The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger - Free Book Summary
Introduction Is it possible to graduate high school without getting to know The Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield? Since its publication in 1951, J. D. Salinger’s timeless novel has been shedding light on the notion of growing up to adolescents around the globe. Despite vulgar language repeated challenges from all directions, The Catcher in the Rye found its way into almost every list ranking top literature of the 20th century. Can Holden catch and rescue young children from falling into adulthood? Does everybody have to eventually grow up? "Ruth, The Catcher in the Rye wasn't easy... the free book summary was great help!" Executive Summary Holden Caulfield, a sensitive yet somewhat disturbed teenager, recalls the events that got him into the mental facility from which he tells his story. After being expelled from four schools, Holden is still not willing to play according to the rules that the society set for adolescents. Instead of planning a career like other young people, he sees his future role as a savior of children, protecting them from falling into adulthood. After several incidents – including getting beaten up by a roommate, getting beaten up again in bar, and having his teacher making a pass at him – he decides he wants to leave everything behind. But then, when he meets his young sister Phoebe to say goodbye, he seems to realize that he cannot in fact save her from growing up. “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” This is how Holden Caulfield, a sensitive yet somewhat disturbed teenager, opens his story and in this tone and language he continues. Holden tells his story in first person, from behind the walls of a mental facility where he is being psychoanalyzed. The story takes place in New York: “I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go? I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away” While his high-school classmates were already dreaming of solid careers as businessmen and professionals, Holden kept to himself and was dreaming on a less clear path. “You know that song, ’If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye’? ... I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.” About a year before, in December of l949, Holden was expelled from the Pencey Prep School for Boys. He had failed four out of his five classes, and he was reluctant to apply himself to his studies. This was the fourth school Holden had flunked out of. On the evening of his departure, Holden went to see his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, who had asked him to come by for goodbyes. Mr. Spencer was smelling of Vicks Nose Drops, and wore a ratty bathrobe that opened to reveal his “bumpy old chest.” Almost immediately the old man launched into a farewell lecture. “Life is a game, boy,” he declared. “Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.” According to Mr. Spencer, Holden was failing in school and in life because he didn’t play according to the rules. After this tormenting visit, Holden returned to his dormitory. His roommate, Stradlater, who was getting ready for a date, asked him for a last favor: could he write a descriptive essay about a “house” or a “room” for Stradlater’s English assignment? Holden agreed but then he couldn’t think of any house or room to write about, so he scrawled thoughts about his brother’s baseball mitt. “My brother Allie had this left-handed fieIder’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 l8, l946.” This free book summary of The Catcher in the Rye is complimentary from the www.free-book-summary.com website. Want to say Thanks? Tell about the book summary to your friends, link to it from your blog, or include a link to it in a forum. Cheers! Later, when Stradlater returned from his date and read Holden’s essay, he went crazy and shouted: “…This is about a goddam baseball glove... You don’t do one damn thing the way you’re supposed to…” Since this was the second verbal assault Holden had suffered that night, he couldn’t hold back and he punched Stradlater with his fist. But Stradlater was much stronger and at his response, Holden was left beaten and with a bleeding nose. Humiliated, he gathered his things and went into the December night. Holden was not expected home for Christmas vacation until Wednesday. Since he had not yet told his parents about his expulsion, he took a train to the west side of New York and checked into the derelict Edmont Hotel. On his way up in the elevator, the attendant told him that for five dollars he could arrange to have a girl sent to his room. Feeling as if he were in some remote, lonesome country, Holden agreed. When the prostitute appeared, however, he changed his mind and sent her away, not before paying her the agreed five dollars. But a few minutes later the girl showed with her pimp and demanded another five dollars. When Holden refused to pay any more, the pimp entered the room and beaten him up. After that incident, Holden felt depressed: “I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would’ve done it, too, if I’d been sure somebody’d cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn’t want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory.” The following morning, Holden checked out of the Edmont Hotel and called his girlfriend, Sally Hayes, to ask her if she wanted to see a movie later that afternoon. After that, he wandered absently through the streets. Suddenly he heard a little boy singing: “If a body catch a body coming through the rye.” At that very instant, Holden felt happy. The song reminded him of what he had always wanted to be: the catcher in the rye. Holden proceeded cheerfully down the street to a museum he hadn’t been to since he was a young child. There, standing again in front of the familiar glass cases with the statues of Eskimos on display, the pleasant musty odor returning to his lungs, he noticed that everything was positioned exactly the way he remembered it. During all those years, nothing had changed. Holden thought: “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.” Reluctantly, Holden exited the museum. Sally and Holden went to a movie that afternoon and then went ice skating. As he looking over the rink, Holden couldn’t help but think how phony everyone was. Sally, the movie actors, the theater-goers, the skaters, all the students at his four schools – they were nothing but phonies. In his eyes, the only people who weren’t phony were himself, his 10-year-old sister, Phoebe, and his dead brother Allie. He refused to live by Mr. Spencer’s rules. After all, the rules must also be phony. When Holden tried to share his thoughts with Sally, she was bewildered and they argued. Finally Holden rushed out of the ice rink, leaving Sally crying behind. He wandered for awhile and then found a bar and got drunk. This free book summary of The Catcher in the Rye is complimentary from the www.free-book-summary.com website. Want to say Thanks? Tell about the book summary to your friends, link to it from your blog, or include a link to it in a forum. Cheers! Later that evening at the bar, he initiated an argument with a stranger in the men’s room, only to get beaten up and left passed out on the floor. When he came to, he felt an overwhelming urge to see his little sister. Not wanting his parents to know he was kicked out of school once more, he took a cab to his family’s apartment building and crept through the dark toward Phoebe’s bedroom. Holden woke Phoebe up and she was overjoyed to see him. She told him that their parents weren’t home and wouldn’t be returning until late that night. When Holden told her that he’d been expelled, Phoebe answered: “Daddy’s going to kill you”. But Holden said that would never happen, because he was going to move west and live in a cabin all by himself. In fact, he had only come home to say goodbye to Phoebe. But Phoebe managed to make her brother promise to stay in New York a little longer, so he could see her school play on Friday. Holden then borrowed $8.65 out of his sister’s Christmas gift fund and made his way out of the apartment. Without a room for to spend the night in, Holden showed up at the home of his old English teacher, Mr. Antolini, who seemed happy to see him, and invited him to stay the night. As they drank coffee together, Mr. Antolini started with a lecture just like Mr. Spencer before him. According to Antolini, Holden was headed for a “big fall”, but he had other advice too: “You’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them – if you want. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.” Tired for Mr. Antolini’s lecture, Holden then asked if he could go to sleep, and he nodded off quickly on Antolini’s couch. Not long after, he was awakened by a hand stroking his head in what seemed to him a “perverty” way. It was Mr. Antolini, sitting next to him on the floor, and Holden was sure he was making a pass at him. He got up off the couch and rushed out of the house. He spent the night sitting up in a bus station. Later on, Holden would question if that “pass” was actually what it seemed to him at the time. In the morning Holden asked an office attendant at Phoebe’s school to deliver a note to her explaining that he couldn’t wait until Friday with his move to the west. He was leaving today, and so he asked Phoebe to meet him to say goodbye in front of the museum during her lunch time. Phoebe was twenty minutes late. When she finally showed up at the museum, she was carrying a suitcase and announced that she was joining Holden. Holden refused and they had a tearful argument, after which they decided to spend the rest of the day together at the zoo. Holden loved Phoebe. He could not keep his eyes off her – how idyllic, how perfect, how beautiful she was, riding around and around on the carousel. Holden seemed to have realized that he cannot take control of his sister’s life, and moreover, he cannot prevent her from growing up. D.B., Holden’s older brother, came to visit him in the mental facility. He and asked Holden what he thought about all the stuff that had happened, but Holden didn’t know how to respond. “If you want to know the truth,” he said after a minute’s thought, “I don’t know what I think about it.” For over six months in the mental facility Holden could not resolve the puzzle of his life. There were talks of his being reinstated in school, but the question remained, could he apply himself? Could he survive? Could he catch himself? No one seemed to know. No one – including Holden himself – seemed to understand. "Ruth, The Catcher in the Rye - wonderful summary. Gracias!"
Context Some understand The Catcher in the Rye as pessimistic – Holden failed his dream of catching innocent children from falling into adulthood, just as he has failed his own life and ended up in a mental facility. Others noted the optimistic tone at the end of the story as a message to teenagers – what seems to be sufferings is just a passing phase of life. Either way, almost anyone can relate to something that Holden has said, and by reading his story, learn something about life. That’s exactly why Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye has become a recommended read for high school students worldwide, despite the vulgar language it uses. These days, it’s almost impossible to graduate high school without getting to know Holden Caulfield. Since its publication in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye found its way into almost every list ranking top literature of the 20th century. The Complete Book Salinger, J. D.. The Catcher in the Rye.
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