The Catcher in The Rye - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

The majority of the novel takes place over two days in December 1949. Seventeen-year-old Holden Caulfield, the book's narrator and protagonist, addresses the reader directly from a hospital in Southern California, recounting the events leading up to his breakdown the previous December.

Holden begins his story at Pencey Prep, an exclusive private school in Agerstown, Pennsylvania, on the Saturday afternoon of the traditional football game with school rival, Saxon Hall. Holden misses the game. As manager of the fencing team, he managed to lose the team's equipment on the subway in New York that morning, resulting in the cancellation of a match. He is on his way to the home of his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, to say good-bye. Holden has been expelled and is not to return after Christmas break, which starts the following Wednesday. Spencer is a well-meaning but long-winded old man. Much to Holden's annoyance, he reads aloud his history examination paper, in which Holden wrote a note to Mr Spencer so that his teacher would not feel badly about failing him in the subject.

Holden returns to his dorm, which is quiet because most of the students are still at the football game. Wearing his new red hunting cap, he begins a book, but his reverie is temporary. First, his dorm neighbor Ackley disturbs him, then later, he argues with his roommate, Stradlater, who fails to appreciate a theme that Holden wrote for him about Holden's late brother Allie's baseball glove. A womanizer, Stradlater has just returned from a date with Holden's old friend Jane Gallagher. Holden is distressed because he is scared that Stradlater might have taken advantage of Jane. Stradlater does not appreciate Jane in the manner in which Holden does; he even misstates Jane's name as 'Jean.' The two roommates fight, and Stradlater wins easily. Holden decides at this point that he has had enough of Pencey Prep, and catches a train to New York City, where he plans to stay in a hotel until Wednesday, when his parents expect him to return home for Christmas vacation.

He checks into the dilapidated Edmont Hotel. After observing the behavior of the "perverts" in the hotel room facing his, he struggles with his own sexuality. He states that although he has had opportunities to lose his virginity, the timing never felt right and he was always respectful when a girl said, 'no.' He spends an evening dancing with three tourist women in their thirties from Seattle in the hotel lounge, and enjoys dancing with one, but ends up with only the check. He finds it slightly frustrating because the women seem unable to carry a conversation. Following a disappointing visit to Ernie's Nightclub in Greenwich Village, Holden agrees to have a prostitute, Sunny, visit his room. His attitude toward the girl changes the minute she enters the room, because she seems to be about the same age as Holden and he starts to view her as a person. Holden becomes uncomfortable with the situation, and when he tells her that all he wants to do is talk, she becomes annoyed and leaves. Even though he still pays her for her time, she returns with her pimp, Maurice, and demands more money. Despite the fact that Sunny takes five dollars from Holden's wallet, Maurice punches Holden in the stomach.

After a short sleep, Holden telephones Sally Hayes, a familiar date, and agrees to meet her that afternoon to go to a play. Meanwhile, Holden leaves the hotel, checks his luggage at Grand Central Station, and has a late breakfast. He meets two nuns, one an English teacher, with whom he discusses Romeo and Juliet. Holden shops for a special record, "Little Shirley Beans," for his 10-year-old sister, Phoebe. He spots a small boy singing "If a body catches a body coming through the rye," which somehow makes Holden feel less depressed. After seeing the play with Sally featuring Broadway stars Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, the two go skating at Radio City, and while drinking Coke, Holden impulsively invites Sally to run away with him to the wilderness. She declines. Her response deflates Holden's mood and prompts his remark: "You give me a royal pain in the ass, if you want to know the truth." He regrets it immediately, and Sally storms off as Holden follows, pleading with her to accept his apology. Finally, Holden gives up and leaves her there, sees the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall, endures a movie, and gets very drunk. Throughout the novel, Holden has been worried about the ducks in the lagoon at Central Park. He tries to find them but only manages to break Phoebe's record in the process. Exhausted physically and mentally, he heads home to see his sister.

Holden's time in the city is characterized largely by drunkenness and loneliness. He thinks about the Museum of Natural History, which he often visited as a child. He contrasts his evolving life with the statues of Eskimos in a diorama: while the statues have remained unchanged through the years, he and the world have not. These concerns may have stemmed largely from the death of his brother, Allie. Eventually, he sneaks into his parents' apartment while they are out, to visit his younger sister—and close friend—Phoebe, the only person with whom he seems to be able to communicate. Holden shares a fantasy he has been thinking about (based on a mishearing of Robert Burns' Comin' Through the Rye): he pictures himself as the sole guardian of a group of children running and playing in a huge rye field on the edge of a cliff. His job is to catch the children if, in their abandon, they come close to falling off the brink, to be a "catcher in the rye." Because of this misinterpretation, Holden believes that to be a "catcher in the rye" means to save children from losing their innocence.

When his parents come home, Holden slips out and seeks out his former and much-admired English teacher, Mr. Antolini, who offers advice on life and a place to sleep. Mr. Antolini tells Holden that it is the mark of the mature man to live humbly for a cause, rather than die nobly for it. This is at odds with Holden's ideas of becoming a "catcher in the rye," symbolically saving children from the evils of adulthood. During the speech on life, Mr. Antolini has a number of cocktails served in highball glasses. Holden is upset when he wakes up in the night to find Mr. Antolini patting his head in a way that he regards as "flitty." Confused and uncertain, he leaves and spends his last afternoon wandering the city. He later wonders if his interpretation of Mr. Antolini's actions was actually correct, and seems to wonder how much it matters anyway.

Holden makes the decision that he will head out west and live as a deaf-mute. When he mentions these plans to his little sister Monday morning, she wants to go with him. Holden declines her offer, which upsets Phoebe, so Holden decides not to leave after all. He tries to cheer her up by taking her to the Central Park Zoo, and as he watches her ride the zoo's carousel, he is filled with happiness and joy at the sight of Phoebe riding in the rain. At the conclusion of the novel, Holden decides not to mention much about the present day, finding it inconsequential. He alludes to "getting sick" and living in a mental hospital, and mentions that he'll be attending another school in September; he relates how he has been asked whether he will apply himself properly to his studies this time around and wonders whether such a question has any meaning before the fact. Holden says that he doesn't want to tell us anything more, because surprisingly he found himself missing two of his former classmates, Stradlater and Ackley, and even Maurice, the pimp who punched him. He warns the reader that telling others about their own experiences will lead them to miss the people who shared them.