- The catcher in the rye holden driver#
- The catcher in the rye holden free#
- The catcher in the rye holden windows#
Holden continues to wonder about the ducks.
The catcher in the rye holden driver#
The driver becomes confused and then incensed by the question, talking about fish instead. Along the way, he asks the cab driver where the ducks in Central Park go during the winter. Holden decides to take a cab down to a nightclub in Greenwich Village called Ernie’s. He later asks her if her stepfather has ever tried to get “wise” with her, but she says no. When he goes back inside, Holden sees that she is crying. Her drunken stepfather came out of the house to ask Jane if there were any cigarettes, but she refuses to answer him. They were up in Maine, and playing checkers at her house. He remembers one particular day very fondly. Holden leaves the Lavender Room and starts thinking about Jane Gallagher again. He dances with three girls in the club, but he thinks they are all morons, and they end up ditching him later on. Once in his hotel, he decides to go down to a nightclub, the Lavender Room.
The catcher in the rye holden windows#
Holden has not fully dealt with his grief over Allie’s death, although he did break all of the windows in the garage of his family’s summer house on the night Allie died. It is revealed that Allie died three years earlier, after losing a battle to Leukemia. Holden writes a composition about his little brother Allie’s baseball glove, which had poems written all over it. Stradlater asks Holden to write his English composition for him, while he goes out on a date with a girl that Holden knows and seems to respect. Holden is supposed to be going home in three days for Christmas break, but after an altercation with his roommate Stradlater, he decides to leave early and hang out in New York City before breaking the news of his expulsion to his parents. This is the fourth elite boarding school that Holden has flunked out of. He was kicked out of Pencey Prep for failing every subject except English. The novel opens with the narrator, Holden Caulfield, apparently relating a story that happened to him the previous Christmas.
The catcher in the rye holden free#
Start My Free Trial* A Quick Summary of The Catcher in the Rye (Contains Spoilers) Holden’s breakdown highlights the importance of getting the necessary help for children who are dealing with grief. It also gives voice to the impact and symptoms of mental illness. This narrative gives readers a look into the mind of a character whose world is crumbling around him, and his crumbling with it.
He increasingly isolates himself by finding fault with others (everyone is a “phony”), getting tossed out of boarding school after school, ruining every chance he has to establish a romantic relationship, and voicing his paranoia and disdain about the world to anyone who will listen. Holden seems only to connect with children younger than himself, those who have not yet been scarred or corrupted by the heartless world around them. Salinger described his work The Catcher in the Rye as a novel about “an individual’s alienation in a heartless world.” Indeed, one of the primary themes that is highlighted throughout Holden Caulfield’s whirlwind narrative of mental breakdown is alienation. When the prostitute Sunny was describing Holden, she likened his appearance to the child actor Freddie Bartholomew.Īs one of the most enduring characters in American literature, Holden has become a modern icon of coming-of-age stories and teenage rebellion, and is perhaps most recognized by the red hunting cap he wears.J.D. Descriptionĭuring his final year at Pencey, Holden is 6'2'' tall and has gray hairs visible on his crew cut. īefore attending Pencey Preparatory School, Holden either quit or was expelled from three other schools, including Elkton Hills and Whooton School. He generally describes his childhood as "lousy".
Holden mentions that their parents have different religions, thus he and his siblings are "sort of atheists". He has an older brother named D.B., a war veteran turned writer a younger brother named Allie, who died of leukemia at age 11 and the youngest Phoebe, who is six years younger than Holden.