The Catcher in the Rye summary

Holden Caulfield is six feet, two and a half inches tall, and half his head is covered with gray hair. But he’s only 17 years old – and he was 16 when the story you’re about to hear took place – and at times, despite appearances, you’d mistake him for someone even younger.

As he freely admits, he sometimes acts like he’s as young as 12 or so, kidding around and play-wrestling and trying out ideas that are slightly beyond his grasp. But he’s also able to play the adult – just about. Well enough to get served alcohol, anyway.

He’s had it rough lately and has wound up in some sort of facility – which is where this strange, sensitive young man decides to tell you his story.

J. D. Salinger’s classic post-war novel is a detailed, subtle depiction of adolescence that provides a window into a young mind that isn’t quite developed. The novel is written in the first person, from Holden’s own perspective. But as he proudly says, he’s an excellent liar. His account, although brutally honest at times, can’t quite be trusted.

In this Blink, we'll take you through the key points in the novel – which is Holden’s account of what happened over a few days last December. But we only have Holden’s word for it. How much you believe is up to you.

After catching the train to New York, Holden goes to the Edmont Hotel. They give him a crumby room, and he looks out to see a bunch of perverts – a man putting on a dress in front of a mirror, a couple spitting water at each other. Honestly, Holden is the only normal one there.

He thinks about calling his kid sister, Phoebe – the prettiest and smartest kid you’ll see. But it’s too late – and what if his parents pick up the phone?

So he goes down to the hotel bar. A terrible, phony band is playing. The audience are phonies, too – but he gets chatting to these three girls, aged maybe around 30, and gets dancing with one. Thing is, the waiter spots he’s underage, so he’s stuck drinking Cokes. The girls leave without even offering to pay.

Out in the lobby, Holden’s mind drifts back to Jane. He remembers playing golf with her, and showing her Allie’s baseball mitt. He’d never shown anyone else apart from family. Holden kissed Jane once, but not on the mouth. She didn’t let him.

Holden still isn’t tired, so he takes a cab to Ernie’s – the bar his older brother D. B. used to take him to, before he went out to Hollywood and started prostituting himself, writing movies instead of the stories Holden loves. Holden hates the movies.

It’s all phonies here too – people are going wild for Ernie, the pianist, even though he’s just showing off for them. But anyway, Holden gets himself a Scotch and soda. He hears a familiar voice – Lillian, this girl D. B. used to date. Total phony. Biggest knockers you’ve ever seen. She’s with some stupid Navy guy.

Shooting the breeze with them is just about the last thing Holden feels like doing, so he tells them he was just on his way out, abandons his drink, and walks all the way back to the hotel.

Going up in the elevator, the attendant offers him a prostitute for five bucks. Holden is feeling pretty depressed, so he agrees.

A few minutes later she’s there, throwing her coat on the bed. She’s about his age, he reckons – his real age. She suddenly pulls her dress up over her head so she’s just in this little slip – but it makes him feel bad. He’s not in the mood for it after all.

Maybe they can just talk, he asks? She looks at him like he’s crazy. Pretty soon she gets up to go, and Holden gives her the five bucks. It’s ten, she says. He says no, the guy said five. She leaves, looking annoyed.

The truth is, Holden’s a virgin. He’s gotten close – but something always comes up.

A little later, there’s a knock at the door.

It’s the prostitute and the elevator guy, demanding their extra five bucks. Holden stands his ground, but they get his wallet, take the money, and beat him up.

Despite his long Saturday, Holden doesn’t sleep long. He’s up at ten or so and realizes he hasn’t eaten anything for what feels like years. But he doesn’t want to call room service in case they send the guy who’s just beat him up.

Instead, he makes himself a date for the afternoon, with old Sally Hayes. They used to neck and all, although he isn’t wild about her. But he asks her out again all the same – suggesting a matinee. That isn’t till two, so he’s got four hours to kill.

He doesn’t want to stay at the Edmont again because of all that business last night. So he takes a cab over to Grand Central and checks his bags in there before going to a sandwich bar for breakfast.

These two nuns are at the next table. They’re not collecting money right now, they tell him, but he offers ten bucks all the same, and they accept. They get talking about literature – Holden loves reading and tells them what he thought of Romeo and Juliet – pretty annoying characters, most of the time. It feels weird talking to a nun about all the sexy stuff in literature. He feels bad he didn’t give them more than ten bucks.

There’s something else he wants to do that morning. He goes to a record store to buy a rare one for Phoebe, “Little Shirley Beans.” She’ll love it, he just knows. And then he thinks maybe he can give it to her right away, so he takes a cab over to her favorite park. But she’s not there.

Holden is about to try the museum nearby – but realizes she wouldn’t be there on a Sunday. He starts to go anyway – he used to love that museum when he was a kid, looking at the model Eskimo and deers. It’s funny: he’d go back and back as a kid, and he’d be different each time – but everything in that museum would stay just the way it always was.

He changes his mind. He doesn’t want to go anymore.

So he takes a cab back into town and waits for Sally.

The show is phony, and Sally’s phony too, but she looks so good he wants to marry her. She suggests they go ice-skating, and Holden agrees.

He opens up to her. Do you ever feel, he asks, like you just hate everything? School, New York, cabs, stupid phony shows, and getting your pants fitted and –

Sally asks him to stop shouting. Not that he is shouting.

Let’s run away together, he says. Tomorrow. We’ll go north, up to New England, and live in a cabin.

Stop shouting. We can’t do that.

They part ways. He didn’t even want to, he says. He isn’t sure why he said all that.

Holden leafs through his address book for who to call next. He tries old Jane, never far from his mind, but there’s no answer. Then he tries Carl Luce – an older kid who’s at Columbia now, a real intellectual, and knowledgeable when it comes to women. They arrange a drink at ten.

So he goes to the movies to kill time – even though he hates it. It’s a crumby picture and the lady next to him cries all the way through. It’s a war movie, so Holden gets to thinking about his brother, D. B. – the one in Hollywood now. He used to be in the army but luckily didn’t see much action. Holden would sign up if there was another war, he says, and sit right on top of the bomb.

Holden makes his way to the bar early, standing up when he orders his drink so they can see how tall he is. He’s already a little drunk when Carl Luce gets there, and he starts kidding around with him, joking about some people at the bar he thinks are gay.

Luce is unamused – he’d been hoping for a mature conversation – but Holden keeps on asking him about his sex life. Luce is embarrassed and encourages him to see a shrink. He makes a hasty exit, leaving Holden drinking alone.

He stays there till maybe one in the morning, when he goes out to the telephones to call Sally at home. She tells him to go to bed.

But he doesn’t – he goes to the bathroom and dunks his head in the sink to freshen up, and then sits on the radiator, shivering like you wouldn’t believe.

Soon enough Holden starts crying for some reason, so he gets his coat. The coat-check girl is so kind, even though he can’t find his check, but she doesn’t want to go on a date.

The cold air freshens him up and he walks to Central Park. He trips and breaks Phoebe’s new record and feels terrible. He gathers up the pieces into his pocket.

Still shivering, and worried he’ll get pneumonia and die, he sits down on a bench and thinks about Allie’s funeral. He missed it – he was in the hospital because he’d punched out all the windows in the garage. His hand still hurt sometimes. He thinks about his own funeral and all the phonies that would be there.

He decides to go home early after all. Out of money now, he walks all the way.

Holden still doesn’t want to see his parents yet, though – just Phoebe. So he tiptoes into the apartment as quietly as he can, and finds Phoebe asleep.

He gently wakes her up, and she’s so pleased to see him.

It turns out he needn’t have been so quiet – their parents are at a party out of town. They start to chat – but Phoebe is sharp as a button, and wants to know why he’s back early. He can’t lie to her.

She’s furious with him – Daddy will be so mad, she says. He tries to explain that it was a crumby school anyway, but she’s not having it – he doesn’t like anything, she says – name one thing.

He pauses. All he can think to say is Allie – he likes Allie.

But, Phoebe says, he’s dead.

She keeps on. Name one thing he wants to do with himself.

Holden comes up with something. It sounds crazy, but – you know that old folk song? “If a body catch a body coming through the rye …”

He’d kind of like to do that. If there were all these kids in a rye field, on a cliff, he could catch them, if they got too near the edge. He’d love that.

Phoebe points out it’s “If a body meet a body.” She’s right.

Holden doesn’t want to stay here, so he calls a past English teacher, Mr. Antolini, who agrees to take him in.

His parents come back, and he hides in Phoebe’s closet, before reluctantly accepting Phoebe’s Christmas money from her, slipping out, and getting a cab over to Mr. Antolini’s.

Holden is welcomed warmly by the teacher and his wife – but he has some stern words for his former pupil. He predicts Holden’s setting himself up for something terrible later in life if he can’t start applying himself. He keeps telling Holden to listen. Holden nods along.

Holden yawns, and Antolini fixes up his couch.

He falls asleep quickly – but wakes when he feels someone stroking his hair. It’s Antolini. Holden is horrified, makes his excuses, and leaves. He gets the subway back to Grand Central and sleeps in the waiting room by his bags.

It’s getting busy by nine, so he gets himself up, still thinking about Mr. Antolini last night – was he really making a pass at him? Or had he got it wrong? He can’t get it out of his head.

Walking down Fifth Avenue, he pretends he’s talking to Allie.

He doesn’t want to stay around here. He’ll say his goodbyes to Phoebe, give her her money back, and head out west. He’ll work at a filling station and pretend he’s deaf-mute to get out of talking to people. Maybe he’ll find a deaf-mute girl to marry too, and they’ll have to write everything down when they want to talk to each other.

He goes to Phoebe’s school and leaves her a note, asking her to come see him at the museum at lunch. Then he goes over there and waits.

When Phoebe turns up, she’s dragging his old suitcase behind her – filled with all her stuff. She wants to go with him. He knows she can’t, and gently tells her. She’s furious, so he takes her to the zoo to calm her down, and then to the carousel. He’s much too big for it – but he gives her her money back so she can ride it.

He sits there watching her on the carousel, and it starts to rain. Holden’s getting soaked, but he’s so happy watching her, he cries and cries.

That’s when Holden’s story ends.

It’s months later now, he’s in the facility getting help, and he’s going to head back to a new school come September. He thinks he’ll try harder this time, but who can really know? You only find out that sort of thing when you do it.

Since it was published in 1951, J. D. Salinger’s slender, fascinating novel has become a true modern classic. But maybe it’s ironic that it so often gets studied in high school: one of its key themes is how conflicted the teenage mind often is. Holden often seems caught, helplessly, between wanting to be an adult and wanting still to be a young child. Salinger is sympathetic but also a little devastating in his depiction of this confused, not yet fully developed mental state.

It’s that, more than the details of the book’s plot, that gives the book its well-deserved status: The Catcher in the Rye is a brilliant evocation of a stage in our lives we all go through. Most of us don’t have precisely the same experience as the privileged young Holden Caulfield, who also had to deal with the tragedy of losing his brother young. But everyone has felt that confusing pang of emotion Holden feels when he hears Jane’s dating Stradlater, or the lump-in-the-throat pride he takes in his bright kid sister – or his distaste for the phonies who nod along through their adult lives, never quite saying what they really think.