Catcher In The Rye Chapter Summaries

The novel begins with sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield who is recounting two days back in December in the form of a long flashback. Holden has been expelled numerous times, his most recent, Pencey Prep. After getting into a fight with his roommate, Stradlater, Holden leaves school before he must return home on Wednesday to confront his family of his expulsion. Once he enters the train heading to New York he meets the mother of one his classmates from Pencey. Holden then misleads his classmates mother into believing that her son is popular among the students who attend Pencey. When he arrives in New York he encounters strangers dancing in a hotel, a prostitute, nuns, an old girlfriend, and his younger sister Phoebe. While Holden’s journey continues

After the excursion, Mal went off to look for a bridge game, and Ackley sits on Holden’s bed squeezing pimples and making up stories about a girl he had sex with during the summer before. Holden gets him to leave by working on the English assignment for Stradlater. Stradlater said composition was supposed to be an easy description of a room, a house, something on point. But Holden cannot think of anything to say about a house or a room. So he writes about a baseball glove that his brother Allie used to copy poems by using a green

After an unpleasant dinner, Holden gets into a snowball fight with some of the boys. Holden and his friend Mal Brossard decide to see a movie which Holden convinces Mal to let Ackley go with them. As it turns out that Ackley and Mal have seen the movie they decide to eat and play some games before returning to Pencey. Upon returning Mal leaves, leaving Ackley and Holden at his dorm with Ackley talking about girls and popping his pimples. Holden gets him to leave by starting to work on Stradlaters homework to which Holden does not understand and starts writing about his dead brother Allie. Coming home from his date Stradlater arrives and reads Holden's composition and becomes angry that it had nothing to do with the assignment. Holden becomes angry himself and tears the composition up and throws it away. He decides to smoke in the room to annoy Stradlater but the tension between them increase when asked about

Although Holden has qualms about Jane being with Stradlater, he lets go of his worries because he knows that Jane is not the type of girl to have “the time” with Stradlater.

Holden begins to get upset while she is there, when she leaves he is even more depressed than before. He lit a few cigarettes and started talking out loud to his brother Allie. We find out earlier in the book that Allie died when they were younger from Leukemia. Holden thinks of a time when they were younger and he was going to shoot BB guns with his friend Bobby

For example, Holden refuses to call his childhood friend, Jane Gallagher, in fear of discovering she has lost her naive innocence - he prefers to think of her as a terrible at checkers rather than a sexual being involved with Stradlater. In keeping himself disengaged from the rest of the world, he is able to defend himself from daunting metamorphosis from child to adult. Furthermore, this sentiment is expanded as Holden undergoes the beginnings of his breakdown with Sally. To demonstrate, Holden hatches an idea that involves “stay[ing] in [...] cabin camps” where he would “chop [his] own wood” (Salinger 132). The remote description implies a withdrawal from the rapid pace of life that Holden desperately tries to cling onto in order to remain innocent. Despite the signals from his body - his tall height and grey hair - warning him of adulthood, he is loath to succumb to it. Additionally, his ultimate goal, to stop time and protect children from evil, is highlighted by how he wishes for the Museum of Art to stay the same and his aversion of change each time he enters the building. The three days in which Holden spends wandering the streets of New

In his room, Holden is visited by his next door neighbor, Robert Ackley, who is annoying and dirty, and his roommate Stradlater, who Holden isn’t too fond of. Holden hears that Stradlater is going on a date with Jane Gallagher, a girl Holden used to date and

Stradlater doesn’t know or care. Holden becomes so overwhelmed by the thought of him “giving Jane time,” he gets into a physical altercation with his roommate. After this incident, Holden begins to idealize Jane’s image increasingly, leading to him imagining a fantastic scene after he gets robbed by a pimp, Maurice. “Then I’d crawl back to my room and call up Jane and have her come over and bandage up my guts. I pictured her holding a cigarette for me to smoke while I was bleeding and all” (Salinger 104). This is why Holden can’t talk to Jane; he has created another disjointed image of her in his mind that he uses to rescue himself. Jane saves him; but it’s not really Jane, more likely than not, the Jane in Holden’s head hasn’t existed for years. His image of her becoming more and more warped, and his cowardice in refusing to talk to her, show Holden’s inability to reconcile the past, his childhood, with the present: the fact that he and others around him are growing up. [ADD SOMETHING HERE?]

He left 3 days before they were supposed to go home for winter break. He goes to a hotel for at least a week and walks around the city. He does not want to go home and face his parents mostly his father because Holden has got kicked 3 other private schools and his dad would “kill him.” Holden’s sister Phoebe says to him “I suppose you failed in every single subject again.” His little sister was not surprised at all that he failed out of his school again. Phoebe is 10 years old giving her bigger brother a talk about why he’s not good in school. Phoebe should not be able to give his older brother advise because she is the younger one. Holden should be mature enough to lead his sister to do good overall in life by facing his

He connects with life on a very idealistic level which causes him to feel the flaws of others so deeply that he tries to cover himself by being in a state of disbelief. Part of Holden yearns for a connection with others on an adult level, while the other part of him wants to repudiate the adult world as “phony” and unjust and to recede into his own memories of childhood where things seem to be easier to deal with. He attempts to connect with other people over the development of the novel which leads him to interacting with other people as an adult and then deciding that he wasn’t ready for it. When Holden meets Sunny, it becomes clear to him that he is far from ready to be able to handle an adult situation. He starts to feel uncomfortable and makes the woman leave. Another encounter he had was at the end of his date with Sally Hayes, Holden tries to get her to run away with him, resulting in her strongly rejecting his dreams and him getting so upset that they part ways. Lastly, in his departure from Mr.Antolini’s apartment, he begins to question his ability to judge peoples characteristics. He had gone to the apartment to confide in his teacher about the choices he had made, but Mr.Antolini made him realize that his arguments weren’t very strong which made him unsure of himself and his views. Holden finally comes to terms with himself at the end of his story as he watches Phoebe ride the carousel. Everything seems to all come together at that moment. Holden shows signs of growth as he’s watching Phoebe. He realizes that the compassion he was missing had been there all along within his little

“I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would 've, too, if I 'd been sure somebody 'd cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn 't want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory” (104). Holden is a complex character with mixed emotions about everything; many times contradicting his own thoughts and beliefs. Holden’s struggles are due to the lack of parental attention, the death of his younger brother, and his unusual relationships with other characters in the novel, “The Catcher in the Rye.”

In the beginning of the novel, Holden falls off the metaphorical cliff when he flunks out of school for the third time. He never applies himself to any of the schools that he went to and he admits to not liking any of the schools either. He continues to complain about the students by calling

The setting is in Holden’s dorm room in Ossenburger Hall, relatively after he left the Spencer’s! Holden is sitting in the room reading a book when Ackley barged in. Ackley is delineated as having bad hygiene and committing discourteous, whim areal actions. Ackley incessantly asks Holden irritating questions and then starts trimming hi fingernails over the carpet. Stradlater, another one of Holden’s roommates enters the room. Ackley obviously does not like Stradlater and goes back to his room. Stradlater asked Holden to write an English composition because he had a date that is preventing him from completing it. Come to find out, Holden knows the girl who Stradlater is taking on a date, Jane Gallagher. Holden brings up a memory involving him and Jane which

Holden’s date with Sally Hayes exhibited his difficulty at cooperating with others. At first he gives us a dire impression of Sally, “I wasn’t too crazy about her, but I’d known her for years.” (p. 105) Later, he wants to marry Sally and says he is in love with her. The biggest mystery of all when it comes to women is with Jane Gallagher. Constantly mentioning Jane, Holden recalls playing checkers with her before he got sent to boarding school. When his roommate, Stradlater, has a date with Jane, Holden asks him a peculiar question, “Did you ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row?” (p. 42) Holden, jealous of Stradlater’s date with Jane, longs to see Jane but never has the courage to call her. Interactions with other people especially women perplex and overwhelm Holden. He therefore resorts to isolation, illustrating a characteristic of his mental state.

Catcher in the Rye starts off with Holden Caufield, the main character, alone at the top of Thomsen Hill above Pencey Prep. Holden has gotten kicked out of Pencey along with numerous other schools. Laziness is the reason of Holdens lack of success in school like many teenage boys. He goes back to his dorm and starts reading the book Out of Africa when his doofus roommate Robert Ackley walks in. His description to meet is just that awkwardly tall kid, like myself but with poor hygiene. Holdens roommate, Stradlater comes in and tells them about a date he is going on with none other than Holdens old fling named Jane Gallagher. Stradlater has a carefree attitude for her calling her by the wrong name multiple times. Stradlater also asks Holden to write an English composition for him since that is the only class Holden is not failing. Holden reluctantly agrees and that is when we get our first taste of why he is such an angry kid. He writes about his little brother named Allie who died a few years before of Leukemia. He specifically wrote about his baseball glove that he wrote poems on so he