The
Catcher in the Rye is about alienation, the main character Holden Caulfield
wants to make a connection with other people, but almost every scene in the
book shows him trying to do this and failing, the book is set in the 1940s,
Holden is a 16 year old boy from New York City, and he’s recently flunked out
of several prestigious boarding schools because he doesn’t apply himself,
Holden tells his story from a tuberculosis rest home readers today tend to
assume he’s in a psychiatric facility but that’s not actually true, he tells us
at the end of the first chapter that he practically got TB and had to come out
here for all these checkups, he does speak with a psychoanalyst at this
facility who encourages him to write his story, he gets sick because he spends
three days just before Christmas roaming around New York City, sleeping very
little, smoking and drinking a lot with no winter coat and in a state of
intense emotional distress.
So
it is true that his emotional problems lead to the breakdown in his health, at
the start of the novel he’s just been expelled from a school called Pencey prep
everyone at the school is at a football game, and he’s isolated from everyone
looking down on it, his first thought is to go say goodbye to a teacher he
likes mr. Spencer mr. Spencer is in bed with the flu, he challenges Holden
about the fact that he doesn’t do any work, and doesn’t seem to care about his
future even though Holden was the one who wanted to talk to mr. Spencer, he
gets out of the room as quickly as he can, because he doesn’t want to talk
about why he doesn’t apply himself, and it’s bothering him that mr. Spencer is
old and his chest is sort of bumpy looking actly one of Holden’s neighbors in
the dorm comes to visit Holden, but he irritates Holden because of his personal
habits, and his insecurities Holden’s roommate Strad later comes in Strad later
is getting ready for a date with a girl, Holden knows named Jane Gallagher
Holden spent a lot of time with Jane during a summer in Maine and he likes her,
he tries to tell Strad later how special she is by describing one of her
quirks, how she would play checkers and not use her kings, but keep them in the
back row, Brad later could care less he asks Holden to write an English
composition for him.
While he’s out on his
date, Holden writes the composition scribing his younger brother Ali’s baseball
mitt which I’ll a had written poems on so he could read in the outfield, Holden
tells us that Ali died three years before of leukemia, so at this moment we
know that the root of Holden’s problems is that he’s mourning his brother, he
gets in a fight with Strad ,later when Strad later comes back from the date
grad later doesn’t like the composition much but more importantly he won’t tell
Holden about the date, and Holden’s worried that Strad later tried to have sex
with Jane, so he tries to hitch trad later and Strad later gives him a bloody
nose, holden decides to leave the school even though he’s not supposed to go
home for several more days, on the train to New York, Holden meets the mother
of another boy in the school whom Holden thinks as a bastard, Holden lies about
his own name calling himself rudolf Schmidt, and he makes up stories about the
woman’s son Ernest, saying that Ernest is the nicest and most popular boy at
pensee, he also says he Holden has a brain tumor that he’s about to have
removed, he tries to flirt with the woman suggesting that they get drinks in
the club car, she’s nice to him but she points out that the club car is closed
and she gets off in Newark.
Holden
gets to New York, and thinks about the people he could call because he wants to
see someone, he thinks of his sister Phoebe and Jane Gallagher, another girl
named Sally Hayes, and a friend named Carl Luce, but he changes his mind and
doesn’t call anyone, Holden tries to bond with a taxi driver inviting him to
have cocktails with him, and asking if he knows where the Ducks in Central Park
go for the winter, the driver isn’t interested Holden checks in at the Edmond
hotel where he sees other guests that he says are perverts, one man is
cross-dressing and another couple is spitting at each other in their room, he
sort of likes what he sees this couple doing but it bothers him that he likes
it, because he thinks if he were fooling around with a girl he likes he should
respect her more than this, it’s very late at night by now but Holden decides
to call a woman named faith Cavendish, he’s never met her but he got her number
from a friend, and he heard she used to be a stripper, he tries to get her to meet
him for a cocktail or let him come to her apartment, but she won’t.
Holden
goes downstairs to a lounge called the lavender room where a ban is playing, he
sits with three women from out of town and dances with them, they let him buy
all their drinks and cigarettes, but they laugh at him because he’s so young
and they depress him because they’re so ignorant, he thinks about Jane
Gallagher whom he actually likes and still gets mad thinking about Strad later
hitting on her, he goes to a bar in Greenwich Village to see a jazz pianist
named Ernie, Ernie plays well the Holton thinks he plays too well and he knows
he’s good, and he pretends to be humble so he’s phony, Holden sees a woman who
used to date his brother and she wants him to have drinks with her in her date,
but he thinks they’re phonies, so he leaves the elevator operator at the hotel
named Maurice offers to send a prostitute to Holden’s room and he agrees
without having time to think about it, a prostitute named sunny comes to his
room, he’s hoping to lose his virginity to her but when she gets aggressive
with him, he becomes uncomfortable and says he’s recovering from an injury and
can’t have sex, she asks for $10 but Holden will only give her five the price,
Maurice quoted she leaves calling him a bum sunny and Maurice show up at his
door to collect the other five dollars.
Holden
practically breaks down in tears rather than pay it because Maurice lied about
the cost, but Maurice punches him in the stomach and sunny takes the money and
they leave, Holden sleeps just a few hours and the next morning he calls Sally
Hays to make a date, he’s dated Sally before and she likes him, he thinks she’s
attractive but he doesn’t like her as much as Jane he has breakfast in a diner
where he talks to two nuns, he thinks they’re interesting but while they’re
talking he worries they’re going to ask if he’s Catholic, which spoils the
conversation for him, he decides to call Jane but he hangs up when her mother
answers, he goes to Central Park hoping to see his younger sister Phoebe
without having to go home, he asks a girl in her class where Phoebe might be
and the girl suggests the museum, Holden goes to the American Museum of Natural
History, he loves the displays in glass cases which have been exactly the same
since he was a little kid, Holden meets Sally for his date and takes her to the
matinee of a Broadway play, Sally annoys him by talking to a boy she knows from
another school whom ho then thinks as a phony, they go to Rockefeller Center to
skate, and Holden tries to convince Sally to run away right then and live with
him in a cabin in the woods where he’ll get a job pumping gas.
She obviously likes him, but she wants him to be a normal boy and to go to
college and get a real job, he calls her a pain in the ass, and she storms off
in tears, Holden calls Jane Gallagher again but there’s no answer,r Holden has
drinks with a friend from school named Carl Luce who several years older than
him and living in the city, now Holden remembers Carl Lewis as being sophisticated
and liking to talk to the other boys about sex, and Holden has a lot of
questions on his mind about sex because he’s attracted to girls he doesn’t
really like, like Sally but he really wants to be with someone he likes a lot
like Jane, but he’s drunk and too pushy with his questions, and Carl Luce tells
him he’s immature and he should see a psychoanalyst, Holden called Sally drunk
and tells her he still wants to come over and help her trimmer tree, she says
yes, but tells him to go to bed and call her back later.
Holden
sneaks into his own family’s apartment, so he can see his sister Phoebe without
having to see his parents Phoebe’s happy to see him, but upset that he flunked
out of another school, she accuses him of not liking anything or having any ambition
since Ally died, and he says he does have a fantasy, he likes of himself
rescuing young kids before they run off a cliff while they’re playing, he’s
basing this image on a Robert Burns poem that he’s misremembering, Holden
doesn’t want to stay home or go back to the ED month, so he calls a former
English teacher named mr. ant aleni at one of Holden’s schools, Holden
remembers a boy being bullied until he jumped out of a window and killed
himself mr. Enslin he picked the boy up so Holden respects mr. ant aleni,
mr. Anthony warns Holden that he’s going to need to figure out what he wants to
do with his life, and whatever that is will probably require applying himself
in school, and that if he reads you’ll find that other people have been morally
and spiritually troubled like him, and left valuable records of their thoughts,
Holden’s not really listening because by now he’s completely exhausted and
starting to get sick.
Holden
sleeps on the couch but he wakes up because mr. Anthony has put his hand
on Holden’s forehead, and was looking at him sleep, he freaks out thinking mr.
ant weenies a pervert he runs off and sleeps in Grand Central Station for
a few hours, the next day he goes to Phoebe’s school to give her a message to
meet him at lunch because he’s running away, and going to hitchhike out west in
her school, he sees the words [ __ ] you graffiti down the wall and he
rubs it off, Phoebe meets him at the American Museum of Natural History where
the glass cases were, but she wants to run away with him and she gets furious
when he won’t let her, they walk off and Holden eventually leads her toward the
zoo where she gradually stops being angry at him, Holden buys Phoebe a ticket
to the carousel and he watches her ride at a few times it’s raining and he’s starting
to get sick, but he’s finally happy that’s the end of Holden’s story he says he
got sick after that, and came out to the rest home and that he’s about to move
back and start another school, and he’ll probably apply himself, but you don’t
know you’ll do something until you do it, he says he misses everyone he wrote
about.