The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger : Summary

 

The Catcher in the Rye begins when Holden Caulfield describes events that happened before Christmas. He was expelled from school, Holden spends his last Saturday on campus enduring a scolding from a teacher and interacting with fellow students. Holden clashes with his roommate, Stradlater, a senior, over Stradlater's treatment of Jane Gallagher, his girlfriend. Stradlater easily defeats the weaker Holden and gives him a bloody nose.

During the last days before his expulsion, he searches for an appropriate way to conclude his school experience, but he ends up getting so annoyed with his school and schoolmates that he leaves in the middle of the night on the next train to New York City. Arriving home a few days earlier than his parents expect him, he hangs out in the city to delay his arrival.

The first few chapters describe Holden's last days at Pencey Prep School in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. Advertisements portray Pencey as an elite school that grooms boys into sophisticated men, but Holden sees it as a place of nightmare.

 

The middle section of the novel deals with Holden's adventures in New York City. As soon as he arrives in New York, he looks for something to do, since it is too late to call his friends. He calls Faith Cavendish, a bar dancer recommended by a friend, but she does not want to meet a stranger so late. After a failed attempt to get a date with some girls in the hotel bar, he takes a cab to another bar. When he returns to his hotel, a pimp (brothel keeper) named Maurice sets him up with a prostitute named Sunny, but Holden is too nervous to do anything with her. He pays her and she leaves, but the next day Maurice assaults Holden when he refuses to pay more money, and Sunny steals the money from his wallet.

The next day Holden makes a date with Sally Hayes, whom he had dated in the past, to see a show. While waiting to meet her, he has breakfast with two nuns and buys a blues record for his sister. When he finally meets Sally, they go to a concert and go skating, but they eventually get into a fight and split up. After their fight, Holden meets an old classmate, Carl Luce, at the Wicker Bar, where they have a brief discussion until Holden gets drunk and starts asking inappropriately personal questions and he leaves. 

 

Holden Returns Home

The last part of the novel describes Holden's return to home. He sneaks into his house late at night in hopes of avoiding his parents. He successfully sneaks into the room where his sister sleeps, but luckily his parents were not there at home. At first, Phoebe is delighted to see Holden, but she gets upset when she realizes that he was expelled from the school again. She asks him the reasons, and he blames it on his terrible school. After listening to Holden's excuses, Phoebe criticizes him for being too pessimistic. Holden tries to deny this by explaining how he likes lots of things, but he was always haunted by a few incident : his dead brother Allie and a kid named James Castle who died at  school, and Phoebe. Later, Holden explains that he cannot imagine himself fitting into any of the roles that society expects him to perform, like growing up to be a lawyer or scientist. Instead, he can only imagine being a catcher in the rye (saves children from danger) who stands at the edge of a large rye field watching over and protecting little kids from danger.

Here, Salinger reveals the yet another face of Holden. However, Holden is not only a failure: he is also a deeply sensitive and compassionate person. After sneaking out of the house, Holden spends the night with his favorite teacher, Mr. Antolini, but he leaves early in the morning.

He finally decides to return home and face his parents. The novel never actually describes what happens next, the ending of the novel is enigmatic. But it suggests that Holden faces the dreadful confrontation with his parents and then later experiences some sort of nervous breakdown. The novel concludes with Holden looking back at all the people he has described and fondly remembering how he likes them despite their annoying and phony (dishonest or fake) qualities.

 

Holden’s final statement—“Don’t tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody”.