The Catcher in the Rye (1951) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

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• Holden-Caulfield: He is in between a child and an adult. He's kind of an anti-social. He wants to protect the innocence of children and thinks of himself as a "catcher in the rye" thus the title.
• Stradlator (Holden's roommate): Stradlator is Holden's bossy roommate. He uses Holden for his own selfish purposes and is unapologetic.
• Sally Hayes: A very beautiful girl Holden mentions several times. She wants him to come to her house and help trim the Christmas tree on Christmas eve, and wrote Holden a letter asking him to while he was at Pencey. He goes on a date with her at one point in the book.

Quotes edit see section history

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• “It’s not bad when the sun is out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling & falling. The whole arrangements designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.”

  Mr. Antolini

• “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one”

  Mr. Antolini quoting psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel

• “I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “If you was a fish, Mother Nature'd take care of you, wouldn't she? Right? You don't think them fish die when it gets to be winter, do ya?”

  Horwitz

• “It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “I don't know exactly what I mean by that, but I mean it.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “You know what the trouble with me is? I can never get really sexy--I mean really sexy--with a girl I don't like a lot. I mean I have to like her a lot. If I don't, I sort of lose my goddam desire for her and all. Boy, it really screws up my sex life something awful. My sex life stinks."”

  Holden Caulfield

• “I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know?”

  Holden Caulfield

• “That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddam toilet seat”

  Holden Caulfield

• “It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy”

  Holden Caulfield

• ““It was one of the worst schools I ever went to. It was full of phonies. And mean guys. You never saw many mean guys in your life.””

  Holden Caulfield

• “"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is 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, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them."”

  Holden Caulfield

• “Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hot-shot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “"Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men." They don't do any damn more molding at Pencey than they do at any other school. And I didn't know anybody there that was splendid and clear-thinking and all. Maybe two guys. If that many. And they probably came to Pencey that way.”

  Holden Caulfield

• “All morons hate it when you call them a moron”

• “Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row.”

  Holden Caulfield

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

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• New York City: The majority of the story takes place in the city of New York.
• Museum of Natural History: Holden displays a certain fascination with the Museum, mostly because it never changes
• Hollywood: Where Holden's brother, D.B., works writing movies
• Whooton: Holden's old prep school, which he got kicked out of
• Central Park: The real Central Park in New York is where Holden spends quite a bit of time. His sister and he have enjoyed some of their childhood there.
• The Museum of Art: A Museum very close to Phoebe's current, and Holden's previous elementry school.
• Pencey Prep, Agerstown, PA: The boarding school Holden is being kicked out of
• Thomsen Hill
• The Pond: Holden often wonders where the ducks go once the pond is frozen over.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Pimpy-looking: Resembling a man who is an agent for a prostitute or prostitutes and lives off their earnings.
• Quaker: A member of the Society of Friends, a Christian denomination founded in England (circa 1650) by George Fox; the Friends have no formal creed, rites, liturgy, or priesthood, and reject violence in human relations, including war. The term "Quaker" was originally derisive, aimed at the Friends because of Fox's admonition to "quake" at the word of the Lord.
• Rubbernecks: People who stretch their necks or turn their heads to gaze about in curiosity.
• Flit/Flitty: Homosexual

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• The Red Hat: The red hunting hat is one of the most recognizable symbols from twentieth-century American literature. It is inseparable from our image of Holden, with good reason: it is a symbol of his uniqueness and individuality. The hat is outlandish, and it shows that Holden desires to be different from everyone around him. At the same time, he is very self-conscious about the hat—he always mentions when he is wearing it, and he often doesn’t wear it if he is going to be around people he knows. The presence of the hat, therefore, mirrors the central conflict in the book: Holden’s need for isolation versus his need for companionship.It is worth noting that the hat’s color, red, is the same as that of Allie’s and Phoebe’s hair. Perhaps Holden associates it with the innocence and purity he believes these characters represent and wears it as a way to connect to them. He never explicitly comments on the hat’s significance other than to mention its unusual appearance.
• The “Catcher in the Rye”: As the source of the book’s title, this symbol merits close inspection. It first appears in Chapter 16, when a kid Holden admires for walking in the street rather than on the sidewalk is singing the Robert Burns song “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye.” In Chapter 22, when Phoebe asks Holden what he wants to do with his life, he replies with his image, from the song, of a “catcher in the rye.” Holden imagines a field of rye perched high on a cliff, full of children romping and playing. He says he would like to protect the children from falling off the edge of the cliff by “catching” them if they were on the verge of tumbling over. As Phoebe points out, Holden has misheard the lyric. He thinks the line is “If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye,” but the actual lyric is “If a body meet a body, coming through the rye.”The song “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye” asks if it is wrong for two people to have a romantic encounter out in the fields, away from the public eye, even if they don’t plan to have a commitment to one another. It is highly ironic that the word “meet” refers to an encounter that leads to recreational sex, because the word that Holden substitutes—“catch”—takes on the exact opposite meaning in his mind. Holden wants to catch children before they fall out of innocence into knowledge of the adult world, including knowledge of sex.
• The Museum of Natural History: Holden tells us the symbolic meaning of the museum’s displays: they appeal to him because they are frozen and unchanging. He also mentions that he is troubled by the fact that he has changed every time he returns to them. The museum represents the world Holden wishes he could live in: it’s the world of his “catcher in the rye” fantasy, a world where nothing ever changes, where everything is simple, understandable, and infinite. Holden is terrified by the unpredictable challenges of the world—he hates conflict, he is confused by Allie’s senseless death, and he fears interaction with other people.
• The Ducks in the Central Park Lagoon: Holden’s curiosity about where the ducks go during the winter reveals a genuine, more youthful side to his character. For most of the book, he sounds like a grumpy old man who is angry at the world, but his search for the ducks represents the curiosity of youth and a joyful willingness to encounter the mysteries of the world. It is a memorable moment, because Holden clearly lacks such willingness in other aspects of his life.The ducks and their pond are symbolic in several ways. Their mysterious perseverance in the face of an inhospitable environment resonates with Holden’s understanding of his own situation. In addition, the ducks prove that some vanishings are only temporary. Traumatized and made acutely aware of the fragility of life by his brother Allie’s death, Holden is terrified by the idea of change and disappearance. The ducks vanish every winter, but they return every spring, thus symbolizing change that isn’t permanent, but cyclical. Finally, the pond itself becomes a minor metaphor for the world as Holden sees it, because it is “partly frozen and partly not frozen.” The pond is in transition between two states, just as Holden is in transition between childhood and adulthood.
• Bildungsroman: A coming-of-age novel dealing with the main character's development or spiritual education.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Wild Swans, and followed by The Collaborator.

Preceded by The Hunger Games, and followed by Pride and Prejudice.

Preceded by The Houses in Between.

Preceded by The Golden Notebook, and followed by Red Harvest.

Preceded by Furor & Mystery and Other Poems (English and French Edition), and followed by No Orchids for Miss Blandish.

Preceded by The Brothers Karamazov, and followed by The Wealth of Nations.

Preceded by The Alchemist, and followed by Pride and Prejudice.

Preceded by The Painted Veil.

Preceded by The Painted Veil, and followed by The Writing Life.

Preceded by The Lost Symbol, and followed by I Can Make You Thin.

Preceded by The Alchemist, and followed by The Lovely Bones.

Preceded by Big Tiger and Christian;, and followed by The Wool-Pack.

Preceded by Go Ask Alice, and followed by King & King.

Preceded by Lord of the Flies, and followed by Slaughterhouse-Five.

Preceded by To Kill a Mockingbird, and followed by A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Preceded by The Leopard, and followed by The Woman in White.

Preceded by Birdsong, and followed by The Time Traveler's Wife.

Preceded by Ulysses, and followed by To Kill a Mockingbird.

Preceded by Rebecca, and followed by The Wind in the Willows.

Preceded by The Opposing Shore, and followed by The Rebel.

Preceded by Brave New World, and followed by Animal Farm.

Preceded by The Wapshot Chronicle, and followed by A Clockwork Orange.

Preceded by Things Fall Apart, and followed by Gone With the Wind.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. J. D. Salinger (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Teen Read Awards (Finalist, 2010: Best All-Time Fave)
• National Book Award (Finalist, 1952: Fiction)
• BBC's Big Read (April 2003, #15)
• Publishing Triangle's 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Novels

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3537.A426
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Young Adults

This book may contain some vulgar contents for young children. Describes an encounter with a prostitute, but no sex happens. Many profanities (mostly damn and goddamn but occasional f--- as well)

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( S ) › Salinger, J.D.
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Secondary Solutions: Common Core and NCTE/IRA Standards-Aligned Literature Guide for teaching The Catcher in the Rye

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