Catcher in the Rye Summary

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Updated: Mar 28, 2022
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2019/04/21
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In the novel The Catcher In The Rye by J.D Salinger, the main character Holden Caulfield is a troubled child and fears the change from childhood to adulthood. Throughout the novel, the main character Holden Caulfield takes us through a few days of his life, in which he flaunts his hostile attitude to us. Over the course of his journey, there is a subtle, yet important, pattern.

The author of this book J.D Salinger was born on January 1st, 1919 and died January 27th, 2010 at age 91.

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J.D. Salinger was an American writer known for his widely read novel, The Catcher in the Rye, about which there are many Catcher in the Rye essay examples. In 1951 his most famous, and enduring novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was published and still sells around 250,000 copies a year. (J.D)

The first day, Saturday, the main character Holden Caulfield is just getting back from New York from a fencing tournament. Previously, in New York Holden had left all the fencing supplies on the subway so the team couldn’t compete. Now Holden is at Pencey Prep standing way up on Thomsen Hill. Holden goes over to Mr. Spencer’s house to say goodbye because Holden got kicked out of Pencey for failing his classes. Holden goes back to his room and we meet his roommate, Stradlater. Stradlater is a very good looking guy but is also a secret slob. He is going on a date with Jane Gallagher, a friend of holdens. Stradlater also asked Holden to write his composition essay for him. Holden wrote it about his dead brother, Allie’s baseball glove. Stradlater came back from his date and he hated the essay Holden wrote. Holden started asking lots of questions about his date and stradlater got annoyed so they got into a fight. After the fight, Holden goes into Ackley’s room. Ackley lives in the room next to him and is a really gross boy. Holden wakes him up and then decides to leave Pencey Prep and go to New York. Holden boards a train to New York.

On the train to New York, Holden sees and talks to Earnest Marrows mother. Holden makes up a fake name and says false stuff about her son. He gets off the train and calls Sally. Then he takes a cab the the Edmont hotel. In the hotel he goes to the lavender room and meets some girls that leave him with their check. After that, he takes a taxi to Ernies. Holden runs into Lillian Simmons, an old friend of D.B’s. Holden eventually walks back to the hotel.

Back at the hotel, he meets an elevator operator named Maurice, who offers to set him up with a five dollar prostitute. Sunny, the prostitute arrives at Holden’s room. Holden was thinking and he decided not to do anything with Sunny. Holden pays the five dollars just to talk and Sunny leaves. Holden sits in a chair and talks to his dead brother Allie for awhile. Holden goes to bed and tries to pray. Maurice and Sunny arrive at Holden’s door and demand five more dollars. Holden refuses and has a fist-fight with Maurice. They take the five dollars and leave. Holden pretends he has bullets in his gut. Eventually, he finally goes to sleep.

On the second day, Sunday, Holden wakes up and decided to call Sally Hays. Sally Hays is an old girlfriend of Holden’s. They arrange to meet up and go on a date that afternoon. Holden leaves to go get his luggage and gets some breakfast. While he is at the breakfast place, he meets two nuns. They talk and he donates 20 dollars to them. After breakfast, Holden heads over to a record store. He buys a special record for his sister Phoebe. Then. He heads over to the theatre to buy tickets for his date later with Sally Hays.

After Holden bought the tickets, he took a taxi to the Baltimore to meet Sally Hays. They met up, went to the theatre and watched a play. After the play they decided to go ice skating. It didn’t end up going too well. Holden started talking about conformity and told Sally that they should just leave together. They got into a huge fight and Sally left. After Sally left, Holden decided to call up his old friend Carl Luce. Carl was an old friend that he used to go to school with. They make plans to meet at the Wicker bar. They meet up but they get into an argument and Carl storms out of the bar and leaves. Holden chooses to stay at the bar and get very drunk. While he is very drunk, he called Sally Hays and started to say his gut was full of bullets and bleeding. He finally leaves the bar and walks to the park. Holden accidentally drops the record that was for his sister phoebe. Holden finally decides that he is going to sneak into his parents apartment to see phoebe.

It is the last and final day, Monday. It is very early in the morning and Holden walked to his parents apartment from the park. He sneaks in the apartment trying not to wake his parents up. He goes into phoebe’s room and wakes her up. Holden gives the broken record pieces to her. Phoebe is very smart and guesses that Holden got kicked out of Pencey Prep. Holden then tells her the story about how he wants to be the catcher in the rye. He wants to save all the kids from reality. After they talks he decides he needs to leave so he calls Mr. Antolini. He was an old teacher of Holden. He walks over to his apartment and they have a long talk. Mr. Antolini was drinking a lot. Holden falls asleep on the couch but wakes up to Mr. Antolini stroking his head. Holden freaks out and leaves immediately.

After Holden leaves Mr. Antolini’s apartment, he goes down to the bus station and sleeps on the bench there. Holden wakes himself up in the morning. He decided to go to a store to get a pen and paper. He writes a note to Phoebe that says to meet him at the museum around 12. Holden delivered the note to her school. While he was there he saw bad words graffitied onto the wall and he tried to make it disappear. He goes down to the museum and once again he sees more bad words on the walls. Phoebe finally arrives but she is carrying suitcases. Phoebe wants to run away with Holden but Holden won’t let that happen. Holden follows Phoebe as they enter Central Park. Holden gives in and he will not leave home. Phoebe then follows Holden to the Central Park Zoo. Phoebe rides the Central Park Carousel as Holden watches. It begins to pour but Holden will not move out of the rain. Overwhelmed by happiness, Holden starts to cry.

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Catcher In The Rye Summary. (2019, Apr 21). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/catcher-in-the-rye-summary/