The Catcher in the Rye

Holden Caulfield, a depressed 17-year-old, lives in a sanitorium in California after the end of World War II. After his discharge within a month, he intends to go live with his brother D.B., an author and war veteran with whom Holden is angry for becoming a Hollywood screenwriter.

Holden recalls the events of a single night during the previous year's Christmas, beginning at Pencey Preparatory Academy, a boarding school in Pennsylvania that Salinger may have based on the Valley Forge Military Academy and College.[13] Holden has just been expelled from Pencey because he had failed all of his classes except English. After causing the fencing team to forfeit a fencing match in New York because he accidentally lost the team’s equipment on the subway, he says goodbye to his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, who is a well-meaning but long-winded old man. Spencer offers him advice and simultaneously embarrasses Holden by criticizing his history exam.

Back at his dorm, Holden's dorm neighbor, Robert Ackley, who is unpopular among his peers, disturbs Holden with his impolite questioning and mannerisms. Holden, who feels sorry for Ackley, tolerates his presence. Later, Holden agrees to write an English composition for his roommate, Ward Stradlater, who is leaving for a date. Holden and Stradlater normally hang out well together, and Holden admires Stradlater's physique. He is distressed to learn that Stradlater's date is Jane Gallagher, with whom Holden was infatuated, and whom he feels the need to protect. That night, Holden decides to go to a Cary Grant comedy with Mal Brossard and Ackley. Since Ackley and Mal had already seen the film, they end up just eating food and playing pinball for a while and returning to Pencey. When Stradlater returns hours later, he fails to appreciate the deeply personal composition Holden wrote for him about the baseball glove of Holden's late brother Allie who died from leukemia a few years prior, and refuses to say whether he had sex with Jane. Enraged, Holden punches him, and Stradlater easily wins the fight. When Holden continues insulting him, Stradlater leaves him lying on the floor with a bloody nose. Fed up with the "phonies" at Pencey Prep, Holden decides to leave Pencey early and catches a train to New York. Holden intends to stay away from his home until Wednesday when his parents would have received notification of his expulsion. Aboard the train, Holden meets the mother of a wealthy, obnoxious Pencey student, Ernest Morrow, and makes up nice but false stories about her son.

In a taxicab, Holden asks the driver whether the ducks in the Central Park lagoon migrate during winter, a subject he brings up often, but the man barely responds. Holden checks into the Edmont Hotel and spends an evening dancing with three tourists at the hotel lounge. Holden is disappointed that they are unable to hold a conversation. Following an unpromising visit to a nightclub, Holden becomes preoccupied with his internal angst and agrees to have a prostitute named Sunny visit his room. His attitude toward the girl changes when she enters the room and takes off her clothes. Holden, who is a virgin, says he only wants to talk, which annoys her and causes her to leave. Even though he maintains that he paid her the right amount for her time, she returns with her pimp Maurice and demands more money. Holden insults Maurice, Sunny takes money from Holden's wallet, and Maurice snaps his fingers on Holden's groin and punches him in the stomach. Afterward, Holden imagines that he has been shot by Maurice and pictures murdering him with an automatic pistol.

The next morning, Holden, becoming increasingly depressed and in need of personal connection, calls Sally Hayes, a familiar date. Although Holden claims that she is "the queen of all phonies," they agree to meet that afternoon to attend a play at the Biltmore Theater. 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 catch a body coming through the rye", which lifts his mood. After the play, Holden and Sally go ice skating at Rockefeller Center, where Holden suddenly begins ranting against society and frightens Sally. He impulsively invites Sally to run away with him that night to live in the wilderness of New England, but she is uninterested in his hastily conceived plan and declines. The conversation turns sour, and the two angrily part ways.

Holden decides to meet his old classmate, Carl Luce, for drinks at the Wicker Bar. Holden annoys Carl, whom Holden suspects of being gay, by insistently questioning him about his sex life. Before leaving, Luce says that Holden should go see a psychiatrist, to better understand himself. After Luce leaves, Holden gets drunk, awkwardly flirts with several adults, and calls an icy Sally. Exhausted and out of money, Holden wanders over to Central Park to investigate the ducks, accidentally breaking Phoebe's record on the way. Nostalgic, he heads home to see his sister Phoebe. He sneaks into his parents' apartment while they are out, and wakes up Phoebe — the only person with whom he seems to be able to communicate his true feelings. Although Phoebe is happy to see Holden, she quickly infers that he has been expelled, and chastises him for his aimlessness and his apparent disdain for everything. When asked if he cares about anything, Holden shares a selfless fantasy he has been thinking about (based on a mishearing of Robert Burns's Comin' Through the Rye), in which he imagines himself as making a job of saving children running through a field of rye by catching them before they fell off a nearby cliff (a "catcher in the rye"). Phoebe points out that the actual poem says "when a body meet a body, comin through the rye." Holden breaks down in tears, and his sister tries to console him.

When his parents return home, Holden slips out and visits his former and much-admired English teacher, Mr. Antolini, who expresses concern that Holden is headed for "a terrible fall". Mr. Antolini advises him to begin applying himself and provides Holden with a place to sleep. Holden is upset when he wakes up to find Mr. Antolini patting his head, which he interprets as a sexual advance. He leaves and spends the rest of the night in a waiting room at Grand Central Terminal, where he sinks further into despair and expresses regret over leaving Mr. Antolini. He spends most of the morning wandering Fifth Avenue.

Losing hope of finding belonging or companionship in the city, Holden impulsively decides that he will head out West and live a reclusive lifestyle as a deaf mute gas station attendant living in a log cabin. He decides to see Phoebe at lunchtime to explain his plan and say goodbye. While visiting Phoebe's school, Holden sees graffiti containing a curse word and becomes distressed by the thought of children learning the word's meaning and tarnishing their innocence. When he meets Phoebe at the Museum of Natural History, she arrives with a suitcase and asks to go with him, even though she was looking forward to acting as Benedict Arnold in a play that Friday. Holden refuses to let her come with him, which upsets Phoebe. He tries to cheer her up by allowing her to skip school and taking her to the Central Park Zoo, but she remains angry. They eventually reach the zoo's carousel, where Phoebe reconciles with Holden after he buys her a ticket. Holden is finally filled with happiness and joy at the sight of Phoebe riding the carousel.

Holden finally alludes to encountering his parents that night and "getting sick", mentioning that he will be attending another school in September. Holden says that he doesn't want to tell anything more because talking about them has made him find himself missing his former classmates.

Various older stories by Salinger contain characters similar to those in The Catcher in the Rye. While at Columbia University, Salinger wrote a short story called "The Young Folks" in Whit Burnett's class; one character from this story has been described as a "thinly penciled prototype of Sally Hayes". In November 1941 he sold the story "Slight Rebellion off Madison", which featured Holden Caulfield, to The New Yorker, but it wasn't published until December 21, 1946, due to World War II. The story "I'm Crazy", which was published in the December 22, 1945 issue of Collier's, contained material that was later used in The Catcher in the Rye.

In 1946, The New Yorker accepted a 90-page manuscript about Holden Caulfield for publication, but Salinger later withdrew it.[14]

The Catcher in the Rye is narrated in a subjective style from the point of view of Holden Caulfield, following his exact thought processes. There is flow in the seemingly disjointed ideas and episodes; for example, as Holden sits in a chair in his dorm, minor events, such as picking up a book or looking at a table, unfold into discussions about experiences.

Critical reviews affirm that the novel accurately reflected the teenage colloquial speech of the time.[15] Words and phrases that appear frequently include:

• "Old" – term of familiarity or endearment
• "Phony" – superficially acting a certain way only to change others’ perceptions
• "That killed me" – one found that hilarious or astonishing
• "Flit" – homosexual
• "Crumbum" or "crumby" – inadequate, insufficient, disappointing
• "Snowing" – sweet-talking
• "I got a bang out of that" – one found it hilarious or exciting
• "Shoot the bull" "bull session" – have a conversation containing false elements
• "Give her the time" – sexual intercourse
• "Necking" – passionate kissing especially on the neck (clothes on)
• "Chew the fat" or "chew the rag" – small-talk
• "Rubbering" or "rubbernecks" – idle onlooking/onlookers
• "The can" – the bathroom
• "Prince of a guy" – fine fellow (however often used sarcastically)
• "Prostitute" – sellout or phony (e.g. in regard to his brother D.B. who is a writer: "Now he's out in Hollywood being a prostitute")

Bruce Brooks held that Holden's attitude remains unchanged at story's end, implying no maturation, thus differentiating the novel from young adult fiction.[16] In contrast, Louis Menand thought that teachers assign the novel because of the optimistic ending, to teach adolescent readers that "alienation is just a phase."[17] While Brooks maintained that Holden acts his age, Menand claimed that Holden thinks as an adult, given his ability to accurately perceive people and their motives. Others highlight the dilemma of Holden's state, in between adolescence and adulthood.[18][19] Holden is quick to become emotional. "I felt sorry as hell for..." is a phrase he often uses. It is often said that Holden changes at the end, when he watches Phoebe on the carousel, and he talks about the golden ring and how it's good for kids to try and grab it.[18]

Peter Beidler in his A Reader's Companion to J. D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye", identifies the movie that the prostitute "Sunny" refers to. In chapter 13 she says that in the movie a boy falls off a boat. The movie is Captains Courageous (1937), starring Spencer Tracy. Sunny says that Holden looks like the boy who fell off the boat. Beidler shows a still of the boy, played by child-actor Freddie Bartholomew.[20]

Each Caulfield child has literary talent. D.B. writes screenplays in Hollywood;[21] Holden also reveres D.B. for his writing skill (Holden's own best subject), but he also despises Hollywood industry-based movies, considering them the ultimate in "phony" as the writer has no space for his own imagination and describes D.B.'s move to Hollywood to write for films as "prostituting himself"; Allie wrote poetry on his baseball glove;[22] and Phoebe is a diarist.[23] This "catcher in the rye" is an analogy for Holden, who admires in children attributes that he often struggles to find in adults, like innocence, kindness, spontaneity, and generosity. Falling off the cliff could be a progression into the adult world that surrounds him and that he strongly criticizes. Later, Phoebe and Holden exchange roles as the "catcher" and the "fallen"; he gives her his hunting hat, the catcher's symbol, and becomes the fallen as Phoebe becomes the catcher.[24]

In their biography of Salinger, David Shields and Shane Salerno argue that: "The Catcher in the Rye can best be understood as a disguised war novel." Salinger witnessed the horrors of World War II, but rather than writing a combat novel, Salinger, according to Shields and Salerno, "took the trauma of war and embedded it within what looked to the naked eye like a coming-of-age novel."[25]

The Catcher in the Rye has been consistently listed as one of the best novels of the twentieth century. Shortly after its publication, in an article for The New York Times, Nash K. Burger called it "an unusually brilliant novel,"[3] while James Stern wrote an admiring review of the book in a voice imitating Holden's.[26] George H. W. Bush called it a "marvelous book," listing it among the books that inspired him.[27] In June 2009, the BBC's Finlo Rohrer wrote that, 58 years since publication, the book is still regarded "as the defining work on what it is like to be a teenager."[28] Adam Gopnik considers it one of the "three perfect books" in American literature, along with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby, and believes that "no book has ever captured a city better than Catcher in the Rye captured New York in the fifties."[29] In an appraisal of The Catcher in the Rye written after the death of J. D. Salinger, Jeff Pruchnic says the novel has retained its appeal for many generations. Pruchnic describes Holden as a "teenage protagonist frozen midcentury but destined to be discovered by those of a similar age in every generation to come."[30] Bill Gates said that The Catcher in the Rye is one of his favorite books.[31]

Not all reception has been positive. The book has had its share of naysayers, including the longtime Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley, who, in 2004, wrote that the experience of rereading the novel after several decades proved to be "a painful experience: The combination of Salinger's execrable prose and Caulfield's jejune narcissism produced effects comparable to mainlining castor oil." Yardley described the novel as among the worst popular books in the annals of American literature. "Why," Yardley asked, "do English teachers, whose responsibility is to teach good writing, repeatedly and reflexively require students to read a book as badly written as this one?"[32] According to Rohrer, many contemporary readers, as Yardley found, "just cannot understand what the fuss is about.... many of these readers are disappointed that the novel fails to meet the expectations generated by the mystique it is shrouded in. J. D. Salinger has done his part to enhance this mystique. That is to say, he has done nothing."[28] Rohrer assessed the reasons behind both the popularity and criticism of the book, saying that it "captures existential teenage angst" and has a "complex central character" and "accessible conversational style"; while at the same time some readers may dislike the "use of 1940s New York vernacular" and the excessive "whining" of the "self-obsessed character."

In 1960, a teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma was fired for assigning the novel in class. She was later reinstated.[33] Between 1961 and 1982, The Catcher in the Rye was the most censored book in high schools and libraries in the United States.[34] The book was briefly banned in the Issaquah, Washington, high schools in 1978 when three members of the School Board alleged the book was part of an "overall communist plot."[35] This ban did not last long, and the offended board members were immediately recalled and removed in a special election.[36] In 1981, it was both the most censored book and the second most taught book in public schools in the United States.[37] According to the American Library Association, The Catcher in the Rye was the 10th most frequently challenged book from 1990 to 1999.[10] It was one of the ten most challenged books of 2005,[38] and although it had been off the list for three years, it reappeared in the list of most challenged books of 2009.[39]

The challenges generally begin with Holden's frequent use of vulgar language;[40][41] other reasons include sexual references,[42] blasphemy, undermining of family values[41] and moral codes,[43] encouragement of rebellion,[44] and promotion of drinking, smoking, lying, promiscuity, and sexual abuse.[43] This book was written for an adult audience, which often forms the foundation of many challengers' arguments against it.[45] Often the challengers have been unfamiliar with the plot itself.[34] Shelley Keller-Gage, a high school teacher who faced objections after assigning the novel in her class, noted that "the challengers are being just like Holden... They are trying to be catchers in the rye."[41] A Streisand effect has been that this incident caused people to put themselves on the waiting list to borrow the novel, when there was no waiting list before.[46][47]

Several shootings have been associated with Salinger's novel, including Robert John Bardo's murder of Rebecca Schaeffer and John Hinckley Jr.'s assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. Additionally, after fatally shooting John Lennon, Mark David Chapman was arrested with a copy of the book that he had purchased that same day, inside of which he had written: "To Holden Caulfield, From Holden Caulfield, This is my statement".[48][49]

• Book censorship in the United States
• Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century

Wikiquote has quotations related to The Catcher in the Rye.

• Book Drum illustrated profile of The Catcher in the Rye Archived September 28, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
• Photos of the first edition of Catcher in the Rye
• Lawsuit targets "rip-off" of "Catcher in the Rye" – CNN