Everything to do with Catcher In The Rye

[carstencheyne]

This is a summary of every chapter in the novel in case you didn't want to read the book in it's entirety, and also features the key quotes from each chapter.
(Warning: I did not create all of this. This is an amalgamation of information from our notes as well as from the internet. Also a lot of this may be pointless but it could help if you are trying to put something into context.)
I will do this in multiple posts so it is slightly easier to navigate.
It should all be up by Friday 17th May.

Chapter 1 Summary:

"If you really want to hear about it," begins the narration. You can tell right away you're going to get a lot of attitude from this first-person narration, so you'd better be ready to deal with it if you're going to read The Catcher in the Rye.
The first thing you hear from this young guy is that his parents wouldn't want him to tell you about his personal life. Doesn't matter. He's going to tell us all about "this madman stuff" that happened last Christmas.
He says he's got a brother named D.B. who's out in Hollywood "being a prostitute," which we know means "writing scripts," since D.B. used to write short stories (such as "The Secret Goldfish," a tale about a boy who wouldn't let anyone else look at his pet goldfish).
Anyway, the narrator hates "phonies," which is what his brother is now since he made "a lot of dough" and bought a Jaguar.
Our narrator also hates the movies. He hates a lot of things, so get used to it.
Back to this story of "last Christmas." The narrator says he'll start off with day he left Pencey Prep. Pencey is an annoying, snobby East-coast Prep school in Pennsylvania. Our narrator is disgusted by it and its phoniness.
The day in question is a Saturday, and Pencey is hosting a big-deal football game against rival Saxon Hall. The narrator doesn't feel like watching the game, so he hangs out up on a hill and watches the crowd from a distance.
He digresses about Selma Thurmer, the headmaster's daughter and the only girl around the place. Her father is a "bastard," the narrator says, but she's decent because she knows as much. She also wears "falsies" (fake breasts).
So why isn't our narrator watching the football game? It seems he is 1) the manager of the fencing team, and 2) the guy who, earlier this Saturday, left all the fencing equipment on the subway. So no match + a mob of angry fencers = necessary isolation.
Additionally, the narrator wants to go say good-bye to his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, before he (the narrator) leaves the school.
And why is he leaving the school? Mostly because… he got kicked out. Because he failed all his classes, they "gave [him] the ax," which it seems they do quite frequently.
So now he's hanging around on the hill (and freezing because some "crook" at school stole his camel hair coat) and trying to feel some sort of good-bye for the place. He says, "When I leave a place, I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse."
In order to get the emotion of a proper good-bye, the narrator reminisces about tossing around a football with two friends of his one evening on campus. They played even after it was too dark to see.
This is just the sort of things he needs. A round of nostalgia later, he heads off toward Mr. Spencer's, but slowly, as running proves difficult for this "heavy smoker."
We get another hint as to where the narrator is in the present time (as he's telling us this story about leaving Pencey last Christmas): he reveals that last year he "grew six and a half inches" and "practically got t.b." and "came out here for all these goddamn checkups and stuff." We think he is in some sort of institution or hospital.
He gets to the Spencers' and, as he is greeted by Mrs. Spencer, we learn our narrator's name: Holden.

Chapter 1 Quotes + Analysis:

1."Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football game. […] I remember around three o'clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell up on top of Thomsen Hill. […] You could see the whole field from there, and you could see the two teams bashing each other all over the place. […] You could hear them all yelling."

The very first place we see Holden sets the stage for his character throughout The Catcher in the Rye: he's isolated, aloof, and watching people instead of connecting with them.

2."What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. 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."

This introduces us to a central paradox in The Catcher in the Rye. Holden wants to make connections with people (or, in this case, with places), but to do so means to make an emotional investment that will probably end up depressing him. Here, however, he seems to decide that he would rather feel sad about leaving a place than feel sad about the fact that he doesn't get to feel connected enough to feel sad. Make sense? Now compare this to the last paragraph of the novel, where Holden says not to tell stories, as you then miss the people in them. Does this mean he's changed his mind?

3."I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy. I mean, that's all I told D.B. about, and he's my brother and all. He's in Hollywood. That isn't too far from this crumby place."

Since Holden (or Salinger, depending on how you want to look at it) isn't entirely forthcoming, we have to look carefully at these hints about where Holden is now (when he's seventeen) telling us the story about where he was then (when he was sixteen, around Christmas). We guess that he's in California "resting up," so we wonder exactly what kind of break-down/episode happened.

4."I ran all the way to the main gate, and then I waited a second till I got my breath. I have no wind, if you want to know the truth. I'm quite a heavy smoker, for one thing – that is, I used to be. They made me cut it out. Another thing, I grew six and a half inches last year. That's also how I practically got t.b. and came out here for all these goddam checkups and stuff. I'm pretty healthy though."

Salinger certainly is a clever guy. Check out words like "they" and "here." It's ambiguous, but we have an idea that "they" are some sort of professionals taking care of Holden, and "here" is some sort of institution or place that gives "checkups and stuff." Again, more hints that something went wrong with Holden.


Chapter 2 Summary:

The Spencers are about seventy years old, and, as Holden informs us, they "get a big bang out of things" such as buying an old Navajo blanket.
Also, Holden's last name is Caulfield. Holden Caulfield. Nice ring to it, isn't there?
As soon as Holden makes it into Mr. Spencer's room, he regrets having come at all. Mr. Spencer is sitting reading the Atlantic Monthly and surrounded by Vicks Nose Drops.
He is in fact wearing a ratty bathrobe, which isn't the most aesthetically pleasing sight.
The two discuss Mr. Spencer's grippe (hence the nose drops) and Mr. Thurmer, the headmaster.
They talk about life being a game – Thurmer's advice to Holden. Holden remarks to us (not to Mr. Spencer) that, sure, it is a game – if you're on the side of all the hot-shots. Otherwise, "no game."
Holden tells Spencer that his parents are going to be pretty irritated when they find out he's gotten the ax, since this is the fourth school he's been booted from.
Holden reveals to us some key information about himself: he shakes his head a lot, he says "Boy!" a lot, was sixteen at the time of the story (when he's leaving Pencey) and is seventeen now (as he's telling us the story from his hospital/ward/institution place), has gray hair, often acts like he's twelve, but occasionally acts older, except no one notices when he does.
Spencer picks his nose.
We learn that Holden hates the word "grand," on account of it being "phony."
He decides he'd better "get the hell out of there" because he feels a "lecture coming on."
And he is right. Spencer opens with, "What's the matter with you, boy?" Ugh.
Holden admits that he took five classes and failed all but one – English, and only because he'd read all the books before, at another school (before he was kicked out of that one).
Spencer then resorts to low-blows: he reads Holden's final exam essay (in history) out loud, which is utter garbage about the Egyptians and ends with a note that (roughly speaking) says, "I know this is junk, so it's OK if you flunk me, don't worry about it."
Holden is livid that Old Spencer made him read the essay out loud.
Spencer wants to know why Holden left his previous schools (like Whooton and Elkton Hills).
Holden isn't very forthcoming to his history teacher, but he tells us everything we want to know (and more). He left because he was "surrounded by phonies" and the headmaster was a "bastard." Sound familiar?
Spencer wants to know if Holden has any concerns for his future. He says Holden will, someday – when it's too late. Holden finds this depressing.
Holden gets out of there after that. As he heads out the front door he thinks he hears Spencer yelling something like "Good luck!" after him, which Holden also finds to be depressing.

Chapter 2 Quotes + Analysis:

1.""Boy!" I said. I also say "Boy!" quite a lot. Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I'm about thirteen. It's really ironical, because I'm six foot two and a half and I have gray hair. I really do. The one side of my head – the right side – is full of millions of gray hairs. I've had them ever since I was a kid. And yet I still act sometimes like I was only about twelve. Everybody says that, especially my father. It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true. I don't give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am – I really do – but people never notice it. People never notice anything"

This sets up an interesting question that sticks with us for most of The Catcher in the Rye: is Holden immature, or a precocious and wise kid? The mention of his grey hairs is important, since we're also constantly evaluating Holden in light of his physical appearance, which has a big effect on a person's self-identity.

2."The minute I went in, I was sort of sorry I'd come. He was reading The Atlantic Monthly, and there were pills and medicine all over the place, and everything smelled like Vicks Nose Drops. It was pretty depressing. I'm not too crazy about sick people, anyway. What made it even more depressing, old Spencer had on this very sad, ratty old bathrobe that he was probably born in or something. I don't much like to see old guys in their pajamas and bathrobes anyway"

Holden is depressed by physical illness, and we know from his hints that he's approaching a sort of sickness himself. If we're wondering whether he's gotten physically or mentally ill, this passage adds weight to the argument that there might not be too large a distinction between them.

3."After I shut the door and started back to the living room, he yelled something at me, but I couldn't exactly hear him. I'm pretty sure he yelled "Good luck!" at me. I hope not. I hope to hell not. I'd never yell "Good luck!" at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it."

Part of listening to Holden talk is trying to understand why he finds all these things depressing. Wishing someone "good luck," for example, might "sound terrible" since it implies he's not doing so well and needs it.

4.""Well. . . they'll be pretty irritated about it," I said. "They really will. This is about the fourth school I've gone to." I shook my head. I shake my head quite a lot. "Boy!" I said. I also say "Boy!" quite a lot."

Holden obviously has an issue with formal education. This much we know right off the bat. But before you write him off as being anti-education, start keeping an eye out for what kind of informal instruction he pursues throughout The Catcher in the Rye.

5."DEAR MR. SPENCER [he read out loud]. That is all I know about the Egyptians. I can't seem to get very interested in them although your lectures are very interesting. It is all right with me if you flunk me though as I am flunking everything else except English anyway. Respectfully yours, HOLDEN CAULFIELD.

He put my goddam paper down then and looked at me like he'd just beaten hell out of me in ping-pong or something. I don't think I'll ever forgive him for reading me that crap out loud. I wouldn't've read it out loud to him if he'd written it – I really wouldn't. In the first place, I'd only written that damn note so that he wouldn't feel too bad about flunking me.

"Do you blame me for flunking you, boy?" he said.

"No, sir! I certainly don't," I said."

Look at Holden's emotional intelligence as compared to his knowledge of, say, the Egyptians. He knows that Spencer, who is partial to Holden, will feel bad about flunking him, so he does his best to ease the man's conscience. You could even say that The Catcher in the Rye makes the argument that emotional intelligence is more important than formal education.

6."One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all. They were coming in the goddam window. For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. Ten times worse than old Thurmer. On Sundays, for instance, old Haas went around shaking hands with everybody's parents when they drove up to school. He'd be charming as hell and all. Except if some boy had little old funny-looking parents. You should've seen the way he did with my roommate's parents. I mean if a boy's mother was sort of fat or corny-looking or something, and if somebody's father was one of those guys that wear those suits with very big shoulders and corny black-and-white shoes, then old Hans would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he'd go talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else's parents. I can't stand that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills."

It looks like Holden's problem with formal education is more about the people than the institution itself (although we're not sure those can be considered separately from each other, but whatever). While he comes from a wealthy family himself, he's extremely opposed to classism, which in his mind is inherently tied to education –at least the education he has been exposed to.

7.""Oh, I have a few qualms, all right. Sure. . . but not too many. Not yet, anyway. I guess it hasn't really hit me yet. It takes things a while to hit me. All I'm doing right now is thinking about going home Wednesday. I'm a moron."

"Do you feel absolutely no concern for your future, boy?"

"Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure. Sure, I do." I thought about it for a minute. "But not too much, I guess. Not too much, I guess."

"You will," old Spencer said. "You will, boy. You will when it's too late."

Compare this conversation with Spencer to Holden's later conversation with Mr. Antolini. There seems to be some structural significance to these two conversations being placed – almost like bookends – around the rest of the text. Both men refer to some sort of crisis or downfall that Holden is surely approaching. Both talk (if somewhat indirectly here) about the importance of education. Both possess a physicality that bothers Holden – the white, hairless legs of Mr. Spencer and the fact that Mr. Antolini touches Holden while he's sleeping. How has Holden changed, however, in between these two instances? Both men say sort of the same thing, but do they say it to the same Holden?

8."One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all. They were coming in the goddam window. For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. Ten times worse than old Thurmer. On Sundays, for instance, old Haas went around shaking hands with everybody's parents when they drove up to school. He'd be charming as hell and all. Except if some boy had little old funny-looking parents. You should've seen the way he did with my roommate's parents. I mean if a boy's mother was sort of fat or corny-looking or something, and if somebody's father was one of those guys that wear those suits with very big shoulders and corny black-and-white shoes, then old Haas would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he'd go talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else's parents. I can't stand that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills"

This welcomes the reader to Holden's obsession with "phonies." This seems to be the source of much of his dissatisfaction with the world around him.

Chapter 3 Summary:

"I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life." Holden opens Chapter Three with this declaration. He gives a short discourse on lying, and then we learn that Holden lives in a dormitory donated by an alumnus named Ossenburger, who made all his money with cheap funeral parlors.
Holden doesn't like the guy (Ossenburger came to Pencey to give a big, "corny speech" about praying to Jesus). In fact, the only good part of the speech was when someone in the audience let one rip. (Or "passed gas," as they say.)
Holden ends up back in his dorm and puts on a red hunting cap – he's partial to the thing and wears it with the peak swung around to the back.
Holden chills out and reads Out of Africa, which he got by mistake from the library.
This brings is to a discourse on books. Holden's brother D.B. is his favorite author (or Ring Lardner, who writes sports-related stories), but mostly Holden just likes books where you can laugh once in a while, books that, after you read them, you wish the author was a friend of yours that you could just call up and talk to. Having read The Return of the Native, he wouldn't mind calling old Thomas Hardy up.
Anyway, a few pages into Out of Africa, this guy Robert Ackley "barges" in. He's a tall guy with dirty teeth and pimples.
Ackley looks around to make sure Holden's roommate, named Stradlater, isn't there. The two don't get along.
Ackley wants to talk and hang out. Holden clearly does not. So Ackley does the next best thing, which is to walk around Holden's room, pick up all his stuff, examine it, and put it back in the wrong place.
One such item is Holden's picture of a girl he "used to go around with" named Sally Hayes. (Relationships were complicated back then; "go around with" was somewhere in between "hanging out" and "together.")
Holden, after reading the same sentence twenty times, gives up and puts his book down. He starts "horsing around," which he admits he does "quite a bit." In this particular case, "horsing around" means pulling a hunting cap over your eyes and pretending to be blind.
Ackley asks about Holden's red hat, informing him that it's a deer-hunting hat.
Holden responds that it's a people-shooting hat.
Ackley proceeds to cut his toenails and leave the clippings all over the floor. Ew.
The boys go back to talking about Stradlater, who is out on a date. Ackley is really not a fan of this guy, but it seems the reason is because Stradlater told him he should really brush his teeth once in a while.
Holden admits that Stradlater is conceited, but defends him. He says if Stradlater was wearing a tie you really liked, he'd just take it off and give it to you.
Speak of the devil, here comes Stradlater – he wants to borrow Holden's hound's-tooth jacket.
Ackley takes off and Holden gives up his jacket, asking Stradlater not to stretch it out with his "godamn shoulders," which are very broad.
Stradlater takes off his shirt and tie so he can have a shave and show off his body. Meanwhile, his date is waiting in the annex.

Chapter 3 Quotes + Analysis:

1."Where I lived at Pencey, I lived in the Ossenburger Memorial Wing of the new dorms. […] It was named after this guy Ossenburger that went to Pencey. He made a pot of dough in the undertaking business after he got out of Pencey. […] He made a speech that lasted about ten hours. He started off with about fifty corny jokes, just to show us what a regular guy he was. Very big deal. Then he started telling us how he was never ashamed, when he was in some kind of trouble or something, to get right down his knees and pray to God. He told us we should always pray to God – talk to Him and all – wherever we were. He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car. That killed me. I just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs."

Right off the bat, Holden mocks religion as self-serving and phony. Look to see how this perspective changes – if it all – throughout the novel. This passage here is your starting point.

Chapter 4 Summary:

Holden, who doesn't have anything better to do, goes along with Stradlater to the bathroom to bug him while he (Stradlater) shaves and demonstrates his poor whistling abilities.
Holden remarks that Stradlater is a "secret slob" – he always looks put together and smells nice and all that jazz, but secret things, like his razor blade, are all crumby and filled with hair and rust.
Stradlater is attractive, he says, but mostly in the good-yearbook-photo way.
Holden is still wearing his red hat, which he gets a "real bang out of."
Stradlater needs a big favor. Hotshot people who are in love with themselves always need a big favor, Holden remarks (to us, not Stradlater).
Anyway, the big favor is that Stradlater needs Holden to write him a composition, only a so-so one – not one with the commas all in the right place and so forth.
This is a pain. Holden hates it when people like Stradlater try to pretend the only reason they're bad at English essays is commas, when really they're just not good at English.
Holden responds by doing a tap dance like you see in the movies, which he hates but gets a bang out of imitating. He makes a point of telling us that Stradlater laughs.
Stradlater compliments the red hunting hat, but only so he can butter up Holden to ask him again to write his English composition (which has to describe something – anything).
Holden asks about a girl (Fitzgerald) that Stradlater was dating at one point. Stradlater says she's too old for Holden, and Holden responds by trying to put Stradlater in a half nelson.
Stradlater ("a very strong guy") pushes Holden ("a very weak guy") away.
Back to the girl-talk. Stradlater says his date's name is Jean Gallagher, and Holden "nearly [drops] dead." He says her name is Jane, not Jean, and he practically grew up next door to her.
Stradlater obviously knows nothing about this girl, but Holden goes on about how she used to dance ballet when she was little, and how, when they played checkers, she would never move her kings from the back row because "she […] liked the way they looked."
Holden admits that most people aren't interested in such details. Stradlater is obviously a member of that majority.
Holden keeps remarking that he should go down and say hello. Stradlater gives Holden the go-ahead, but instead Holden sticks around and talks about Jane's stepfather, an alcoholic who used to run around the house naked all the time.
This interests Stradlater.
Holden tells him to give his regards to Jane, but he knows Stradlater is the kind of guy that never does give regards, even when you make a point of asking him to.
Suddenly very nervous, Holden asks Stradlater just what he plans on doing with Jane on their date.
Stradlater responds that they can't do much, since she only signed out of her dorm (at her own nearby boarding school) until 9:30pm.
Of course, this irritates Holden, who figures Stradlater is probably thinking that if Jane knew what a "sexy bastard" she was going on a date with, she probably would have signed out until three in the morning.
Stradlater is indeed thinking as much. He reminds Holden about the essay and heads out of the bathroom.
Ackley comes back. Holden is happy "for once" to see him, despite the fact that all the guy does is sit around and pick pimples, because it takes his mind off the other stuff (namely, Stradlater potentially having sex with Jane).

Chapter 4 Quotes + Analysis:

1.""She's a dancer," I said. "Ballet and all. She used to practice about two hours every day, right in the middle of the hottest weather and all. She was worried that it might make her legs lousy--all thick and all. I used to play checkers with her all the time."

"You used to play what with her all the time?"

"Checkers."

"Checkers, for Chrissake!"

"Yeah. She wouldn't move any of her kings. What she'd do, when she'd get a king, she wouldn't move it. She'd just leave it in the back row. She'd get them all lined up in the back row. Then she'd never use them. She just liked the way they looked when they were all in the back row." Stradlater didn't say anything. That kind of stuff doesn't interest most people."

Holden appreciates Jane as a person, whereas Stradlater seems to view her as a sexual object for him to impress (he doesn't care about the stuff Holden's telling him, and is distracted by his own appearance). No wonder Holden is uncomfortable at the thought of Stradlater and Jane together.

2."Her mother belonged to the same club we did," I said. "I used to caddy once in a while, just to make some dough. I caddy'd for her mother a couple of times. She went around in about a hundred and seventy, for nine holes."

Stradlater wasn't hardly listening. He was combing his gorgeous locks.

"I oughta go down and at least say hello to her," I said.

"Why don'tcha?"

"I will, in a minute." He started parting his hair all over again. It took him about an hour to comb his hair.

[…]

"Jane Gallagher. Jesus . . . I couldn't get her off my mind. I really couldn't. "I oughta go down and say hello to her, at least."

"Why the hell don'tcha, instead of keep saying it?" Stradlater said.

I walked over to the window, but you couldn't see out of it, it was so steamy from all the heat in the can.. "I'm not in the mood right now," I said. I wasn't, either. You have to be in the mood for those things. […] I walked around the can for a little while. I didn't have anything else to do.""

Here begins a desire-inaction pattern with regards to Jane that will continue for most of The Catcher in the Rye. Holden says he ought to go say hello, but can't get himself to follow through and actually do it. We see this again and again as he merely contemplates calling Jane. Admittedly, Holden is a coward, but his passivity here is a real indication of his genuine feelings for this girl.

3.""Her mother and father were divorced. Her mother was married again to some booze hound," I said. "Skinny guy with hairy legs. I remember him. He wore shorts all the time. Jane said he was supposed to be a playwright or some goddam thing, but all I ever saw him do was booze all the time and listen to every single goddam mystery program on the radio. And run around the goddam house, naked. With Jane around, and all."

"Yeah?" Stradlater said. That really interested him. About the booze hound running around the house naked, with Jane around. Stradlater was a very sexy bastard.

"She had a lousy childhood. I'm not kidding."

That didn't interest Stradlater, though. Only very sexy stuff interested him."

We wonder if Jane and her "lousy childhood" serves as some sort of connection between her and Holden. After all, he later reveals that he, too, has had some "perverty" stuff happen to him "about twenty times since [he] was a kid."

4."You remember I said before that Ackley was a slob in his personal habits? Well, so was Stradlater, but in a different way. Stradlater was more of a secret slob. He always looked all right, Stradlater, but for instance, you should've seen the razor he shaved himself with. It was always rusty as hell and full of lather and hairs and crap. He never cleaned it or anything. He always looked good when he was finished fixing himself up, but he was a secret slob anyway, if you knew him the way I did."

Because Stradlater puts on a front, he's a hypocrite. Oh, and also a phony. The question is, does Holden follow his own rules about appearing as one really is?

(Thats all for now folks, I shall be back with more Catcher stuff shortly....)

[carstencheyne]

Chapter 5 Summary:

Saturday night the boys at Pencey always get steak for dinner. Primarily, Holden tells us, this is because everyone's parents come to visit on Sunday, and this way, when they ask what their son had for dinner last night, he'll say "steak."
Holden and his friend Mal Brossard take the bus into town for the night. He convinces Mal to let Ackley come along with them (because otherwise the kid will sit in his room and pick his pimples all night).
It's snowing (since it's December in Pennsylvania) and Holden packs a snowball. He tries to throw it at about ten different objects but keeps changing his mind, and finally just carries it around until they get on the bus and the driver tells him to ditch it.
They don't end up going to the movie theater after all, since Mal and Ackley already saw it and Holden doesn't like watching movies with people that laugh at stuff that isn't even funny.
When they get back to the dorm, Ackley sits on Holden's bed and picks his pimples and won't leave after a barrage of hints that, really, he should leave. Ackley then proceeds to tell a fake sex story (and we can tell it's fake because it contains inconsistencies).
Once Ackley leaves, Holden puts on pajamas, a bathrobe, and his red hunting hat to write Stradlater's composition.
It's supposed to be a descriptive work, but Holden can't think of a room or a house or anything like that as he was supposed to write. All he can think of is his brother Allie's baseball mitt.
Allie was left-handed and (accordingly) had a left-handed fielder's mitt. The thing about it is that it was covered in poems that Allie had written on in green ink so that he'd have something to do (that is, read the poems).
Allie's dead now, Holden tells us. He died from leukemia in 1946 (which we can infer to be three years before the events taking place, and four years before Holden's telling us this story). He (Allie) was intelligent and good-natured and had red hair – the kind you could see from a mile away. He used to laugh so hard he'd fall off his chair. Holden then gets to some Pretty Important Stuff: The night that Allie died, he (Holden) went into the garage and broke all the windows with his fist – "just for the hell of it." He tried to break all the windows on the car, too, but his hand was already broken. He still can't make a good fist, but whatever – it's not like he's going to be a violinist or something, he says.
So that's what Holden writes the composition about – the baseball glove. He listens to Ackley snoring and feels "a little sorry for the crazy sonuvabitch."

Chapter 5 Quotes+ Analysis:

1."The thing was, I couldn't think of a room or a house or anything to describe the way Stradlater said he had to have. I'm not too crazy about describing rooms and houses anyway. So what I did, I wrote about my brother Allie's baseball mitt. It was a very descriptive subject. It really was. My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt. He was left-handed. The thing that was descriptive about it, though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he'd have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up at bat. He's dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You'd have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent. He was terrifically intelligent. His teachers were always writing letters to my mother, telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Allie in their class. And they weren't just shooting the crap. They really meant it. But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. […] God, he was a nice kid, though. He used to laugh so hard at something he thought of at the dinner table that he just about fell off his chair."

Holden will later tell us that he likes digressions, since you don't know what the important stuff is that you have to talk about until you just start going. That's what this English composition ends up being for him. He needs to talk about Allie (obviously a huge part of his life), so that's what comes out when he sits down to write. The fact that it just sort of happens, unintentionally, is a big tip-off that Allie is important element when discussing Holden and The Catcher in the Rye.

2."I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don't blame them. I really don't. I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn't do it. It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it, and you didn't know Allie. My hand still hurts me once in a while when it rains and all, and I can't make a real fist any more – not a tight one, I mean – but outside of that I don't care much. I mean I'm not going to be a goddam surgeon or a violinist or anything anyway."

Holden has had more than one brush with death, and the death of his brother is clearly the most powerful. Notice that his reaction is categorized as anger – not sadness or depression or confusion. Compare this to the other important moments when Holden gets really angry – not sad, but angry (e.g., when he's talking to Sally, when he punches Stradlater). Do these instances have any one thing in common?

3."I was only thirteen, and they were going to have my psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don't blame them. I really don't. I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn't do it. It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it, and you didn't know Allie"

Here we see that some of Holden's instability may come from this traumatic event: the death of his brother. It's also the one blatantly unstable (this adjective is subject to debate, by the way) event that he reveals; the others are all covered up (like his episode with Sally).

Chapter 6 Summary:

t's still Saturday night. Holden is awake and worrying about Jane and the possibility of Stradlater getting it on with her.
Stradlater finally comes back (remember, he's Holden's roommate), returns the hound's-tooth jacket, and notably says nothing about his date.
He reads the English composition Holden wrote for him and complains that it's not about a room or a house or something like he said. He berates Holden for doing everything "a-s-backward" and says this is exactly why he (Holden) is flunking out.
Holden rips it all up and throws the pieces away, which only makes Stradlater angrier. (Because Holden wrote it on a typewriter, this was the only copy.)
Holden lights up a cigarette, which he informs us is something Stradlater hates. It's against the rules, and Stradlater never breaks any rules.
Finally, he asks about Jane. He notes that Stradlater got back pretty d--n late considering she had only signed out until 9:30pm.
Stradlater cuts his toenails and doesn't really address the question until Holden keeps pressing.
Finally, he says he didn't go anywhere with Jane – they just hung out in a car. Ed Banky's car, actually (he's the basketball coach, who likes Stradlater because he's on the team and isn't a terrible player).
Finally, Holden asks outright: "What'd you do? Give her the time in Ed Banky's godd--n car?"
Again, Stradlater refuses to answer. Holden flips out and tries to hit him. Stradlater pins him down, demanding to know what is wrong.
Holden keeps insulting him. It's clear that Stradlater doesn't want to hurt him, but he's also not going to take this lying down (or kneeling, as he is on Holden's chest).
Once Stradlater finally lets him go, Holden calls him a "dirty stupid sonuvab---h of a moron." Stradlater smacks Holden a good one in the nose, resulting in quite the bloody mess.
Holden just keeps sobbing and calling him a moron. He sits on the floor until Stradlater leaves the room, then puts on his hunting hat and stares at himself in the mirror.
Looking at his bloody reflection, Holden thinks he looks tough and remarks that he's only ever been in about two fights in his life and lost both.
He heads off to Ackley's crumby old room.

Chapter 6 Quotes + Analysis:

1."If you didn't go to New York, where'd ya go with her?" I asked him, after a little while. I could hardly keep my voice from shaking all over the place. Boy, was I getting nervous. I just had a feeling something had gone funny.
[…]
Stradlater kept taking these shadow punches down at my shoulder. He had his toothbrush in his hand, and he put it in his mouth. "What'd you do?" I said. "Give her the time in Ed Banky's goddam car?" My voice was shaking something awful.
[…]
This next part I don't remember so hot. All I know is I got up from the bed, like I was going down to the can or something, and then I tried to sock him, with all my might, right smack in the toothbrush, so it would split his goddam throat open.

Holden is so angered by the thought of Stradlater and Jane because she's the only girl, as far as we can tell, that he has genuine feelings for. Since he can't reconcile respect for a girl with lusting after her, anything sex-related means she's being disrespected. Then again, it's Stradlater, so what are the odds that there is any respect in the first place.

2."What'd you do?" I said. "Give her the time in Ed Banky's goddam car?" My voice was shaking something awful.
[…]
The next part I don't remember so hot. All I know is I got up from the bed, like I was going down to the can or something, and then I tried to sock him, with all my might, right smack in the toothbrush, so it would split his goddam throat open. […] It probably would've hurt him a lot, but I did it with my right hand, and I can't make a good fist with that hand. On account of that injury I told you about."

This is one of the key moments in The Catcher in the Rye when Holden really loses control – and it's because of a girl. Jane, in particular, actually. As annoyed as Holden gets by the "moron" girls he meets, Jane (and his genuine feelings for her) is the one to make him really lose his cool.

Chapter 7 Summary:

Holden gets to Ackley's room and is all, "How about playing Canasta?" and Ackley is all, "Stop bleeding all over my room."
Because Ackley's roommate Ely is out of town, Holden asks to sleep in his bed, probably so he doesn't have to go back and face Stradlater.
Ackley refuses, since he doesn't know what time his roommate is going to get back.
He does want to know what the fight was about, however, and Holden jokes he was defending Ackley's honor to his roommate.
Holden lies in Ely's bed and thinks about Jane – more specifically, about Jane with Stradlater in the back of Ed Banky's car. He says most of the guys at Pencey just talk about sex, but Stradlater actually does it.
Holden recounts a night when he double-dated with Stradlater in the very same car. Holden was in the front with his date and Stradlater in the back with his. He says all night he could hear Stradlater coercing his date, with a very quiet, sincere voice, while she said things like "No – please. Please don't" and so on and so forth.
By now, Ackley has fallen asleep. Holden wakes him up and asks him what's the deal with joining a monastery, and if you have to be Catholic to do it. He adds that he'd probably join the wrong kind of monastery, anyway – the kind with a bunch of "stupid bastards."
Ackley resents this seeming attack on his religion (we now know he's Catholic – he talked earlier about going to Mass the next day, Sunday).
Holden leaves snippily.
Walking down the empty (and depressing) dorm corridor, Holden figures now is as good of time as any to leave Pencey.
He packs up quickly (without waking Stradlater) and gets depressed about the ice skates that his mother sent him a few days earlier. She bought him the wrong kind, but he still feels guilt that he got the ax again at school. Besides, he says, every time he gets a present, it makes him sad.
Holden sits down to count up his money (he says "dough").
But about this dough: Holden has a decent chunk since his grandmother just sent him money for his birthday, which she does about four times a year.
Holden goes down the hall and sells his ninety-dollar typewriter for twenty bucks.
Just as he's leaving, Holden, "sort of crying," puts on his red hunting hat and yells down the corridor at the top of his lungs, "Sleep tight, ya morons!" He almost trips on some peanut shells one of those morons left all over the stairs.

Chapter 7 Quotes + Analysis:

1."Most guys at Pencey just talked about having sexual intercourse with girls all the time – like Ackley, for instance – but old Stradlater really did it. I was personally acquainted with at least two girls he gave the time to. That's the truth. "

Holden's innocence is highlighted by the contrasting experiences of those around him.
This may have something to do with Holden resenting Stradlater so much. Because he's still uncomfortable with his own sexuality, he ends up feeling inferior to his roommate.

2."I kept laying there in the dark anyway, though, trying not to think about old Jane and Stradlater in that goddam Ed Banky's car. But it was almost impossible. The trouble was, I knew that guy Stradlater's technique. That made it even worse. We once double-dated, in Ed Banky's car, and Stradlater was in the back, with his date, and I was in the front with mine. What a technique that guy had. What he'd do was, he'd start snowing his date in this very quiet, sincere voice – like as if he wasn't only a very handsome guy but a nice, sincere guy, too. I damn near puked, listening to him. His date kept saying, "No – please. Please, don't. Please." But old Stradlater kept snowing her in this Abraham Lincoln, sincere voice, and finally there'd be this terrific silence in the back of the car. It was really embarrassing. I don't think he gave that girl the time that night – but damn near. Damn near."

No wonder Holden sees sex as manipulative and dirty. We haven't been able to find many positive sexual experiences in his past, and this just another bad experience. Holden ends up with the idea that, in order to have sex, one needs to coerce and convince. This idea comes up again later, when he tells us how, unlike other boys, he always stops when a girl says to.

3."Then I went over and laid down on Ely's bed. Boy, did I feel rotten. I felt so damn lonesome. "

Arguably the most powerful cause of Holden's depression is his feeling isolated from the rest of the world. Even though he's judged Ackley to be pimply and disgusting (and painted a portrait of him as a social outcast), he still reaches out to the guy when he feels lonely. Much of the tension in Holden's character arises from the conflict between his hating the world and his wanting to connect with the world.

4."Everybody was asleep or out or home for the weekend, and it was very, very quiet and depressing in the corridor. […] All of a sudden, I decided what I'd really do, I'd get the hell out of Pencey – right that same night and all. I mean not wait till Wednesday or anything. I just didn't want to hang around any more. It made me too sad and lonesome. […] Besides, I sort of needed a little vacation. My nerves were shot. They really were. "

Again, it's the solitude of the empty corridor that Holden finds depressing. His statement that his "nerves [are] shot" reminds us that he is, in fact, headed for some sort of breakdown.

5."One thing about packing depressed me a little. I had to pack these brand-new ice skates my mother had practically just sent me a couple of days before. That depressed me. I could see my mother going in Spaulding's and asking the salesman a million dopy [sic] questions – and here I was getting the ax again. It made me feel pretty sad. She bought me the wrong kind of skates – I wanted racing skates and she bought hockey – but it made me sad anyway. Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad"

Again, what's sad about this? In this particular case, Holden's sad that his mother went to all this trouble to buy him skates, and now he's let her down by "getting the ax" at yet another school. When he says that he finds any present from anyone to be depressing, it seems as though he feels he doesn't ever deserve gifts.

6.""Listen. What's the routine on joining a monastery?" I asked him. I was sort of toying with the idea of joining one. "Do you have to be a Catholic and all?"

"Certainly you have to be a Catholic. You bastard, did you wake me just to ask me a dumb ques"

"Aah, go back to sleep. I'm not gonna join one anyway. The kind of luck I have, I'd probably join one with all the wrong kind of monks in it. All stupid bastards. Or just bastards."

When I said that, old Ackley sat way the hell up in bed.

"Listen," he said, "I don't care what you say about me or anything, but if you start making cracks about my goddam religion, for Chrissake–"

"Relax," I said. "Nobody's making any cracks about your goddam religion." I got up off Ely's bed, and started towards the door. I didn't want to hang around in that stupid atmosphere any more."

Holden is right – he isn't making cracks about the religion itself, just like he doesn't really make cracks about education itself. What he's criticizing are the people inside the institutions – the phony people who use organizations for their own purposes.

Chapter 8 Summary:

Holden walks in the cold to the train station. He likes trains at night, since it's the only time he can read those dumb stories in the cheap magazines without puking.
He takes his hat off.
Holden meets an attractive woman on the train who is about forty or forty-five years old. She sees the Pencey sticker on his Gladstone suitcases and strikes up a conversation, since her son Ernest Morrow goes there, too.
Holden lets us know that Ernest is the biggest jerk in the history of mankind.
He lies to the woman, telling her his own name is Rudolf Schmidt (the janitor in his dorm). Then he goes on and on about what a wonderful boy Ernest is.
Holden offers the woman a cigarette, but she declines, as the train isn't a smoker. Holden convinces her to take a cigarette anyway, and he admires the way she smokes.
She asks about Holden's nose (which has just started bleeding again), and he tells her he got hit in the face by a snowball.
He makes up more stories about what a wonderful guy Ernest is and offers to buy Mrs. Ernest's Mom a drink. She gives him the, "Um, what are you, twelve?" in the nicest way possible.
The woman then asks why Holden is going home for Christmas so early (it's Saturday, and the kids are supposed to leave Wednesday). She looks worried, which Holden says means really she's just nosy.
Holden (a.k.a. Rudolf) details that he has to have an operation to remove a tumor on his brain. He then has to start reading a timetable he's got in his pocket because it's the only way he can stop himself from lying.
The woman goes back to reading Vogue, but before they part ways, she invites Holden (or Rudolf) to come visit her son Ernest in Massachusetts sometime during the summer. He replies that, no, this summer he has to go to South America with his grandmother, which means that timetable did nothing to stop his lying.
Besides, he wouldn't visit Ernest Morrow for anything.

Chapter 8 Quotes + Analysis:

1."All of a sudden, this lady got on at Trenton and sat down next to me. Practically the whole car was empty, because it was pretty late and all, but she sat down next to me, instead of an empty seat, because she had this big bag with her and I was sitting in the front seat. She stuck the bag right out in the middle of the aisle, where the conductor and everybody could trip over it. She had these orchids on, like she'd just been to a big party or something. She was around forty or forty-five, I guess, but she was very good looking. Women kill me. They really do. I don't mean I'm oversexed or anything like that – although I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean. They're always leaving their goddam bags out in the middle of the aisle."

It's interesting to see what Holden identifies as sexy, feminine attributes – like leaving bags in out in the middle of the aisle. His observations can actually be quite incisive, lending some weight to the argument that, actually, Holden is quite beyond his years (at least in some ways).

2.""Would you care for a cigarette?" I asked her.

She looked all around. "I don't believe this is a smoker, Rudolf," she said. Rudolf. That killed me.

"That's all right. We can smoke till they start screaming at us," I said. She took a cigarette off me, and I gave her a light.

She looked nice, smoking. She inhaled and all, but she didn't wolf the smoke down, the way most women around her age do. She had a lot of charm. She had quite a lot of sex appeal, too, if you really want to know."

For being a sexually insecure sixteen-year-old, Holden has guts. Again, think twice before writing him off as a socially-inept kid.

3.""Oh, how lovely! Perhaps you know my son, then, Ernest Morrow? He goes to Pencey."

"Yes, I do. He's in my class."

Her son was doubtless the biggest bastard that ever went to Pencey, in the whole crumby history of the school. He was always going down the corridor, after he'd had a shower, snapping his soggy old wet towel at people's asses. That's exactly the kind of a guy he was.

"Oh, how nice!" the lady said. But not corny. She was just nice and all. "I must tell Ernest we met," she said. "May I ask your name, dear?"

"Rudolf Schmidt," I told her. I didn't feel like giving her my whole life history. Rudolf Schmidt was the name of the janitor of our dorm."

Even while he's berating Ernest, Holden lies – just because he feels like it.

4."She had a terrifically nice smile. She really did. Most people have hardly any smile at all, or a lousy one. "Ernest's father and I sometimes worry about him," she said. "We sometimes feel he's not a terribly good mixer."

"How do you mean?"

"Well. He's a very sensitive boy. He's really never been a terribly good mixer with other boys. Perhaps he takes things a little more seriously than he should at his age."

Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddam toilet seat."

Holden knows Ernest is a jerk, but he indulges Mrs. Morrow anyway. We see in fact that he, Holden that is, is a sensitive boy. For all his sarcasm and attitude, he's careful about others' emotions.

Chapter 9 Quotes + Analysis:

Holden gets off at Penn Station (in New York City) and decides it's just about time to give someone a buzz on the payphone. The only question is…who to call?
He ponders the possibilities: his brother D.B., his kid sister Phoebe, Jane Gallagher's mother, and finally this girl Sally Hayes he used to go around with.
Sally recently wrote Holden a "long, phony letter," the gist of which was an invitation to help trim her Christmas tree.
Unfortunately, Sally's mother thinks Holden is "wild" and would have a conniption if he called her house, not to mention she'd call Holden's mother and blab about how he's in New York four days early, which means he got kicked out of school, which his parents don't know yet.
So he ends up not calling anyone.
Instead, Holden gets a cab and accidentally gives his home address. About halfway there, he remembers he can't go home until Wednesday. Then he asks the driver about the ducks in the lagoon near Central Park: he wants to know where they go in the winter when the water freezes over.
The driver can't answer. Holden decides that, since this guy is corny, he should act corny, too. He has the driver take him to the Edmont Hotel, and the driver declines Holden's invitation to have a cocktail there.
Holden notes that he took his hunting cap off before going into the lobby, so as to not look like a "screwball," even though he later found out there were "screwballs all over the place."
Holden feels bad for the 65-year-old man who carries his suitcases up the room. What a crumby job, he thinks.
He looks across to the other side of the hotel and sees distinguished-looking gentleman putting on women's fine clothing and prancing about in high-heels.
In the room above that, he sees a man and a woman squirting water out of their mouths at each other.
Holden finds both occurrences to be entirely perverted. Stradlater, he thinks, would have been the King of a sexed-up place like this.
Which gets us right into a little digression on sex. Holden admits that the woman across the hotel is really attractive. He could go for some water-squirting himself, come to think of it.
Except the idea stinks. Holden says if you really care about a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all in such a crumby way. (Crumby = dirty, from what we can tell.)
He used to know a "crumby" girl himself, so crumby that he made a rule not to horse around with any girls anymore, which lasted about ten minutes.
Either way, he "doesn't understand" sex.
Holden contemplates calling Jane at her school. It's late, so he has a whole story planned out to tell whomever picks up the phone (it involves an uncle and a dead woman).
Holden's "felling pretty horny" by now, so he gets his wallet and digs out the address of a girl who isn't "exactly a whore or anything," but always good for a fun time. He got said address from a guy he knows that goes to Princeton.
So he calls up this girl, Faith Cavendish, tells her he's a friend of this Princeton guy, Eddie, whom at first she doesn't remember, tries to make his voice sound deeper than it is, and asks her out for a cocktail.
She's all, "Hmm, how about tomorrow?" and Holden is all, "Now or never!" so the upshot of the whole deal is that Holden gets nothing.

Chapter 9 Quotes + Analysis:

1."I didn't want to start an argument. "Okay," I said. Then I thought of something, all of a sudden. "Hey, listen," I said. "You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?" I realized it was only one chance in a million.

He turned around and looked at me like I was a madman. "What're ya tryna do, bud?" he said. "Kid me?"

"No – I was just interested, that's all."

He didn't say anything more, so I didn't either. Until we came out of the park at Ninetieth Street. Then he said, "All right, buddy. Where to?"

We cover the ducks in detail in "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory," so if this passage does it for you, we'd suggest checking that out. For the moment, though, recall that no one else shares Holden's concern for the ducks (or for disappearing), which adds to his lonely isolation. His obsession with mortality is part of what separates him from the rest of the world.

2."The first thing I did when I got off at Penn Station, I went into this phone booth. I felt like giving somebody a buzz […] but as soon as I was inside, I couldn't think of anybody to call up. My brother D.B. was in Hollywood. My kid sister Phoebe […] was out. Then I thought of giving Jane Gallagher's mother a buzz […]. Then I thought of calling this girl […] Sally Hayes. […] I thought of calling […] Carl Luce. […] So I ended up not calling anybody. I came out of the booth, after about twenty minutes or so."

Holden is clearly trying to reach out to someone – but is for one reason or another unable to do so. His hesitation (itself a result of his judgmental view of others) keeps him in this isolation.

3.""Well – take me to the Edmont then," I said. "Would you care to stop on the way and join me for a cocktail? On me, I'm loaded."

So Holden is pretty desperate for someone to talk to. This is the first in a long string of his attempts to connect with someone – anyone – during his time in the city.

4."After he left, I looked out the window for a while, with my coat on and all. I didn't have anything else to do. You'd be surprised what was going on on the other side of the hotel. They didn't even bother to pull their shades down. I saw one guy, a gray-haired, very distinguished-looking guy with only his shorts on, do something you wouldn't believe me if I told you. First he put his suitcase on the bed. Then he took out all these women's clothes, and put them on. Real women's clothes – silk stockings, high-heeled shoes, brassiere, and one of those corsets with the straps hanging down and all. Then he put on this very tight black evening dress. I swear to God. Then he started walking up and down the room, taking these very small steps, the way a woman does, and smoking a cigarette and looking at himself in the mirror. He was all alone, too. Unless somebody was in the bathroom – I couldn't see that much. Then, in the window almost right over his, I saw a man and a woman squirting water out of their mouths at each other. It probably was highballs, not water, but I couldn't see what they had in their glasses. Anyway, first he'd take a swallow and squirt it all over her, then she did it to him – they took turns, for God's sake. You should've seen them. They were in hysterics the whole time, like it was the funniest thing that ever happened. I'm not kidding, the hotel was lousy with perverts. I was probably the only normal bastard in the whole place – and that isn't saying much. I damn near sent a telegram to old Stradlater telling him to take the first train to New York. He'd have been the king of the hotel."

Look at how these two instances are viewed together: one, a cross-dressing gentleman, and two, a couple having some foreplay. One action is generally considered more mainstream than the other. Yet, to Holden, because both have to do with sex, he calls everyone a "pervert."

5."The trouble was, that kind of junk is sort of fascinating to watch, even if you don't want it to be. For instance, that girl that was getting water squirted all over her face, she was pretty good-looking. I mean that's my big trouble. In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw. Sometimes I can think of very crumby stuff I wouldn't mind doing if the opportunity came up. I can even see how it might be quite a lot of fun, in a crumby way, and if you were both sort of drunk and all, to get a girl and squirt water or something all over each other's face. The thing is, though, I don't like the idea. It stinks, if you analyze it. I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you're supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes. Girls aren't too much help, either, when you start trying not to get too crumby, when you start trying not to spoil anything really good. I knew this one girl, a couple of years ago, that was even crumbier than I was. Boy, was she crumby! We had a lot of fun, though, for a while, in a crumby way. Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away. Last year I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass. I broke it, though, the same week I made it – the same night, as a matter of fact. I spent the whole night necking with a terrible phony named Anne Louise Sherman. Sex is something I just don't understand. I swear to God I don't."

Holden says if you like a girl, you shouldn't do "crumby" stuff to her. Crumby = dirty in the sex way, not in the mud-puddle way. To him, what's "sexy" is "dirty" and therefore degrading to the woman. So, if you like a woman as a person, not as a sex object, how could you ever get dirty with her?

6.""Where ya stopping at? Perhaps we could get together for cocktails tomorrow."

"I can't make it tomorrow," I said. "Tonight's the only time I can make it." What a dope I was. I shouldn't've said that.

"Oh. Well, I'm awfully sorry."

"I'll say hello to Eddie for you."

"Willya do that? I hope you enjoy your stay in New York. It's a grand place."

"I know it is. Thanks. Good night," I said. Then I hung up.

Boy, I really fouled that up. I should've at least made it for cocktails or something."

Why doesn't Holden make plans for the following night? This is classic Caulfield behavior. He thinks he knows what he wants, but he's only willing to pursue it halfway before he backs out.

Chapter 10 Summary:

Holden changes his shirt so he can go downstairs to the Lavender Room. He wishes he could call his little sister Phoebe, except it's late and she's probably sleeping.
Apparently Phoebe is the smartest kid ever. Actually, so is D.B., and so was Allie, so Holden is the only one who isn't, he tells us.
Phoebe's ten and "roller-skate skinny." The good thing about her is that she always knows what you're talking about and can tell the difference between a good movie and a bad one. She's very emotional, he adds, and writes short stories about a girl named Hazel ("Hazle," she spells it).
Basically, she's amazing and "really kills" Holden and in fact anybody with any sense.
Holden makes it down to the Lavender Room, is disgusted by the band, and gives a blonde across the room the up-down.
He tries to order a drink and once again gets the old "What are you, twelve?" So he ends up with a coke.
Holden goes back to eyeing the blonde, who's sitting at a table with two other giggling women. He finally walks over and asks if anyone would like to dance, even though the three of them are a bunch of "morons."
The blonde is one of the best dancers partners Holden's ever had (which reminds us – she's the one who got up at his request).
However, because she's a "moron," she doesn't really listen to his compliments. Instead, she talks about how she and her girlfriends saw an actor, Peter Lorre, buying a newspaper the other night.
Holden, still impressed with her dancing, if not her conversational abilities, kisses her on the top of "her dopey head," which irritates the girl.
He asks her where she's from (Seattle), and tells her (ironically) that she's a good conversationalist. She doesn't get it, so he lets it go.
When she asks how old he is, Holden swears and then has to apologize for his language.
That's what he hates about girls – every time they do something cute he ends up half in love with them, even though they're "sort of stupid."
He ends up sitting down with the girls, even though they forget to invite him. He says his name is Jim Steele, and has a hard time getting them to talk about anything intelligent at all, especially the blonde (whose name is Bernice).
The other two girls (Marty and Laverne) are not attractive. Holden asks if they're sisters, which insults both of them, since neither wants to think she's as unattractive as the other.
Holden ends up dancing with all three of them and amusing himself by pretending to see movie stars all over the place. As in, "Look! Gary Cooper! Aw, you just missed him."
He buys them all drinks.
Finally, they all take off and stick Holden with the tab – thirteen bucks, which was a lot back then (remember, he sold his typewriter for twenty). He says they should have offered to pay for the drinks they had before he got there, not that he would have let them.
Mostly, he's depressed that they came all the way from Seattle, Washington to wear an ugly hat in New York City and get up early the next morning to see the first show at Radio City Music Hall. It's possibly the most depressing thing he's ever heard.
So he leaves.

Chapter 10 Quotes + Analysis:

1."I ordered a Scotch and soda, and told him not to mix it – I said it fast as hell, because if you hem and haw, they think you're under twenty-one and won't sell you any intoxicating liquor. I had trouble with him anyway, though. "I'm sorry, sir," he said, "but do you have some verification of your age? Your driver's license, perhaps?" I gave him this very cold stare, like he'd insulted the hell out of me, and asked him, "Do I look like I'm under twenty-one?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but we have our –"

"Okay, okay," I say. I figured the hell with it. "Bring me a Coke." He started to go away, but I called him back. "Can'tcha stick a little rum in it or something?" I asked him. I asked him very nicely and all. "I can't sit in a corny place like this cold sober. Can'tcha stick a little rum in it or something?"

"I'm very sorry, sir…" he said, and beat it on me. I didn't hold it against him, though. They lose their jobs if they get caught selling to a minor. I'm a goddam minor."

Holden obviously has mixed feelings about his age. There are times when he obviously reveres youth, but other times, like this one, where his age becomes a limitation.

2."It's immaterial to me," she said. "Hey – how old are you, anyhow?"

That annoyed me, for some reason. "Oh, Christ. Don't spoil it," I said. "I'm twelve, for Chrissake. I'm big for my age."

The "some reason" for which Holden is annoyed is that people older than him do not take him seriously. This is yet another limitation placed on him because of his age.

3."While I was changing my shirt, I damn near gave my kid sister Phoebe a buzz, though. I certainly felt like talking to her on the phone. Somebody with sense and all. But I couldn't take a chance on giving her a buzz, because she was only a little kid and she wouldn't have been up, let alone anywhere near the phone. I thought of maybe hanging up if my parents answered, but that wouldn't've worked, either. They'd know it was me. My mother always knows it's me. She's psychic. But I certainly wouldn't have minded shooting the crap with old Phoebe for a while. "

While Holden feels isolated and alienated from other people, the one person he seems to feel closest to (and the one person he reaches out to) is his younger sister, Phoebe.

4."The blonde was some dancer. She was one of the best dancers I ever danced with. I'm not kidding, some of these very stupid girls can really knock you out on a dance floor. You take a really smart girl, and half the time she's trying to lead you around the dance floor, or else she's such a lousy dancer, the best thing to do is stay at the table and just get drunk with her.

"You really can dance," I told the blonde one. "You oughta be a pro. I mean it. I danced with a pro once, and you're twice as good as she was. Did you ever hear of Marco and Miranda?"

"What?" she said. She wasn't even listening to me. She was looking all around the place."

Holden is hardly sexually or socially inept here. He's bold enough to ask the girl to dance in the first place, and then adept enough to make decent conversation.

5."She was really a moron. But what a dancer. I could hardly stop myself from sort of giving her a kiss on the top of her dopey head – you know – right where the part is, and all. She got sore when I did it.

"Hey! What's the idea?"

"Nothing. No idea. You really can dance," I said. "I have a kid sister that's only in the goddam fourth grade. You're about as good as she is, and she can dance better than anybody living or dead."

Although he values intelligence in women, Holden often lets physical appearances cloud his judgment.

6."I apologized like a madman, because the band was starting a fast one. She started jitterbugging with me – but just very nice and easy, not corny. She was really good. All you had to do was touch her. And when she turned around, her pretty little butt twitched so nice and all. She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can."

Holden falls in and out of love easily, just as he later does with Sally.

7."They were so ignorant, and they had those sad, fancy hats on and all. And that business about getting up early to see the first show at Radio City Music Hall depressed me. If somebody, some girl in an awful-looking hat, for instance, comes all the way to New York – from Seattle, Washington, for God's sake – and ends up getting up early in the morning to see the goddam first show at Radio City Music Hall, it makes me so depressed I can't stand it. I'd've bought the whole three of them a hundred drinks if only they hadn't told me that."

Holden is depressed by these girls having succumbed, perhaps unintentionally, to the phoniness of New York. They've traveled all this way, only to be sucked into the culture of movies and shows and actors (remember how excited they were when Holden pretended to have seen Gary Cooper?).

(Thats all for now. I've been a little busy so this is running a little late.)

[carstencheyne]

Chapter 11 Summary:

Back in the Lobby, Holden again starts thinking about Jane Gallagher – and again, more specifically about her sitting in Ed Banky's car with Stradlater.
He's pretty certain there was no sex, but still.
He says he never hooked up with Jane, but they saw each other all the time (played golf, etc.) so he knew her really well.
He recalls how he met her: Holden's mother got upset that the Gallagher's dog kept peeing on their lawn, so she called them up and complained.
A few days later, when Holden tried to say hello to Jane, she was an ice princess about it. He had to convince her that he personally didn't care where the dog relieved itself.
They ended up going golfing together. Jane lost eight balls. Holden, on the other hand, is an amazing golfer.
Then he gets into a nice long description about this girl. She's not exactly beautiful, he says, but she really knocks him out, especially the way her mouth moves when she talks. He says she's the only person to whom he's ever shown Allie's baseball mitt.
Holden's mother doesn't like Jane, probably because she squabbles all the time with Jane's mother.
OK, so there was this one afternoon where he and Jane almost hooked up. It was a rainy Saturday and they were playing checkers on her porch. Her drunk stepfather came out and asked Jane if there were any cigarettes. She refused to look up or answer, even when he asked repeatedly.
Finally, after he went back into the house, Jane started crying. Holden moved over so sit right next to her and started kissing her everywhere – her nose, eyes, ears – everywhere except her mouth.
They ended up going out for a movie; Holden asked if the stepfather (Mr. Cudahy) had ever tried anything with her. She said no, and he's never really figured out what the deal was.
They just held hands. Jane is an excellent hand-holder.
Which reminds him of this time in the movie theater. Jane reached over and put her hand on the back of his neck. It's something you always see older people do, Holden remarks, like a mother to her husband or her kid or something, but when a girl Jane's age does it, "it's so pretty it just about kills you."
Anyway, Holden's done reminiscing and the lobby is getting depressing, so he decides to get out of there and go to Greenwich Village, where D.B. used to take him once in a while to listen to this guy Ernie play the piano.

Chapter 11 Quotes + Analysis:

1."Anyway, I was telling you about that afternoon Jane and I came close to necking. It was raining like hell and we were out on her porch, and all of a sudden this booze hound her mother was married to came out on the porch and asked Jane if there were any cigarettes in the house. […] He had a lousy personality. Anyway, old Jane wouldn't answer him when he asked her if she knew where there was any cigarettes. So the guy asked her again, but she still wouldn't answer him. She didn't even look up from the game. Finally the guy went inside the house. When he did, I asked Jane what the hell was going on. She wouldn't even answer me, then. She made out like she was concentrating on her next move in the game and all. Then all of a sudden, this tear plopped down on the checkerboard. […] I don't know why, but it bothered hell out of me. So what I did was, I went over and made her move over on the glider so that I could sit down next to her – I practically sat down in her lap, as a matter of fact. Then she really started to cry, and the next thing I knew, I was kissing her all over – anywhere – her eyes, her nose, her forehead, her eyebrows and all, her ears – her whole face except her mouth and all. She sort of wouldn't let me get to her mouth. Anyway, it was the closest we ever got to necking. […] I asked her […] if Mr. Cudahy – that was the booze hound's name – had ever tried to get wise with her. She was pretty young, but she had this terrific figure, and I wouldn't've put it past that Cudahy bastard. She said no, though. I never did find out what the hell was the matter. Some girls you practically never find out what's the matter."

The only remotely sexual action we see between Jane and Holden isn't actually that sexual – it's more about his comforting her than anything else. Meanwhile, it sounds like the two of them have similar histories of (maybe?) sexual abuse.

2."I held hands with her all the time, for instance. That doesn't sound like much, I realize, but she was terrific to hold hands with. […] We'd get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we'd start holding hands, and we wouldn't quit till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a big deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were."

It's not the physical aspect of their relationship that makes Holden happy – it's the companionship and emotion represented by their hand-holding.

3."The other thing I just thought of. One time, in this movie, Jane did something that just about knocked me out. The newsreel was on or something, and all of a sudden I felt this hand on the back of my neck, and it was Jane's. It was a funny thing to do. I mean she was quite young and all, and most girls if you see them putting their hand on the back of somebody's neck, they're around twenty-five or thirty and usually they're doing it to their husband or their little kid – I do it to my kid sister Phoebe once in a while, for instance. But if a girl's quite young and all and she does it, it's so pretty it just about kills you."

Jane's action toward Holden – putting her hand on the back of his neck – is similar to his kissing her everywhere but her lips. They both take a more emotion-based attitude toward each other.

Chapter 12 Summary:

Holden gets into a "vomity" cab with a driver named Horwitz. He's depressed about the empty New York streets, but asks anyway about the ducks and where they go in the winter when the lagoon freezes over.
Horwitz doesn't know. He does add, however, that the fish stay right where they are. Their pores open up, he insists, and they take in nutrients from all the seaweed and stuff around them, even while they're frozen right there in place.
Holden asks the guy if he wants to have a drink with him, but Horwitz replies that he has no time.
As Holden exits the cab, Horwitz insists that the fish are taken care of, because Mother Nature wouldn't leave them to fend for themselves. He's quite worked up about the whole thing.
Holden shows up to old Ernie's where everyone is intently listening to the piano. The crowd is just a bunch of morons, the kind who laugh at movies that aren't funny. Ernie even bows, which Holden finds disgusting.
He finds a seat and orders a scotch and soda, adding that no matter how old you are, you can always drink at Ernie's.
Holden listens in on the conversation of these two people sitting next to him. The guy is giving the girl a play-by-play of the last football game he was in. The only reason she has to listen to that dull conversation, according to Holden, is that she's not attractive.
On his other side is a very preppy, good-looking couple. To be exact, they are a "Joe Yale-looking-guy" and a "terrific looking girl with him." (By the way, Holden informs us, he wouldn't go to Yale or Princeton even if he was dying).
Also, he's feeling her up under the table while she protests and while he talks about this guy in his dorm that committed suicide.
As a better alternative to watching this display, Holden sends a message via the waiter asking Ernie to join him for a drink.
Just then a girl with a terrific body named Lillian Simmons greets Holden by name and comes over to this table. She used to date Holden's brother D.B., and now she's with a naval officer.
Lillian asks about D.B. and introduces her date. Holden remarks that nobody really likes this girl, even the guy that's dating her.
Holden resents having to say, "Glad you have met you" to the naval guy whom he isn't remotely glad to have met.
Then he has to leave; he tells Lillian he can't join her because he's meeting somebody else. "People are always ruining things for you," he says.

Chapter 12 Quotes + Analysis:

1."The ducks. Do you know, by any chance? I mean does somebody come around in a truck or something and take them away, or do they fly away by themselves – go south or something?"

Old Horwitz turned all the way around and looked at me. He was a very impatient-type guy. He wasn't a bad guy, though.

"How the hell should I know?" he said.

"How the hell should I know a stupid thing like that?"

"Well, don't get sore about it," I said. He was sore about it or something.

"Who's sore? Nobody's sore."

I stopped having a conversation with him, if he was going to get so damn touchy about it. But he started it up again himself. He turned all the way around again, and said, "The fish don't go no place. They stay right where they are, the fish. Right in the goddam lake."

[…] "Listen," he said. "If you was a fish, Mother Nature'd take care of you, wouldn't she? Right? You don't think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya?"

"No, but – "

"You're goddam right they don't," Horwitz said, and drove off like a bat out of hell. He was about the touchiest guy I ever met. Everything you said made him sore."

Even when Holden does find someone else willing to discuss his interest in the ducks (and mortality), he classifies the man as "touchy" and paints a picture of him as emotionally unstable. In fact, the cab driver isn't that different from Holden, who experiences some emotional outbreaks of his own.

2."New York's terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can hear it for miles. It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed. I kept wishing I could go home and shoot the bull for a while with old Phoebe."

We see again that solitude is what depressed Holden, but here is the added dimension of his little sister, Phoebe. While Holden talks about reaching out to several people, Phoebe is one of the few people with whom he does actually have a real, genuine connection.

Chapter 13 Summary:

Holden walks 41 blocks back to his hotel, on the grounds that sometimes, you just feel like walking.
It's cold, so he puts his hunting hat back on, noting that he doesn't care how he looks.
He wishes he had his gloves, which someone at Pencey stole. Holden admits he's rather a coward, and that even if he did know who stole his gloves, he wouldn't have had the guts to beat the guy up like he deserved. Instead, he would have tried to look tough.
He's not particularly partial to fistfights, he continues; he'd much rather push someone out a window than sock them in the jaw.
Heading into yet another bar for yet another drink (#4), Holden assures us he has a great tolerance for alcohol. He puked once, but only because he wanted to. Not because he had to.
He changes his mind, though, when he sees some smelly, drunk men coming out of the bar. Holden ends up back at the hotel, which once again he finds depressing.
As soon as he gets into the elevator, the elevator man asks him if he's up for a good time.
Actually, the elevator man wants to set him up with a woman. And by "set up," we mean he wants to pimp out a prostitute for five bucks.
Holden, who by the way has told the elevator man he is 22, says OK. When he gets back to his room, he changes his shirt and brushes his teeth.
Actually, now that the time has come, Holden informs us he's a virgin. Not that he hasn't had a few opportunities, it's just that he never got around to it.
He says the problem is, most girls always tell you to stop. Most guys just keep going, but Holden actually stops.
So he figures, now is the chance to get in some practice.
Right on time, the girl shows up at his door. She's not bad-looking, and asks Holden if he's the guy that Maurice (the elevator man) is sending her to.
When Holden confirms, she takes off her coat and sits down on his bed in her green dress. She looks nervous, probably because she's about Holden's age.
Holden introduces himself as Jim Steele, and the prostitute, obviously not one for the chit-chat, takes her dress off. This, of course, only makes Holden even more nervous.
He asks her for her name (Sunny) and then wants to know if they can just chat for a while.
She's all "whatever" and asks him to hang up her dress in the closet. This depresses Holden, since he can imagine her buying it in a store where no one knew that she was really a prostitute.
Sunny is a bad conversationalist and just wants to get the sex over with already.
Holden's not up for it, so he makes up a story about having had a recent operation on his clavichord, which isn't so much a part of the body as it is a musical instrument. Sunny doesn't know this.
She does, however, think Holden is cute, much like a guy in the movies. So she sits in his lap.
When he doesn't immediately throw her down and go at it, she gets irritated. She demands the money, so Holden gives her the five dollars that Maurice said it would cost.
Sunny says no, it costs ten. When Holden refuses, she shrugs, puts her dress back on, and leaves.


Chapter 13 Quotes + Analysis:

1."She came in and took her coat off right away and sort of chucked it on the bed. She had on a green dress underneath. Then she sort of sat down sideways on the chair that went with the desk in the room and started jiggling her foot up and down. She crossed her legs and started jiggling this one foot up and down. She was very nervous, for a prostitute. She really was. I think it was because she was young as hell. She was around my age. I sat down in the big chair, next to her, and offered her a cigarette.

"I don't smoke," she said.

She had a tiny little wheeny-whiny voice. You could hardly hear her. She never said thank you, either, when you offered her something. She just didn't know any better.

"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jim Steele," I said.

"Ya got a watch on ya?" she said. She didn't care what the hell my name was, naturally.

"Hey, how old are you, anyways?"

"Me? Twenty-two."

"Like fun you are."

It was a funny thing to say. It sounded like a real kid. You'd think a prostitute and all would say "Like hell you are" or "Cut the crap" instead of "Like fun you are."

Holden recognizes the lingering (and ironic) innocence in Sunny. Though she's a prostitute, she still avoids vulgarities.

2.""Uh huh. Well, how 'bout it? Y'innarested? Five bucks a throw. Fifteen bucks the whole night." He looked at his wrist watch. "Till noon. Five bucks a throw, fifteen bucks till noon."

"Okay," I said. It was against my principles and all, but I was feeling so depressed I didn't even think. That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think.

[…]

I looked at the red thing with my number on it, on my key. "Twelve twenty-two,"

I said. I was already sort of sorry I'd let the thing start rolling, but it was too late now."

And here we go again. Notice that Holden says "Okay" because he's feeling depressed. We've seen that his isolation makes him feel this way, so it makes sense that he's looking for companionship to make him feel better. Unfortunately, prostitutes aren't so much companions as people to have sex with, and we know for Holden, sex and emotion are sort of at odds. So basically, this is doomed from the start, which he pretty much realizes halfway into the conversation with Maurice.

3."I knew I didn't have to get all dolled up for a prostitute or anything, but it sort of gave me something to do. I was a little nervous. I was starting to feel pretty sexy and all, but I was a little nervous anyway. If you want to know the truth, I'm a virgin. I really am. I've had quite a few opportunities to lose my virginity and all, but I've never got around to it yet. Something always happens. […] I came quite close to doing it a couple of times, though. One time in particular, I remember. Something went wrong, though – I don't even remember what any more. The thing is, most of the time when you're coming pretty close to doing it with a girl – a girl that isn't a prostitute or anything, I mean – she keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don't. I can't help it. You never know whether they really want you to stop, or whether they're just scared as hell, or whether they're just telling you to stop so that if you do go through with it, the blame'll be on you, not them. Anyway, I keep stopping."

4."Anyway, while I was putting on another clean shirt, I sort of figured this was my big chance, in a way. I figured if she was a prostitute and all, I could get in some practice on her, in case I ever get married or anything. I worry about that stuff sometimes. […] I wouldn't mind being pretty good at that stuff. Half the time, if you really want to know the truth, when I'm horsing around with a girl, I have a helluva lot of trouble just finding what I'm looking for, for God's sake, if you know what I mean. Take this girl that I just missed having sexual intercourse with, that I told you about. It took me about an hour to just get her goddam brassiere off. By the time I did get it off, she was about ready to spit in my eye. "

Here we get a glimpse into some of Holden's sexual insecurities. Perhaps part of the reason he feels the need for genuine emotion with a girl is that, without it, a relationship is purely about the physical. This really puts the pressure on him to know what he's doing. If sex is all there is between two people, it had better be good. That's a lot for a sixteen-year-old to have to deal with.

5."Anyway, I kept walking around the room, waiting for this prostitute to show up. I kept hoping she'd be good-looking. I didn't care too much, though. I sort of just wanted to get it over with. "

At this point, Holden doesn't see sex as something fun or intimate – it's just a rite of passage he has to "get […] over with." Again, he probably feels this way because he doesn't know the woman he's about to have sex with, which doesn't help the nerves so much.

6."She came in and took her coat off right away and sort of chucked it on the bed. She had on a green dress underneath. Then she sort of sat down sideways on the chair that went with the desk in the room and started jiggling her foot up and down. She crossed her legs and started jiggling this one foot up and down. She was very nervous, for a prostitute. She really was. I think it was because she was young as hell. She was around my age. […] She had a tiny little wheeny-whiny voice. You could hardly hear her. She never said thank you, either, when you offered her something. She just didn't know any better.
[…]
I took her dress over to the closet and hung it up for her. It was funny. It made me feel sort of sad when I hung it up. I thought of her going in a store and buying it, and nobody in the store knowing she was a prostitute and all. The salesman probably just thought she was a regular girl when she bought it. It made me feel sad as hell – I don't know why exactly.

Holden is an incredibly empathetic young man. Right away, he sees Sunny as a person, not as a sexual object. He thinks about how she's nervous, too, tries to guess her age, notices her voice, speculates about her personal situation and even how she might view herself (there are hints of this in the imagined scenario of her buying the dress, the shame she might feel at her profession). He claims this characteristic impedes him – it prevents him from just having sex with her without giving a damn, but in fact it's what makes him such a compassionate person – and so endearing to us.

7."I took her dress over to the closet and hung it up for her. It was funny. It made me feel sort of sad when I hung it up. I thought of her going in a store and buying it, and nobody in the store knowing she was a prostitute and all. The salesman probably just thought she was a regular girl when she bought it. It made me feel sad as hell – I don't know why, exactly"

Even Holden doesn't know why he finds everything so depressing. Anyway, in this case, it seems that he's upset over Sunny's confinement to her role as a prostitute, her need to hide it from others, and the shame she most likely feels at her occupation.

[carstencheyne]

Chapter 14 Summary:

Holden is depressed, so he smokes some cigarettes, watches the dawn, and talks aloud to his brother Allie, which he sometimes does when he's feeling not-so-great.
This leads us into another reminiscence, this time about an incident with one of Holden's childhood friends, Bobby Fallon. Allie wanted to go with the two boys (Holden and Bobby) to play, and Holden said no, since Allie was too little.
He regrets this now, so he keeps saying out loud to Allie, "Okay. Go home and get your bike and meet me in front of Bobby's house."
Finally, Holden gets into bed. He wishes he could pray, but he's sort of an atheist since people like the disciples annoy him so much, since, according to Holden, they were so useless to Jesus.
He used to argue about it all the time with a Quaker named Arthur Childs in one of the prep schools he attended.
Holden used to argue that Jesus wouldn't have sent Judas to hell, even though the guy betrayed him. So the disciples never even got what they deserved.
He reveals to us that all the kids in his family are atheists, and that if there's one thing he can't stand, it's a minister, since they always give sermons in phony voices.
While Holden lies around still smoking, there comes a persistent knocking on his door.
It's Maurice and Sunny, and they want five more dollars.
Holden refuses, as they told him it would only cost five. They argue a bit, and Sunny finally takes Holden's wallet off dresser and removes the money.
Holden starts to cry. Maurice gives him a shove, and Sunny says to leave the kid alone.
In a spectacular demonstration of how not to improve a situation, Holden calls Maurice a "goddam dirty moron."
When asked to repeat it, Holden obliges. With more adjectives.
Maurice punches him hard in the stomach. Holden staggers around and into the bathroom, pretending (in his own mind) that he's taken a bullet to the gut and is dying. He imagines coming back at Maurice with an automatic, calling Jane, and having her bandage up his guts.
Disgusted with himself, Holden notes that the movies can really ruin you.
Getting back into bed, Holden says he'd jump out the window, if he wouldn't end up with a bunch of rubbernecks staring at his gory body.

Chapter 14 Quotes + Analysis:

1."What I did, I started talking, sort of out loud, to Allie. I do that sometimes when I get very depressed. I keep telling him to go home and get his bike and meet me in front of Bobby Fallon's house. Bobby Fallon used to live quite near us in Maine. […] We thought we could shoot something without BB guns. Anyway, Allie heard us talking about it, and he wanted to go, and I wouldn't let him. I told him he was a child. So once in a while now, when I get very depressed, I keep saying to him, "Okay. Go home and get your bike and meet me in front of Bobby's house. Hurry up." […] I keep thinking about it, anyway, when I get very depressed."

Allie's death clearly troubles Holden, but he also uses his memories of Allie to make himself feel better. The problem is, he's comforting himself by trying to alter a past event – his attempts are futile, rooted in fantasy.

2."But I'm crazy. I swear to God I am. About halfway to the bathroom, I sort of started pretending I had a bullet in my guts. Old 'Maurice had plugged me. Now I was on the way to the bathroom to get a good shot of bourbon or something to steady my nerves and help me really go into action. I pictured myself coming out of the goddam bathroom, dressed and all, with my automatic in my pocket, and staggering around a little bit. Then I'd walk downstairs, instead of using the elevator. I'd hold onto the banister and all, with this blood trickling out of the side of my mouth a little at a time. What I'd do, I'd walk down a few floors – holding onto my guts, blood leaking all over the place – and then I'd ring the elevator bell. As soon as old Maurice opened the doors, he'd see me with the automatic in my hand and he'd start screaming at me, in this very high-pitched, yellow-belly voice, to leave him alone. But I'd plug him anyway. Six shots right through his fat hairy belly. Then I'd throw my automatic down the elevator shaft – after I'd wiped off all the finger prints and all. Then I'd crawl back to my room and call up Jane and have her come over and bandage up my guts. I pictured her holding a cigarette for me to smoke while I was bleeding and all."

In his obsession with mortality, Holden often ends up fantasizing about his own death. In a world where he feels perhaps insignificant, he can glorify himself in these imaginings, make himself important, wanted, and loved. The dangerous part of such fantasizing is that it leads Holden to feel the only thing important about himself is his potential death.

3."After old Sunny was gone, I sat in the chair for a while and smoked a couple of cigarettes. It was getting daylight outside. Boy, I felt miserable. I felt so depressed, you can't imagine. What I did, I started talking, sort of out loud, to Allie. I do that sometimes when I get very depressed. I keep telling him to go home and get his bike and meet me in front of Bobby Fallon's house. Bobby Fallon used to live quite near us in Maine. […] We thought we could shoot something without BB guns. Anyway, Allie heard us talking about it, and he wanted to go, and I wouldn't let him. I told him he was a child. So once in a while now, when I get very depressed, I keep saying to him, "Okay. Go home and get your bike and meet me in front of Bobby's house. Hurry up." […] I keep thinking about it, anyway, when I get very depressed."

Holden tries to combat his depression by altering past actions. Clearly, this isn't possible, and he is in a real need of more positive, proactive solution

4."Finally, though, I got undressed and got in bed. I felt like praying or something, when I was in bed, but I couldn't do it. I can't always pray when I feel like it. In the first place, I'm sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down. I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples. If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the Disciples, that poor bastard. […] I'd bet a thousand bucks that Jesus never sent old Judas to Hell. […] I think any one of the Disciples would've sent him to Hell and all – and fast, too – but I'll bet anything Jesus didn't do it."

Again we see that what Holden really understands and thinks about is people. He can't accept the disciples as symbols or as allegory because he judges them as real individuals. We see this over and over in the novel as Holden interacts with various individuals. Think about the prostitute, and how he sees her as a young girl, not as some nameless object defined by her profession. It's the same thing here with the disciples.

5."In the first place, my parents are different religions, and all the children in our family are atheists. If you want to know the truth, I can't even stand ministers. The ones they've had at every school I've gone to, they all have these Holy Joe voices when they start giving their sermons. God, I hate that. I don't see why the hell they can't talk in their natural voice. They sound so phony when they talk."

Holden can't distinguish spirituality from organized religion just as he can't distinguish knowledge from formal education. Since he doesn't like sermons, he's an atheist. Since he doesn't like Oral Expression classes, he isn't into learning.

Chapter 15 Summary:

Holden wakes up around 10am, smokes some cigarettes, and thinks about Jane. Basically, nothing has changed.
He does end up giving Sally Hayes a call. He says she's not too intelligent, but he got tricked into thinking so for a while since she knew a lot about theater and literature and all that stuff. Also, he spent a lot of time making out with her, which can obscure the facts.
Once has her on the phone, they set a date to see a matinee. Then she tells him all about these boys that are just crazy over her, which isn't exactly a tactful thing to do.
After he hangs up, Holden looks out his window at the "perverts" across the way, but they all have their shades pulled down.
It's only Sunday and he knows he can't go home until Wednesday, or at the very earliest, maybe Tuesday, so gets in a cab and heads for Grand Central Station so he can leave his bags in a locker there.
He counts his money and realizes he's spent a ton since he left school, which is nothing new, but still makes him feel bad. We also get some insight here into Holden's family – it seems his father does in fact make a lot of money, as a corporation (corporate) lawyer.
After dropping his bags off, Holden has a light breakfast at a counter, noting that the reason he's so skinny is that he never eats enough.
Holden lends a hand to two nuns nearby who don't seem to know what to do with their inexpensive suitcases.
Which leads Holden into a digression on…inexpensive suitcases.
At Elkton Hills (one of his many previous boarding schools), Holden roomed with a guy named Dick Slagle who had very inexpensive suitcases. He was embarrassed about it, so he used to keep them under the bed instead of on the luggage rack.
Of course, this was depressing to Holden, who himself had very expensive suitcases. So he put his under the bed, too.
The funny thing was, Dick kept taking Holden's suitcases out and putting them back on the rack – so that people would think they were his. Even so, he kept insulting them, calling them "bourgeois." They both ended up getting new roommates.
Holden adds that "it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs."
But back to the nuns. One of them is carrying one of those Salvation Army-type baskets for other people to donate money.
He asks if they're taking up a collection, as he would make a contribution. He's mostly depressed that they're eating toast and coffee while he's eating bacon and eggs.
He finally gives them ten dollars, though they keep asking if he's sure he can afford to do that.
Holden strikes up a conversation, and we find out that the nuns, in addition to being nuns, are schoolteachers from Chicago who have just come to New York.
One of the nuns teaches English, and Holden wonders how she feels about the sexy bits of books she has to teach, considering she is a nun – like Eustacia Vye in The Return of the Native, for example.
So they start talking about English (Holden's best subject).
Holden details the books he's read: Beowulf, Lord Randal My Son, Return of the Native, Romeo and Juliet, etc.
The nun gets all excited about Romeo and Juliet, which Holden thinks isn't exactly nun-appropriate. But he indulges in a discussion of it anyway.
What bothered him most in the play wasn't when Romeo and Juliet died; it was when Mercutio died. He had a hard time liking Romeo after that. He hates it when someone dies and it isn't even his fault.
Holden tries to pay the nuns' bill before they part ways, but the women won't let him.
He reflects that he would've had a lot better time talking to them if he wasn't so afraid they were going to ask him if he was Catholic, especially since he has an Irish last name.
His father was Catholic at one point, he tells us.
He remembers a kid named Louis Shaney that he used to know at school, someone he had a good conversation with until Louis tried to subtly find out if he was Catholic.
This, he tells us, is much like the suitcases issue.
After accidentally blowing smoke in the nuns' face as they say goodbye, Holden apologizes, is embarrassed, and generally feels depressed by the whole thing, especially the money part.

Chapter 15 Quotes + Analysis:

1."All the two of them were eating for breakfast was toast and coffee. That depressed me. I hate it if I'm eating bacon and eggs or something and somebody else is only eating toast and coffee."

Holden feels guilty about bring privileged. His family clearly has money (he bounces between expensive boarding schools, his father is a "corporation lawyer," he has nice suitcases from Mark Cross, etc.), and it bothers him that not everyone has the same advantages – especially the nuns, who he later comments never get to go to "swanky lunches."

2."After they left, I started getting sorry that I'd only given them ten bucks for their collection. But the thing was, I'd made that date to go to the matinee with old Sally Hayes, and I needed to keep some dough for the tickets and stuff. I was sorry anyway, though. Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell."

As we've seen in this chapter, money depresses Holden because it creates interpersonal barriers for him. Since isolation is what makes him feel sad, anything that prevents him from connecting to other people – like money – is going to be depressing.

3."The one next to me, with the iron glasses, said she taught English and her friend taught history and American government. Then I started wondering like a bastard what the one sitting next to me, that taught English, thought about, being a nun and all, when she read certain books for English. Books not necessarily with a lot of sexy stuff in them, but books with lovers and all in them. Take old Eustacia Vye, in The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. She wasn't too sexy or anything, but even so you can't help wondering what a nun maybe thinks about when she reads about old Eustacia. I didn't say anything, though, naturally. All I said was English was my best subject.
[…]
"Oh, Romeo and Juliet! Lovely! Didn't you just love it?" She certainly didn't sound much like a nun.
[…]
"What didn't you like about it? Can you remember?" To tell you the truth, it was sort of embarrassing, in a way, to be talking about Romeo and Juliet with her. I mean that play gets pretty sexy in some parts, and she was a nun and all, but she asked me, so I discussed it with her for a while.

We keep talking about how Holden sees people – not people's professions – yet here he has trouble getting past the fact that this woman is a nun. Why is it that he can immediately see Sunny as more than a prostitute, but has trouble seeing this woman as more than a nun?

4."I said I'd enjoyed talking to them a lot, too. I meant it, too. I'd have enjoyed it even more though, I think, if I hadn't been sort of afraid, the whole time I was talking to them, that they'd all of a sudden try to find out if I was a Catholic. Catholics are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic. […] I knew this one Catholic boy, Louis Shaney, when I was at the Whooton School. […] Then, after a while, right in the middle of the goddam conversation, he asked me, "Did you happen to notice where the Catholic church is in town, by any chance?" The thing was, you could tell by the way he asked me that he was trying to find out if I was a Catholic. He really was. Not that he was prejudiced or anything, but he just wanted to know. He was enjoying the conversation about tennis and all, but you could tell he would've enjoyed it more if I was a Catholic and all. That kind of stuff drives me crazy. I'm not saying it ruined our conversation or anything – it didn't – but it sure as hell didn't do it any good. That's why I was glad those two nuns didn't ask me if I was a Catholic. It wouldn't have spoiled the conversation if they had, but it would've been different, probably. I'm not saying I blame Catholics. I don't. I'd be the same way, probably, if I was a Catholic. It's just like those suitcases I was telling you about, in a way. All I'm saying is that it's no good for a nice conversation. That's all I'm saying."

We're a little bit in love with the comparison of the Catholic stuff to the suitcase business from a few paragraphs earlier. First of all, it's some structural brilliance, as Salinger ties together two otherwise distinct portions of the chapter. Second of all, it's some major insight into how Holden views religion. It creates barriers, he argues, in the same way that class differences can create barriers. This starts to explain why Holden perhaps resents the concept of religion (and maybe class as well); he's searching for personal connections, and these categories are "no good for a nice conversation."

Chapter 16 Summary:

Holden keeps thinking about the collection basket as he heads off to meet Sally for their matinee date. He pictures the different people he knows having to hold a collection basket; Sally's mother, for one, would only do it if everyone had to kiss her butt to make a contribution.
It makes him sad that, while Sally's mother would use the money to go to a swanky lunch, the nuns never get to go to a swanky lunch.
Holden heads to Broadway Street to try to pick up a record for his sister Phoebe called "Little Shirley Beans." It's about a kid who lost her two front teeth and is too embarrassed to leave her house.
Holden sees a sort of poor-looking family come out of church and walk in front of him. The mother and father aren't really paying attention to their six-year-old kid, who is singing, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye."
This makes Holden feel better – not so depressed.
He makes it to a crowded Broadway street by about noon, irritated by the fact that everyone so obviously wants to go the movies. It's one thing if there's nothing else to do, but actually wanting to go is nuts.
Holden makes it to a record store and pays five dollars for an apparently rare copy of "Little Shirley Beans."
He then makes it into a phone booth to call Jane, but hangs up when her mother answers the phone.
Instead, he buys orchestra seats for a show called "I Know My Love," which he figures Sally will go nuts over because it has the Lunts (famous actors) in it.
This leads Holden into a digression on show actors. Most of them suck, and if they don't, then they know it, and that makes them bad. Case in point, Sir Laurence Olivier playing Hamlet. Holden says Hamlet is supposed to be a sad, screwed-up guy, not a commanding general-type like Olivier played it.
Holden heads over to the Mall (as in an outside area without cars, not as in an indoor shopping mall) hoping to run into Phoebe in the park.
He runs into a little kid about his sister's age and asks her if she knows Phoebe Caulfield.
She does, but isn't sure where Phoebe is. Holden helps her tighten her skates. She's a nice kid, and he asks her if she wants to have hot chocolate, but she declines, as she has to go meet her friend. Holden thinks this is just awesome.
Holden heads over to the Museum of Natural History (the little girl in the park disclosed that there have been some recent field trips here). He remembers going himself on Saturdays when he was a kid. Mostly, he learned about Columbus.
Holden has always been a big fan of the museum, especially "the Indian Room," a long, quiet hallway you walk through with Native American displays on either side. The best thing is that everything would stay as it would – you kept changing, but the displays wouldn't.
Holden puts his red hunting hat on, adding that he's sure he won't see anybody who knows him anyway.
Certain things, he muses, ought to be able to stay just as they are, without having to change.
He passes two unbalanced kids on a seesaw and tries to even out their weight by putting his hand on the side of the skinnier kid. He can tell they don't want him around, though, so he leaves.
When he finally gets to the museum, it doesn't appeal to him anymore. So he gets in the cab and heads for the Biltmore – not that he wants to go, but he promised Sally.

Chapter 16 Quotes + Analysis:

1."The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole […]. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or that kid that was your partner in line last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way – I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it."

Holden examines the difference between innocence and youth. He insists that the changes everyone experiences in between visits to the museum don't have to do with getting older – it's something else, he says. The examples he provides indeed don't have much to do with age, rather with experiences that have to do with growing up.

2."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. I know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway."

Part of Holden's depression has to do with the knowledge he reveals here: that his desire to keep things "the way they are" is in fact impossible.

3.""She's prob'ly in the museum, then. We went last Saturday," the kid said.
"Which museum?" I asked her.
She shrugged her shoulders, sort of. "I don't know," she said. "The museum."
"I know, but the one where the pictures are, or the one where the Indians are?"
"The one where the Indians."
"Thanks a lot."

While Holden had difficulty communicating with almost everyone, he knows exactly how to speak to this child.

4."She was having a helluva time tightening her skate. She didn't have any gloves on or anything and her hands were all red and cold. I gave her a hand with it. Boy, I hadn't had a skate key in my hand for years. It didn't feel funny, though. You could put a skate key in my hand fifty years from now and I'd still know what it is. She thanked me and all when I had tightened it for her. She was a very nice, polite little kid. God, I love it when a kid's nice and polite when you tighten their skate for them or something. Most kids are. They really are. I asked her if she'd care to have a hot chocolate or something with me, but she said no, thank you. She said she had to meet her friend. Kids always have to meet their friend. That kills me."

Holden interacts better with the world of children than he does with that of adults.

5."But there was one nice thing. This family that you could tell just came out of some church were walking right in front of me – a father, a mother, and a little kid about six years old. They looked sort of poor. […] The kid was swell. […] He was making out like he was walking a very straight line, the way kids do, and the whole time he kept singing and humming. […] It made me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed anymore."

Holden combats his isolation in an interesting way. Sometimes, observing is enough for him; just by watching the little boy, he says he's "not so depressed anymore."

[MR T]

Well done!!!

Right Carsten - now use it to get writing Critical Essays!