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Salinger “The Catcher in the Rye”.
Romance, Fiction.
Perspective and Narrator
The Catcher in the Rye is told from the first person point of view of Holden Caulfield, a teenager living in New York City in the late 1940’s. Holden’s ambivalence about the adult world drives the novel’s conflicts and provokes questions about human behavior.
The Catcher in the Rye is told primarily in the past tense.
About the Title .
When Holden misunderstands the words of a song, he imagines children at play in a field of rye that ends at a cliff and says he would like to be the “catcher” who protects the children from falling. The symbol of the catcher in the rye shows Holden’s ambivalence about becoming an adult.
Learn about the historical and cultural context surrounding J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye with Course Hero’s video guide.
In the late 1940’s and throughout the 1950’s the United States enjoyed widespread prosperity but also suffered from paranoia about the rise of communism and the perceived threat it presented to that prosperity. The Catcher in the Rye, published in 1951, managed to capture and reflect those tensions
Holden Caulfield -sensitive and troubled teenager
Sally Hayes-Attractive girl whom Holden dates
Student-Teacher
Mr. Antolini- Holden’s former teacher, tries to help him.
Phoebe Caulfield-Holden’s intelligent 10-year-old sister.
Allie Caulfield-Holden’s younger brother, died at age 11
Stradlater-Holden’s roommate at Pency Prep
This study guide and infographic for J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye offer summary and analysis on themes, symbols, and other literary devices found in the text. Explore Course Hero’s library of literature materials, including documents.
Holden Caulfield.
Holden Caulfield is 17 when he recounts the events of few “madman” days but was 16 when they happened. He is a thoughtful, sensitive teen from a well-off family. Holden is drawn to narrative and uses stories, true and false, to make sense of his life. Holden has flunked out of several schools because he refuses to study what doesn’t interest him or to participate in the “phony” world of adult work and play. By turns insightful beyond his years and childish in his confusion, Holden is a relatable but unreliable narrator. Readers grasp that emotional traumas have hurt Holden deeply; many sympathize with, identify with, and are frustrated by this discontented and judgmental narrator as he describes the world he perceives.
Phoebe Caulfield.
Phoebe Caulfield is Holden’s adored 10-year-old sister. Holden speaks often of Phoebe’s quirky, creative traits. She doesn’t like her middle name, so she keeps making up new ones. She writes diaries, dances seriously, and embodies the joy of childhood as Holden imagines it. He calls her “old Phoebe” and says that her endearing ways “kill” him, and she is the only person he trusts. Yet Phoebe, despite being younger than Holden, is less naïve about childhood than he is. She rejects his discontent and forces him to confront his traumas rather than flee them.
Allie Caulfield.
Allie was Holden’s younger brother. When Holden was 13, Allie died of leukemia. Allie’s red hair may be one reason Holden likes the red hunting hat. Remembering Allie’s intelligence and sweetness comforts Holden, despite his unhealed grief. Holden’s memories of Allie become a lifeline when he is exhausted, ill, and terrified.
D.B. Caulfield.
D.B. is Holden’s older brother, a writer who served in the army during World War II and who now writes screenplays in Hollywood. Because movies strike Holden as “phony”, he considers his brother a sellout who trades his talent for cash. Readers don’t get to know D.B. well, but Holden does briefly describe the trauma D.B. suffered during the war.
Mr. Antolini.
Mr. Antolini is Holden’s former English teacher and perhaps the only adult whom Holden perceives as not “phony”. He accepts Holden rather than judges him for his failures. Mr. Antolini doesn’t order Holden to obediently do his homework. Instead, he explains how education, and especially reading, can help him grow into meaningful adulthood .
Sally Hayes.
Sally is conventional teenager adept at playing the roles that help teens find their place in the adult world. She and Holden have dated in the past, but Holden sees her, through his veil of bitter discontent, as “quite the little phony”.
Stradlater, Holden’s roommate at Pencey, is the most influential of Holden’s peers. Good-looking and confident, Stradlater is successfully moving into the adult world. He acts as a foil for the younger Holden, who distrusts his roommate’s adoption of adult behaviors. Yet Holden wants the older teen’s approval.
Holden uses the words phony and phoniness to describe what he perceives as the hypocritical nature of the adult world. His observations are often accurate; adults do engage in behaviors that are less than sincere for benign and selfish reasons. They may behave superficially to save time or face; they may indulge in small talk to smooth over social situations; and they may lie, flatter, or threaten in order to get what they want. Holden observes- and participates in- these behaviors during the novel. He seems to think that only he sees the phoniness for what it is; his willingness to call it out is what sets him apart. And he uses this sense of special knowledge to avoid many adult interactions.
Calling Spencer’s lecture phony, for example, lets Holden avoid the facts about his disengagement in his classes. Sally’s phony flirtation justifies his anger and crude language- she’s asked for his candor, in a way. Repeatedly Holden ducks opportunities to connect by classifying the people involved as phony and thus not worth his time when, in fact, he’s using the accusation as a shield.
Alienation and Identity.
Holden’s loneliness parallels the alienation that many teenagers, and even adults, feel as they search for identity and belonging. The two states bump up against each other: identity is distinctive and requires setting oneself apart from others; belonging requires acknowledging commonalities so that bonds can be formed and maintained. Thus, belonging can threaten identity. Holden’s interactions with his peers at Pencey illustrate this tension. Holden identifies himself in opposition to the disgusting and annoying Ackley. He must, because he thinks of himself as “sexy” and smart. But like Ackley, he’s also lonely and no good with girls. To shore up his self-image, Holden pushes away the sympathy he feels for Ackley. Stradlater provides a contrasting example. A good-looking, confident senior, Stradlater is almost ready to join the adult world, and Holden admires him and watches him closely. Yet to belong to Stradlater’s group is to engage in behaviors Holden rejects in his own self-image. The tension of developing a distinct identity without becoming like the “phonies” means that it is often less painful for Holden to isolate himself from others. This causes him to sabotage interactions with people.
Throughout the difficult events he recalls, Holden often says that he wishes he could go home. He can’t because he fears disappointing his parents, especially his mother; yet he knows that they are aware of his expulsion. Holden pushes against going home as he tries to make it as an adult in the city. This is part of developing the identity that will sustain him in the coming years. But home is what rescues Holden in his moment of crisis. Allie represents home; he keeps Holden from disappearing into utter alienation. Phoebe represents home, and she convinces him to accept the belonging he needs.
Holden considers adults flawed and ‘phony”, but he views reflect an understanding of the world in which children are born innocent and then are gradually corrupted by the world. Holden’s view is oversimplified, as events in the novel show. Violence can be part of children’s lives, for example, and Allie’s death from leukemia is clear evidence that childhood is not a truly sheltered time. Holden’s own memories of childhood- of visiting the museum, for example-seem frozen and fragile, as if he fears to examine them closely and find those years less idyllic than he remembers. Holden’s tendency to romanticize childhood clashes with Phoebe’s more practical view too. A boy pushed her down the stairs; she and a friend retaliated by running his jacket. Little rivalries and deceits are part of Phoebe’s world, as is the risk of falling the children take to grab the gold ring on the carousel. Holden’s fantasy about the children playing in the rye, as Phoebe points out, is pretty but false.
Yet Holden is right to cherish the years of childhood. Children have the time to be curious and to start stories and not finish them, and they can love fiercely, as Phoebe does. Childhood isn’t perfect or free from risk; Holden’s desire to believe it so likely has to do with the fact that his childhood ended with Allie’s death. The crazy events Holden endures challenge him to let go of an immature, shallow understanding of childhood and adulthood. They exist on a continuum, not as a blessed place of play that terminates in a deadly cliff.
The Catcher in the Rye. The context.
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 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. He 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 ‘good-bye’ to a teacher he likes Mr. Spencer. His teacher 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 is bothering him that Mr. Spencer is old and his chest is sort of bumpy looking.
Ackley, is one of Holden’s neighbors in dorm, comes to visit Holden. But he irritates Holden because of his personal habits and his insecurities. Holden’s roommates Stradlater comes in. Stradlater 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 Stradlater how special she is by describing one of her quirks how she would play checkers and not use her kings but keep them in a back row. Stradelater cares less. He asks Holden to write a composition for him while he is out on his date. Holden writes the composition describing his younger brother Ali’s baseball mitt which Ali 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 Stradlader when Stradlater comes back from the date. Stradlater doesn’t like the composition much but more importantly he won’t tell Holden about the date and Holden worries that Stradlater tried to have sex with Jane. So he tries to hit Stradlater. Stradlater gives him a bloody nose. Holden decides to leave the school even though he is 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 the most popular boy at Pensey. He also says that 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 is nice to him but she points out that the club is closed and she gets off in New York.
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 Elmond 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 Cavandish. 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 band 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. Stradlater hitting on her. He goes to a bar in Greenwich village to see a jazz pianist named Ernie. Ernie plays well. Holden 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 to have drinks with her in her date but he thinks they’re phonies. He goes home.
The next day he has breakfast in a dinner where he talks to two nuns. He thinks they’re interesting but while they’re talking he worries theyre 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 National 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 Holden thinks as a phony. They go to Rockefeller Centre 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 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. Holden has drinks with a friend from school named Carl Luce who several years older him and living in the city now. Holden remembers Carl Luce being sophisticated and liking to talk to the other boys about girls and Golden has a lot of questions on his mind about relationships because he’s attracted to girls he doesn’t 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 questions and Carl Luce tells him he’s immature and he should see a psychoanalyst.
Holden calls 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 to 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 at not liking anything or having any ambition since Ally died, and he says he doesn’t have a fantasy, he likes of himself rescuing young kids before they run off a cliff while they’re playing. He’s basing this imagine on a Robert Burns poem that he’s misremembering. Holden doesn’t want to stay at home or go back to the hotel.
He calls a former English teacher Mr. Antolini. He respects him. His teacher 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 is 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.Antolini has put his hand on Holden’s forehead and was looking at him sleep. He freaks out thinking Mr. Antolini weenies and 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 at lunch because he’s running away and going to hitch hike out west. In her school he sees the words slang words graffiti down the wall and he rubs it off. Phoebe meets him at the American Museum of Natural History where the glass cases were out. She wants to run away with him and she gets furious when he doesn’t let her. They walk off and Holden eventually leads her toward the zoo where she gradually stops being angry at him. Holden buys her 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.
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