The Catcher in the Rye (1951) is a novel by J.D. Salinger. It tells the story of three days in the life of Holden Caulfield, a sixteen-year-old boy who has been expelled from school.

Holden is a student at Pencey Prep, a school in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. The novel begins on the Saturday before Christmas vacation.

Holden is the manager of the fencing team, which has traveled to New York City that day. The fencing competition has been canceled because Holden left the team’s equipment on the subway in New York. The fencing team has returned early to school.

Holden has been dismissed from school. His parents do not yet know that he has been expelled from school. They live in New York City He visits the home of his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, to say goodbye.

He has received failing grades in four out of five classes. The only class he passed was English. He admits that he did not apply himself, and did not do any work in his classes.

He returns to his dorm, where he feels annoyed by Robert Ackley, a student who has the room next-door. Ackley never brushes his teeth, and has severe acne, but is meticulous about trimming his fingernails in Holden’s room.

Holden walks to the bathroom to talk with Stradlater, his roommate, while Stradlater is shaving. Stradlater asks Holden to write a composition for him, as an assignment for English class. Stradlater is going on a date with Jane Gallagher, who is a friend of Holden’s.

Holden writes the composition for Stradlater. The essay is a description of the baseball glove that belonged to Holden’s brother, Allie. The wonderful glove had poems written on the fingers, so that Allie would have something to read when he was standing in the field and waiting for someone to be at bat.

Allie had been two years younger than Holden, but had died of leukemia when Holden was thirteen years old. The night that Allie died, Holden had slept in the garage. Holden had broken all the garage windows with his fist, and had broken his hand when he learned that Allie was dead.

Stradlater returns from his date with Jane. He reads Holden’s essay about the baseball glove, but says that it is about the wrong subject, and Holden tears up the paper, and throws it in the wastebasket.

Holden asks Stradlater where he went with Jane that evening. When Stradlater refuses to say anything about what happened, or to say whether he tried to make love to Jane, Holden hits him on the side of the head. Stradlater wrestles Holden to the floor, and when Holden keeps taunting him, Stradlater punches Holden, giving him a bloody nose.

Holden decides to leave Pencey that night, rather than wait until Wednesday. Since his parents do not yet know that he has been expelled from school, and since Wednesday is the beginning of Christmas vacation, he decides to rent a room in a hotel in New York City until Wednesday.

He takes a train to Penn Station in New York City, and takes a cab to the Edmont Hotel. He pays for a room at the hotel, and then takes a cab to a night club in Greenwich Village. He later returns to the hotel, and the elevator operator offers to send a prostitute to his room if Holden pays five dollars.

The elevator operator’s name is Maurice. When the prostitute knocks on the door of the room, Holden starts to feel nervous, and asks her to leave. Her name is Sunny, but Holden finds her depressing. He pays her five dollars, although she says that she wants ten dollars.

The next morning, Sunny and Maurice return to Holden’s room, and Maurice demands ten dollars. When Holden refuses, Maurice shoves him against the wall, and Sunny takes the money out of Holden’s wallet. Maurice snaps his finger against Holden’s crotch, and when Holden calls him a dirty moron, Maurice punches him in the stomach.

Later that morning, Holden telephones his girlfriend, Sally Hayes, and asks her to go with him to a Sunday matinee. He walks to a record store on Broadway, and buys a record for his ten-year-old sister, Phoebe. The record’s name is “Little Shirley Beans,” and it tells the story of a little girl who won’t go out of her house because she is missing two front teeth.

Holden passes a boy in the street, who is singing, “If a body catch a body, coming through the rye.”

Holden and Sally go to a Broadway show, which stars Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne, and then they go ice-skating. They later sit down at a table, and Holden suddenly asks Sally to go with him to live in Massachusetts or Vermont. When Sally tells him how impractical his idea is, Holden says that she gives him “a royal pain in the ass.” Sally starts crying, and Holden starts laughing at her. She gets angry, and refuses to accept his apology. He leaves her at the skating rink.

Later that night, Holden gets drunk at a bar, and walks through Central Park. He drops the “Little Shirley Beans” record, and the record breaks. He picks up the pieces, and puts them into his pocket.

He walks home, and sneaks into his family’s apartment. The lights have been turned off, and Phoebe is sleeping in their brother D.B.’s room. Holden wakes her up. She tells him that their parents have gone out to a party. Holden tells her about the record he bought for her, and shows her the broken pieces of the record.

When Phoebe asks him why he has been expelled from school, Holden says that the reason for his dismissal is that the school is full of phonies. When Phoebe tells him that he doesn’t like anything, and tells him to name one thing that he likes, he cannot name anything.

Then Holden remembers that he liked their dead brother Allie. He tells his sister that he likes talking with her. Phoebe asks him what he wants to be, and he says that he would like to be the catcher in the rye, standing on the edge of a cliff and watching children play in a field of rye, and catching everybody who came near the edge of the cliff.

Holden decides to telephone his former English teacher, Mr. Antolini. After he talks with Mr. Antolini, his parents return home, and he hides in the closet. He sneaks out of the apartment, and takes a cab to Mr. and Mrs. Antolini’s apartment. They invite him to spend the night. Holden sleeps on the sofa, but later wakes up to find that Mr. Antolini is fondling him, by petting him on the head. He is frightened by Mr. Antolini’s advances, and hurriedly says goodbye.

The next day, Monday, he meets Phoebe during her lunch hour at school. He wants to start hitchhiking west, but Phoebe gets angry when he will not take her with him. They walk to the zoo in Central Park, and as he watches her riding the carousel, he starts crying, and suddenly feels happy.

Holden concludes his narrative by saying that, when he later returned home, he had a mental breakdown, for which he had psychiatric treatment. He has now recovered, and plans to return to school the next fall. He now feels empathy toward all the people he has known, including Ackley and Stradlater, and even Maurice.

A theme of the novel is the conflict between youthful honesty and adult hypocrisy. Holden feels that he is surrounded by people who are “phony.” He is alienated by seeing the falseness and absurdity of commonly-shared social pretentions. He feels disaffected from the world, because he sees that it is filled with insincere and dishonest people.

Holden is unpretentious, unassuming, and self-deprecating. He is an outsider, because he does not pretend to be something that he is not. He does not pretend to feel things when he does not feel them. He seeks a sense of his place in the world, even though he sees much of the world as “phony.” He wants to feel a sense of belonging, and this is partly why he wants to become “the catcher in the rye.”

Holden is quick to recognize the hypocrisy of people who try to disguise their social pretentions. But he fails to realize that he is himself guilty of many of the things for which he calls other people “phony.” He is irresponsible (for example, he loses the fencing team’s equipment). He is a liar (for example, when he is sitting next to his classmate’s mother, Mrs. Morrow, on the train to New York, he tells her that his name is Rudolf Schmidt, and that he is returning home from school early because he has a brain tumor). He is sentimental (for example, he feels happy when he remembers the innocence of childhood).

Holden redeems himself, however, by his capacity for empathy. By seeing himself in the role of “catcher in the rye”at the end of the novel, he gains compassion for others.

A strength of the novel is the uniqueness and individuality of the voice of the narrator. Holden’s voice is unmistakable. This voice is one of the most unique and compelling in American literature. The tone is informal, and reveals a brilliantly comic irony.

Holden’s vocabulary is marked by slang, and by frequently-used words such as “crumby,” “moron,” “phony,” “pervert,” “lousy,” “corny,” “jerk,” and “madman.” The tone of the novel is also established by colloquial expressions, such as “that killed me,” or “swear to God.”

Holden is eager to expose and ridicule pretentiousness, dishonesty, and hypocrisy, wherever he sees it. His vocabulary reveals that he is unpretentious and unassuming. He refers to other characters in the novel as “old Ackley,” “old Jane,” “old Sally,” or “old Phoebe.”

Holden’s voice has a disarming honesty and sincerity. He is not introspective, or self-searching. He does not see how similar he is to all the people he descibes as “jerks” or “phony.” He is aware of his lack of direction, but he also lacks self-pity. He is able to ridicule himself, as well as others. His feeling of aimlessness and lack of commitment reveals his underlying unhappiness.

The novel reveals an acute sense of pathos. Examples of this pathos include: the red hunting-cap that Holden wears to New York City; the description of the baseball glove that belonged to Allie; and the “Little Shirley Beans” record that Holden buys for his sister, Phoebe.

Holden unconsciously wants to atone for his lack of direction and commitment by seeking some form of self-punishment. He taunts his roommate Stradlater into punching him, resulting in a bloody nose. After the fight, Holden shows his bloody nose to Ackley.

Holden later taunts Maurice into punching him. When Holden is doubled over by Maurice’s punch to the stomach, he starts to enjoy it, pretending that he has been shot in the stomach by a bullet.

Holden also reveals his need for self-punishment when he tells us that he broke his hand by punching the garage windows when his brother Allie died. Holden’s need for punishment results from his not being able to feel a sense of belonging.

When he regains his happiness and sense of commitment at the end of the novel, he realizes that, by being like “the catcher in the rye,” he can have a sense of personal direction and identity.