're a gentleman and a scholar kid". Holden then eventually goes to lay on Elys bed anyway. Ackley falls asleep and Holden is up awake imagining what could of happened in the car with Stradlater and Jane, which shows that he cares for Jane alot more than he should.To distract himself from these thoughts, Holden starts to ask Ackley irrelevant questions such as "What's the routine on joining a monastery?" , which makes Ackley annoyed as Holden has woken him up. Holden also gets annoyed with Ackley's phoniness, so he leaves. When he is outside in the corridoor, he decides that he is going to leave Pencey Prep early to go to New York, stay in a hotel for a few days, and then return home once his parents have digested the news of him being kicked out of Pencey Prep. He packs his bag, puts on his hat and begins to cry. As he is leaving, he yells in the hallway "Sleep tight ya morons" to the boys on his floor before leaving Pencey Prep for good. ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter 8
In Chapter 8, Holden walks the entire way to the train station in the cold weather, as it was too late to call a cab. He catches a late train to New York. At Trenton, an older woman, who looks around 40-45 gets on the train and sits next to Holden, Holden seems to find her very attractive. She turns out to be the mother of one of Holden's classmates at Pencey Prep - Ernest Morrow. Holden dislikes Ernest, but says positive things about him to his mother(even though they are all lies) in order to make conversation that will keep her intrigued. When Mrs Morrow asks Holden what his name is, he lies and says "Rudolph Schmidt", who is actually the school janitor. When Mrs Morrow ask's Holden why he is leaving Pencey Prep early, he lies and says that he has a "small brain tumour". He also invited her for a cocktail, which suggests just how lonely Holden really is, that he is inviting somebody that he has just met for a cocktail just so that he has some company. Mrs Morrow then invites Holden around to her house on the beach, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, to visit Ernie. Holden then says in his head how we wouldn't visit Ernie for all the dough in the world.
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Chapter 9
At Penn Station, Holden wants to call someone, however he cannot think of anyone to call. His brother D.B is in Hollywood, and his younger sister Phoebe is asleep. He does not feel like calling Jane Gallagher or another girl he knows - Sally Hayes, as her mother once described him as "wild" and that he "has no direction in life". He then decides to take a cab to Edmont hotel. Holden tries to make conversation with the cab driver by asking him where the ducks in the lagoon went when the lake froze up. The cab driver does not take Holden seriously and seems uninterested. Holden then asks the cab driver to go for a cocktail with him, another factor which suggests Holden's loneliness. This is yet the second stranger that he has invited for a cocktail. The cab driver says that he can't do it, and apologizes. When Holden arrives at his hotel room in Edmont, he discovers many bizarre things from his room window(a man dressed in women's clothing, women spitting mouthfuls of drinks into each others faces). Holden begins to feel aroused by this, so he calls up Faith Cavendish, a girl who was up for anything, who was recommended to Holden by a boy he met at a party. Holden tries to make a date with her but she refuses, claiming that she needs her beauty sleep, however once Holden mentions that he's an old friend of Eddie Birdsell, she automatically gains interest in Holden and offers to meet him the next day, but Holden doesn't want to wait that long so he hangs up without arranging to meet with Faith.
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Chapter 10
Holden can't sleep so he changes his shirt and decides to go downstairs to the Edmont hotel's club - The Lavender Room. The thought of calling up his little sister Phoebe occurs in his head again. He refers to her as 'Old Phoebe' (even though shes younger than him), and gives a detailed description of her, which is similar to the description giving to Allie in chapter 5(she has red hair and is unusually intelligent for her age). He reminises on the time that him and Phoebe went to see Hitchcock's The Steps(despite his hatred for cinema, Holden's clearly seen many movies and is strongly opinionated about them). He notes Phoebe's humour and cleverness and mentions that she writes never-ending fictional stories. According to Holden, Phoebe's one floor is that she is perhaps too emotional. In the lavender room,Holden takes a table and tries to order a cocktail,he explains how he'll get served because of his grey hair and height, however he is refused by the waiter as he failed to provide I.D to prove that he is legal to purchase alcohol. Holden meets three women who are visiting from Seattle who he flirts and dances with. The girls are not really interested in Holden and his ways of trying to appear older, however they tolerate him as they find him funny to laugh at rather than laugh with. Holden thinks that the girls are a bunch of morons anyway as they seem to be obsessed with movie stars, which depresses Holden. Trying to impress the girls, Holden tells one of the girls that he's just seen Gary Cooper, then the girl tells her other to friends that she has just caught a glimpse of Gary Cooper aswell. Holden pays for the girls drinks and then leaves the Lavender Room.
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Chapter 11
Holden starts to reminisce about Jane as he walks out of the lobby, and about how their families summer homes in Maine were next door to each other and how he met her(when Holden's mother confronted Janes mother about their Doberman relieving himself on their lawn). Holden and Jane became close, and Jane was the only person that Holden showed Allie's baseball glove to. Holden then starts to think about the time where Jane's alcoholic stepfather saw Holden and Jane sitting together on Janes porch playing checkers and asked Jane for cigarettes, Jane refused to answer and then when her stepfather left, Jane began to cry hysterically, where Holden started to comfort her by holding her and kissing her face. Apart from that, Jane and Holden didn't have much of a physical relationship, apart from holding hands constantly. When you hold Janes hand, Holden reminisces "all you knew was, you were happy. You really were". Holden then suddenly feels upset and returns to his room. He notices that the lights in the 'perverts' room are out. Holden is still wide awake, so he goes downstairs and grabs a taxi.
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Chapter 12
Holden takes a cab to a Greenwich Village nightclub called Ernie’s, a spot he used to go frequently with his brother D.B. His cab driver is named Horwitz, and Holden takes a liking to him. But when Holden tries to ask him about the ducks in the Central Park lagoon, Horwitz unexpectedly becomes angry. At Ernie’s, Holden listens to Ernie play the piano but is unimpressed. He takes a table, drinks Scotch and soda, and listens to the conversations around him, which he finds depressing and phony. He encounters an obnoxious girl named Lillian Simmons, whom D. B. used to date, and is forced to leave the nightclub to get away from her.
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Chapter 13
Feeling like a coward for leaving Ernie’s, Holden walks the forty-one blocks from the nightclub back to the hotel. Along the way, he thinks about his gloves,
which were stolen at Pencey. He imagines confronting the unknown thief, but he realises that he's really just a coward at heart, afraid of
violence and confrontation. When he reaches the Edmont, he takes the elevator up to his room. The elevator operator offers to send him a prostitute for five
dollars, and Holden, depressed and flustered, accepts. While waiting in his room, he again thinks about his cowardness, because he feels that his lack of
aggression has prevented him from ever sleeping with a woman. Women, Holden believes, want a man who asserts power and control. As he broods, the
prostitute, Sunny, arrives. She is a cynical young girl with a high voice. Holden becomes flustered, especially so when she removes her dress. She sits on
his lap and tries to seduce him, but he is extremely nervous and tells her he is unable to have sex because he is recovering from an operation on his
“clavichord.” He finally pays her the five dollars he owes and asks her to leave. She claims that the price is ten, but he refuses to pay her more, and she
leaves in a huff.
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Chapter 14
Holden sits in his hotel room and smokes for a while. He remembers an incident shortly before Allie’s death when he excluded Allie from a BB-gun game—he still feels
guilty for having left Allie out. Eventually, he goes to bed. He feels like praying, but his distaste for organized religion prevents him from doing this. Suddenly, there is a knock at his door. In his pyjamas, Holden opens the door to face Maurice, who has returned with Sunny to collect the extra five dollars Sunny had asked for. Holden tries to refuse, but Maurice pins him against a wall while Sunny takes the money from his wallet. Maurice snaps his finger into Holden’s groin, and Holden starts to insult him in response. Maurice slugs Holden in the stomach and leaves him crumpled on the floor.Holden imagines himself as a movie character, taking his revenge on Maurice after having been plugged in the gut with a gangster’s bullet. Finally, he manages to get into bed and go to sleep.
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Chapter 15
The next morning, Holden calls Sally Hayes and makes a date with her for later that afternoon. He checks out of the hotel and leaves his bags in a locker
at Grand Central Station. He worries about losing his money and mentions that his father frequently gets angry when Holden loses things. He also describes his
mother a bit, noting that she “hasn’t felt too healthy since my brother Allie died.” Holden worries that the news of his exclusion
arly distress his fragile mother, for whom he seems to care a great deal.Holden goes to eat breakfast at a little sandwich bar, where he meets two nuns who are moving to Manhattan to teach in a school. Holden thinks about the superficial money-driven world of the prep school he has just left. Then he talks to one of the nuns about Romeo and Juliet. Despite his earlier expression of distaste for organized religion, he forces them to take ten dollars as a charitable contribution. After they leave, although he realizes he needs money
to pay for his date with Sally, he begins to regret having given only ten dollars. He concludes that money always makes people depressed.
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Chapter 16
After breakfast , Holden decides to go for a walk. He thinks about the selflessness of the nuns, and cannot imagine anybody that he knows being so generous and giving. He heads down to Broadway, to buy his little sister Phoebe a record - "Little Shirley Beans". Holden likes the record because, although it is for children, it is sung by a black blues singer who makes it sound raunchy, not cute. He thinks about Phoebe, whom he considers to be a wonderful girl because, although she’s only ten, she always understands what Holden means when he talks to her. He sees an oblivious little boy walking in the street, singing, “If a body catch a body coming through the rye.” The innocence of the scene cheers him up, and he decides to call Jane, although he hangs up when her mother answers the phone. In preparation for his date with Sally, he buys theater tickets to a show called “I Know My Love,” which stars the Lunts.
The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was.
Holden wants to see Phoebe, and he goes to look for her in the park because he remembers that she often roller-skates there on Sundays. He meets a girl who knows Phoebe. At first, she tells him that his sister is on a school trip to the Museum of Natural History, but then she remembers that the trip was the previous day. Nevertheless, Holden walks to the museum, remembering his own class trips. He focuses on the way life is frozen in the museum’s exhibits: models of Eskimos and Indians stand as though petrified and birds hang from the ceiling, seemingly in mid-flight. He remarks that every time he went to the museum, he felt that he had changed, while the museum had stayed exactly the same.
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Chapter 17 At two o’clock, Holden goes to meet Sally at the Biltmore Hotel; she is late but looks very attractive, so he immediately forgives her not being punctual. They make out in the taxi on the way to the theater. At the play, the actors annoy Holden because, like Ernie the piano player, they are almost too good at what they do and seem full of themselves. During intermission, Sally irritates Holden by flirting with a pretentious boy from Andover, another prep school, but he nonetheless agrees to take her ice-skating at “Radio City” (Radio City Music Hall is part of Rockefeller Center, where there is an ice-skating rink) after the show. While skating, Holden speculates that Sally only wanted to go ice-skating so she could wear a short skirt and show off her “cute ass,” but he admits that he finds it attractive. When they take a break and sit down indoors, Holden begins to unravel. Oscillating between shouting and hushed tones, he rants about all the “phonies” at his prep schools and in New York society, and talks about how alienated he feels. He becomes even more crazy and impetuous, saying that he and Sally should run away together and escape from society, living on their own in a cabin. When she points out that his dreams are ridiculous, he becomes more and more agitated. The quarrel builds until Holden calls Sally a “royal pain in the ass,” and she begins to cry. Holden starts to apologize, but Sally is upset and angry with him, and, finally, he leaves without her.
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Chapter 18
After leaving the skating rink, Holden goes to a drugstore and has a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted milk. Once again, he thinks about calling Jane, but his mind begins to wander. He remembers the time he saw her at a dance with a boy Holden thought was a show-off, but Jane argued that the boy had an inferiority complex. Holden decides that girls always say that as an excuse to date arrogant boys. Finally, he calls Jane, but no one answers. He then calls a boy named Carl Luce, whom he used to know at the Whooton School, and Luce agrees to meet him for drinks later that night.
To kill time, Holden goes to see a movie at Radio City Music Hall. He finds the Rockettes’ Christmas stage show ridiculous and superficial, but it makes him remember how he and Allie used to love the kettledrum player in the Radio City pit orchestra. The man was an unnoticed, minuscule part of the show, but he seemed to take joy and pride in what he did. After the show, the movie begins, which Holden claims to find boring as well. When it is over, he begins walking to the Wicker Bar, where he is supposed to meet Luce. The movie was about the war, so Holden thinks about the army. Based on what D. B. has told him, Holden decides that he could never be in the military. He would rather, he says, be shot by a firing squad or sit on top of an atom bomb.
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Chapter 19
At the Wicker Bar, located in the posh Seton Hotel, Holden thinks about Luce. Luce is three years older than Holden and now a student at Columbia University. At the Whooton School, Luce used to tell the younger boys about sex. Holden says that he finds Luce amusing, even though he is effeminate and a phony. When Luce arrives, he treats Holden coolly, and Holden pesters him with questions about sex. Luce refuses to be drawn into the kind of sex discussion that they had had at Whooton, and he suggests that Holden needs psychoanalysis. Holden remembers that Luce’s father is a psychoanalyst, but Luce is evasive when Holden asks whether Luce’s father ever analyzed his own son. Annoyed by Holden’s juvenile comments and questions, Luce departs.
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Chapter 20
After Luce leaves, Holden stays at the bar and gets very drunk. He stumbles to the phone booth and makes an incoherent late-night call to Sally Hayes, angering both her and her grandmother. He then tries to make a date with the lounge singer, an attractive woman named Valencia. When that fails, he tries, with no more success, to make a date with the hat-check girl.
He decides to walk to the duck pond in Central Park to see if the ducks are still around. Along the way, he becomes quite upset when he drops and breaks the record he had bought for Phoebe. Because he had splashed water in his hair at the hotel in an attempt to sober up, his hair begins to freeze and fill with icicles. At the duck pond, he worries about catching pneumonia and imagines his funeral. He missed Allie’s funeral, he says, because he was in the hospital after breaking the garage windows with his bare hands. He remembers going to Allie’s grave with his parents. He becomes disgusted and sad, because the idea of placing flowers on the grass that covers the stomachs of the dead disturbs him.
Holden wants to talk to Phoebe, and he is running low on money, so he decides to risk going home. He expects his parents to be asleep, which will allow him to sneak in, speak with Phoebe, and then leave without being heard. He leaves the park and begins the long walk home.
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Chapter 21
Holden takes the elevator up to his family’s apartment. Luckily for him, the regular elevator operator is gone, and he is able to convince the new one, who doesn’t recognize him, that he wants to visit the Dicksteins, who live across the hall from the Caulfields.
Holden sneaks into his family’s apartment and looks for Phoebe, but she isn’t in her room. Holden tiptoes to D. B.’s room, because Phoebe likes to sleep there when D. B. is in Hollywood. He finds Phoebe sleeping peacefully, and he remarks that children, unlike adults, always look peaceful when they are asleep. As he watches Phoebe sleep, he reads through her schoolbooks. She has signed her name “Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield,” even though her middle name is Josephine. He enjoys reading the notes to friends, the curious questions, and the random imaginative jottings she has scribbled on the pages.
He finally wakes Phoebe, and she is overjoyed to see him. Bursting with energy, she talks feverishly about one thing after another: her school play (in which she plays Benedict Arnold), a movie she has just seen, a movie D. B. is working on, a boy at school who bullies her, and the fact that their parents are at a party and won’t come home until later. But after her enthusiastic flurry of conversation, she realizes that Holden is home two days early and must have been kicked out of school. Over and over, she repeats that their father will “kill” him. Holden tries to justify his behavior, but she refuses to listen and covers her head with a pillow. Holden leaves the room to get some cigarettes.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 22
Holden returns to Phoebe’s room and eventually gets her to listen. He tries to explain why he fails his classes and tells her all the things he hates about school. She responds by accusing him of hating everything. He tries to refute her claim, and she challenges him to name one thing he likes. He becomes preoccupied, thinking about the nuns he met at breakfast. He also thinks about James Castle, a boy he knew at Elkton Hills School who jumped out of a window to his death while being tormented by other boys.
He finally tells her that he likes Allie, and she reminds him angrily that Allie is dead. She asks what he wants to do with his life, and his only answer is to mention the lyric, “If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye.” Holden says that he imagines a gigantic field of rye on a cliff full of children playing. He wants to stand at the edge of the cliff and catch the children when they come too close to falling off—to be “the catcher in the rye.” Phoebe points out that Holden has misheard the words—the actual lyric, from the Robert Burns poem, “Coming Thro’ the Rye,” is “If a body meet a body coming through the rye.”
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Chapter 23
Holden leaves Phoebe’s room for a moment to call Mr. Antolini, an English teacher he had at Elkton Hills. Mr. Antolini is shocked that Holden has been kicked out of another school and invites Holden to stay the night at his house. Holden mentions to us that Mr. Antolini was the only teacher who approached James Castle’s body after his death, the only one who demonstrated any courage or kindness in the situation. Holden goes back into Phoebe’s room and asks her to dance. After a few numbers, they hear the front door open—their parents have come home from their dinner party. Holden tries to fan away his lingering cigarette smoke and jumps in the closet. His mother comes in to tuck Phoebe in, and he hides until she leaves. He then tells Phoebe goodbye, letting her know of his plan to leave New York and move out west alone. She loans him the Christmas money she’d been saving, and he leaves for Mr. Antolini’s. On the way out, he gives Phoebe his red hunting hat.
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Chapter 24
When Holden arrives at Mr. Antolini’s, Mr. Antolini and his wife have just wrapped up a dinner party in their upscale Sutton Place apartment. Glasses and dishes are everywhere, and Holden can tell that Mr. Antolini has been drinking. Holden takes a seat, and the two begin talking. As Mrs. Antolini prepares coffee, Mr. Antolini inquires about Holden’s expulsion from Pencey Prep. Holden reveals that he disliked the rules and regulations at Pencey Prep. As an example, he mentions his debate class in which students were penalized for digressing from their subject. Holden argues that digressions are more interesting. Instead of offering complete sympathy, Mr. Antolini gently challenges Holden, pointing out that digressions are often distracting, and that sometimes it is more interesting and appropriate to stick to the topic. Holden begins to see the weakness of his argument and becomes uncomfortable. But Mrs. Antolini cuts the tension, bringing coffee for Holden and Mr. Antolini before going to bed.
“I have a feeling that you’re riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall.”
After this respite, Mr. Antolini resumes the discussion on a much more serious note. He tells Holden that he is worried about him because he seems primed for a major fall, a fall that will leave him frustrated and embittered against the rest of the world, particularly against the sort of boys he hated at school. At this suggestion Holden becomes defensive and argues that he actually, after a while, grows to semi-like guys like Ackley and Stradlater. After an awkward silence, Mr. Antolini further explains the “fall” he is envisioning, saying that it is experienced by men who cannot deal with the environment around them. But he tells Holden that if he applies himself in school, he will learn that many men and women have been similarly disturbed and troubled by the human condition, and he will also learn a great deal about his own mind. Holden seems interested in what Mr. Antolini has to say, but he is exhausted. Finally, he is unable to suppress a yawn. Mr. Antolini chuckles, makes up the couch, and, after some small talk about girls, lets Holden go to sleep.
Suddenly, Holden wakes up; he feels Mr. Antolini’s hand stroking his head. Mr. Antolini claims it was nothing, but Holden believes Mr. Antolini is making a homosexual advance and hurries out of the apartment.
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Chapter 25
After leaving Mr. Antolini’s, Holden goes to Grand Central Station and spends the night sleeping on a bench in the waiting room. The next day, he walks up and down Fifth Avenue, watching the children and feeling more and more nervous and overwhelmed. Every time he crosses a street, he feels like he will disappear, so each time he reaches a curb, he calls to Allie, pleading with his dead brother to let him make it to the other side. He decides to leave New York, hitchhike west, and never go home or to school again. He imagines living as a hermit, never talking to anybody, and marrying a deaf-mute girl.
He goes to Phoebe’s school and writes her a note telling her to meet him at the Museum of Art so he can return the money she lent him. As he wanders around his old school, he becomes even more depressed when he finds the words “fuck you” scrawled on the walls.
While waiting at the museum, Holden shows two young kids where the mummies are. He leads them down the hallway to the tomb exhibit, but they get scared and run off, leaving Holden alone in the dark, cramped passage. Holden likes it at first, but then sees another “fuck you” written on the wall. Disgusted, he speculates that when he dies, somebody will probably write the words “fuck you” on his tombstone. He leaves the exhibit to wait for Phoebe. On the way to the bathroom, he passes out, but he downplays the incident.
Phoebe arrives at the museum with a suitcase and begs Holden to take her with him. He feels dizzy and worries that he will pass out again. He tells her that she cannot possibly go with him and feels even closer to fainting. She gets angry, refuses to look at him, and gruffly returns his hunting hat. Holden tells her he won’t go away and asks her to go back to school. She angrily refuses, and he offers to take her to the zoo.
They walk to the zoo, Holden on one side of the street, Phoebe following angrily on the other. After looking at some animals, they walk to the park, now on the same side of the street, although still not quite together. They come to the carousel, and Holden convinces Phoebe to ride it. He sits on a park bench, watching her go around and around. They have reconciled, he is wearing his red hunting hat, and suddenly he feels so happy he thinks he might cry.
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Chapter 26
Holden concludes his story by refusing to discuss what happened after his day in the park with Phoebe, although he does say that he went home, got sick, and was sent to the rest home from which he now tells his story. He says he is supposed to go to a new school in the fall and thinks that he will apply himself there, but he doesn’t feel like talking about it. He wishes he hadn’t talked about his experiences so much in the first place, even to D. B., who often comes to visit him in the rest home. Talking about what happened to him makes him miss all the
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Feeling like a coward for leaving Ernie’s, Holden walks the forty-one blocks from the nightclub back to the hotel. Along the way, he thinks about his gloves,
which were stolen at Pencey. He imagines confronting the unknown thief, but he realises that he's really just a coward at heart, afraid of
violence and confrontation. When he reaches the Edmont, he takes the elevator up to his room. The elevator operator offers to send him a prostitute for five
dollars, and Holden, depressed and flustered, accepts. While waiting in his room, he again thinks about his cowardness, because he feels that his lack of
aggression has prevented him from ever sleeping with a woman. Women, Holden believes, want a man who asserts power and control. As he broods, the
prostitute, Sunny, arrives. She is a cynical young girl with a high voice. Holden becomes flustered, especially so when she removes her dress. She sits on
his lap and tries to seduce him, but he is extremely nervous and tells her he is unable to have sex because he is recovering from an operation on his
“clavichord.” He finally pays her the five dollars he owes and asks her to leave. She claims that the price is ten, but he refuses to pay her more, and she
leaves in a huff.
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Chapter 14
Holden sits in his hotel room and smokes for a while. He remembers an incident shortly before Allie’s death when he excluded Allie from a BB-gun game—he still feels
guilty for having left Allie out. Eventually, he goes to bed. He feels like praying, but his distaste for organized religion prevents him from doing this. Suddenly, there is a knock at his door. In his pyjamas, Holden opens the door to face Maurice, who has returned with Sunny to collect the extra five dollars Sunny had asked for. Holden tries to refuse, but Maurice pins him against a wall while Sunny takes the money from his wallet. Maurice snaps his finger into Holden’s groin, and Holden starts to insult him in response. Maurice slugs Holden in the stomach and leaves him crumpled on the floor.Holden imagines himself as a movie character, taking his revenge on Maurice after having been plugged in the gut with a gangster’s bullet. Finally, he manages to get into bed and go to sleep.
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Chapter 15
The next morning, Holden calls Sally Hayes and makes a date with her for later that afternoon. He checks out of the hotel and leaves his bags in a locker
at Grand Central Station. He worries about losing his money and mentions that his father frequently gets angry when Holden loses things. He also describes his
mother a bit, noting that she “hasn’t felt too healthy since my brother Allie died.” Holden worries that the news of his exclusion
arly distress his fragile mother, for whom he seems to care a great deal.Holden goes to eat breakfast at a little sandwich bar, where he meets two nuns who are moving to Manhattan to teach in a school. Holden thinks about the superficial money-driven world of the prep school he has just left. Then he talks to one of the nuns about Romeo and Juliet. Despite his earlier expression of distaste for organized religion, he forces them to take ten dollars as a charitable contribution. After they leave, although he realizes he needs money
to pay for his date with Sally, he begins to regret having given only ten dollars. He concludes that money always makes people depressed.
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Chapter 16
After breakfast , Holden decides to go for a walk. He thinks about the selflessness of the nuns, and cannot imagine anybody that he knows being so generous and giving. He heads down to Broadway, to buy his little sister Phoebe a record - "Little Shirley Beans". Holden likes the record because, although it is for children, it is sung by a black blues singer who makes it sound raunchy, not cute. He thinks about Phoebe, whom he considers to be a wonderful girl because, although she’s only ten, she always understands what Holden means when he talks to her. He sees an oblivious little boy walking in the street, singing, “If a body catch a body coming through the rye.” The innocence of the scene cheers him up, and he decides to call Jane, although he hangs up when her mother answers the phone. In preparation for his date with Sally, he buys theater tickets to a show called “I Know My Love,” which stars the Lunts.
The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was.
Holden wants to see Phoebe, and he goes to look for her in the park because he remembers that she often roller-skates there on Sundays. He meets a girl who knows Phoebe. At first, she tells him that his sister is on a school trip to the Museum of Natural History, but then she remembers that the trip was the previous day. Nevertheless, Holden walks to the museum, remembering his own class trips. He focuses on the way life is frozen in the museum’s exhibits: models of Eskimos and Indians stand as though petrified and birds hang from the ceiling, seemingly in mid-flight. He remarks that every time he went to the museum, he felt that he had changed, while the museum had stayed exactly the same.
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Chapter 17 At two o’clock, Holden goes to meet Sally at the Biltmore Hotel; she is late but looks very attractive, so he immediately forgives her not being punctual. They make out in the taxi on the way to the theater. At the play, the actors annoy Holden because, like Ernie the piano player, they are almost too good at what they do and seem full of themselves. During intermission, Sally irritates Holden by flirting with a pretentious boy from Andover, another prep school, but he nonetheless agrees to take her ice-skating at “Radio City” (Radio City Music Hall is part of Rockefeller Center, where there is an ice-skating rink) after the show. While skating, Holden speculates that Sally only wanted to go ice-skating so she could wear a short skirt and show off her “cute ass,” but he admits that he finds it attractive. When they take a break and sit down indoors, Holden begins to unravel. Oscillating between shouting and hushed tones, he rants about all the “phonies” at his prep schools and in New York society, and talks about how alienated he feels. He becomes even more crazy and impetuous, saying that he and Sally should run away together and escape from society, living on their own in a cabin. When she points out that his dreams are ridiculous, he becomes more and more agitated. The quarrel builds until Holden calls Sally a “royal pain in the ass,” and she begins to cry. Holden starts to apologize, but Sally is upset and angry with him, and, finally, he leaves without her.
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Chapter 18
After leaving the skating rink, Holden goes to a drugstore and has a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted milk. Once again, he thinks about calling Jane, but his mind begins to wander. He remembers the time he saw her at a dance with a boy Holden thought was a show-off, but Jane argued that the boy had an inferiority complex. Holden decides that girls always say that as an excuse to date arrogant boys. Finally, he calls Jane, but no one answers. He then calls a boy named Carl Luce, whom he used to know at the Whooton School, and Luce agrees to meet him for drinks later that night.
To kill time, Holden goes to see a movie at Radio City Music Hall. He finds the Rockettes’ Christmas stage show ridiculous and superficial, but it makes him remember how he and Allie used to love the kettledrum player in the Radio City pit orchestra. The man was an unnoticed, minuscule part of the show, but he seemed to take joy and pride in what he did. After the show, the movie begins, which Holden claims to find boring as well. When it is over, he begins walking to the Wicker Bar, where he is supposed to meet Luce. The movie was about the war, so Holden thinks about the army. Based on what D. B. has told him, Holden decides that he could never be in the military. He would rather, he says, be shot by a firing squad or sit on top of an atom bomb.
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Chapter 19
At the Wicker Bar, located in the posh Seton Hotel, Holden thinks about Luce. Luce is three years older than Holden and now a student at Columbia University. At the Whooton School, Luce used to tell the younger boys about sex. Holden says that he finds Luce amusing, even though he is effeminate and a phony. When Luce arrives, he treats Holden coolly, and Holden pesters him with questions about sex. Luce refuses to be drawn into the kind of sex discussion that they had had at Whooton, and he suggests that Holden needs psychoanalysis. Holden remembers that Luce’s father is a psychoanalyst, but Luce is evasive when Holden asks whether Luce’s father ever analyzed his own son. Annoyed by Holden’s juvenile comments and questions, Luce departs.
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Chapter 20
After Luce leaves, Holden stays at the bar and gets very drunk. He stumbles to the phone booth and makes an incoherent late-night call to Sally Hayes, angering both her and her grandmother. He then tries to make a date with the lounge singer, an attractive woman named Valencia. When that fails, he tries, with no more success, to make a date with the hat-check girl.
He decides to walk to the duck pond in Central Park to see if the ducks are still around. Along the way, he becomes quite upset when he drops and breaks the record he had bought for Phoebe. Because he had splashed water in his hair at the hotel in an attempt to sober up, his hair begins to freeze and fill with icicles. At the duck pond, he worries about catching pneumonia and imagines his funeral. He missed Allie’s funeral, he says, because he was in the hospital after breaking the garage windows with his bare hands. He remembers going to Allie’s grave with his parents. He becomes disgusted and sad, because the idea of placing flowers on the grass that covers the stomachs of the dead disturbs him.
Holden wants to talk to Phoebe, and he is running low on money, so he decides to risk going home. He expects his parents to be asleep, which will allow him to sneak in, speak with Phoebe, and then leave without being heard. He leaves the park and begins the long walk home.
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Chapter 21
Holden takes the elevator up to his family’s apartment. Luckily for him, the regular elevator operator is gone, and he is able to convince the new one, who doesn’t recognize him, that he wants to visit the Dicksteins, who live across the hall from the Caulfields.
Holden sneaks into his family’s apartment and looks for Phoebe, but she isn’t in her room. Holden tiptoes to D. B.’s room, because Phoebe likes to sleep there when D. B. is in Hollywood. He finds Phoebe sleeping peacefully, and he remarks that children, unlike adults, always look peaceful when they are asleep. As he watches Phoebe sleep, he reads through her schoolbooks. She has signed her name “Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield,” even though her middle name is Josephine. He enjoys reading the notes to friends, the curious questions, and the random imaginative jottings she has scribbled on the pages.
He finally wakes Phoebe, and she is overjoyed to see him. Bursting with energy, she talks feverishly about one thing after another: her school play (in which she plays Benedict Arnold), a movie she has just seen, a movie D. B. is working on, a boy at school who bullies her, and the fact that their parents are at a party and won’t come home until later. But after her enthusiastic flurry of conversation, she realizes that Holden is home two days early and must have been kicked out of school. Over and over, she repeats that their father will “kill” him. Holden tries to justify his behavior, but she refuses to listen and covers her head with a pillow. Holden leaves the room to get some cigarettes.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 22
Holden returns to Phoebe’s room and eventually gets her to listen. He tries to explain why he fails his classes and tells her all the things he hates about school. She responds by accusing him of hating everything. He tries to refute her claim, and she challenges him to name one thing he likes. He becomes preoccupied, thinking about the nuns he met at breakfast. He also thinks about James Castle, a boy he knew at Elkton Hills School who jumped out of a window to his death while being tormented by other boys.
He finally tells her that he likes Allie, and she reminds him angrily that Allie is dead. She asks what he wants to do with his life, and his only answer is to mention the lyric, “If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye.” Holden says that he imagines a gigantic field of rye on a cliff full of children playing. He wants to stand at the edge of the cliff and catch the children when they come too close to falling off—to be “the catcher in the rye.” Phoebe points out that Holden has misheard the words—the actual lyric, from the Robert Burns poem, “Coming Thro’ the Rye,” is “If a body meet a body coming through the rye.”
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Chapter 23
Holden leaves Phoebe’s room for a moment to call Mr. Antolini, an English teacher he had at Elkton Hills. Mr. Antolini is shocked that Holden has been kicked out of another school and invites Holden to stay the night at his house. Holden mentions to us that Mr. Antolini was the only teacher who approached James Castle’s body after his death, the only one who demonstrated any courage or kindness in the situation. Holden goes back into Phoebe’s room and asks her to dance. After a few numbers, they hear the front door open—their parents have come home from their dinner party. Holden tries to fan away his lingering cigarette smoke and jumps in the closet. His mother comes in to tuck Phoebe in, and he hides until she leaves. He then tells Phoebe goodbye, letting her know of his plan to leave New York and move out west alone. She loans him the Christmas money she’d been saving, and he leaves for Mr. Antolini’s. On the way out, he gives Phoebe his red hunting hat.
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Chapter 24
When Holden arrives at Mr. Antolini’s, Mr. Antolini and his wife have just wrapped up a dinner party in their upscale Sutton Place apartment. Glasses and dishes are everywhere, and Holden can tell that Mr. Antolini has been drinking. Holden takes a seat, and the two begin talking. As Mrs. Antolini prepares coffee, Mr. Antolini inquires about Holden’s expulsion from Pencey Prep. Holden reveals that he disliked the rules and regulations at Pencey Prep. As an example, he mentions his debate class in which students were penalized for digressing from their subject. Holden argues that digressions are more interesting. Instead of offering complete sympathy, Mr. Antolini gently challenges Holden, pointing out that digressions are often distracting, and that sometimes it is more interesting and appropriate to stick to the topic. Holden begins to see the weakness of his argument and becomes uncomfortable. But Mrs. Antolini cuts the tension, bringing coffee for Holden and Mr. Antolini before going to bed.
“I have a feeling that you’re riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall.”
After this respite, Mr. Antolini resumes the discussion on a much more serious note. He tells Holden that he is worried about him because he seems primed for a major fall, a fall that will leave him frustrated and embittered against the rest of the world, particularly against the sort of boys he hated at school. At this suggestion Holden becomes defensive and argues that he actually, after a while, grows to semi-like guys like Ackley and Stradlater. After an awkward silence, Mr. Antolini further explains the “fall” he is envisioning, saying that it is experienced by men who cannot deal with the environment around them. But he tells Holden that if he applies himself in school, he will learn that many men and women have been similarly disturbed and troubled by the human condition, and he will also learn a great deal about his own mind. Holden seems interested in what Mr. Antolini has to say, but he is exhausted. Finally, he is unable to suppress a yawn. Mr. Antolini chuckles, makes up the couch, and, after some small talk about girls, lets Holden go to sleep.
Suddenly, Holden wakes up; he feels Mr. Antolini’s hand stroking his head. Mr. Antolini claims it was nothing, but Holden believes Mr. Antolini is making a homosexual advance and hurries out of the apartment.
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Chapter 25
After leaving Mr. Antolini’s, Holden goes to Grand Central Station and spends the night sleeping on a bench in the waiting room. The next day, he walks up and down Fifth Avenue, watching the children and feeling more and more nervous and overwhelmed. Every time he crosses a street, he feels like he will disappear, so each time he reaches a curb, he calls to Allie, pleading with his dead brother to let him make it to the other side. He decides to leave New York, hitchhike west, and never go home or to school again. He imagines living as a hermit, never talking to anybody, and marrying a deaf-mute girl.
He goes to Phoebe’s school and writes her a note telling her to meet him at the Museum of Art so he can return the money she lent him. As he wanders around his old school, he becomes even more depressed when he finds the words “fuck you” scrawled on the walls.
While waiting at the museum, Holden shows two young kids where the mummies are. He leads them down the hallway to the tomb exhibit, but they get scared and run off, leaving Holden alone in the dark, cramped passage. Holden likes it at first, but then sees another “fuck you” written on the wall. Disgusted, he speculates that when he dies, somebody will probably write the words “fuck you” on his tombstone. He leaves the exhibit to wait for Phoebe. On the way to the bathroom, he passes out, but he downplays the incident.
Phoebe arrives at the museum with a suitcase and begs Holden to take her with him. He feels dizzy and worries that he will pass out again. He tells her that she cannot possibly go with him and feels even closer to fainting. She gets angry, refuses to look at him, and gruffly returns his hunting hat. Holden tells her he won’t go away and asks her to go back to school. She angrily refuses, and he offers to take her to the zoo.
They walk to the zoo, Holden on one side of the street, Phoebe following angrily on the other. After looking at some animals, they walk to the park, now on the same side of the street, although still not quite together. They come to the carousel, and Holden convinces Phoebe to ride it. He sits on a park bench, watching her go around and around. They have reconciled, he is wearing his red hunting hat, and suddenly he feels so happy he thinks he might cry.
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Chapter 26
Holden concludes his story by refusing to discuss what happened after his day in the park with Phoebe, although he does say that he went home, got sick, and was sent to the rest home from which he now tells his story. He says he is supposed to go to a new school in the fall and thinks that he will apply himself there, but he doesn’t feel like talking about it. He wishes he hadn’t talked about his experiences so much in the first place, even to D. B., who often comes to visit him in the rest home. Talking about what happened to him makes him miss all the
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