The Catcher and the Rye

A detailed Summary of The Catcher and the Rye

The "Catcher and the Rye" is not the kind of story with a meaningful story line, that is, knowing only that would indicate little on what it is about. The events told in the story, seem to unfold as flashbacks. We can sense a chronological order of events in Holden Caufield's story, although the order does not matter as much as acknowledging each event as its own story. Be what may, here is what was perceived as the story line.

Holden Caufield was telling his story (to the readers, or to some people with a psychoanalyst guy) to the point where he was sixteen years old. We learn bluntly of his failure in most of his subjects at his boarding school otherwise known as Pencey Prep, in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. Due to this failure, he was "kicked" out of the school, in the sense that he can still choose to remain at the school for the remaining days until Christmas vacation begins. He went to New York City before the Christmas vacation started however.

A lot of events occurred in New York City, such as his encounter with three woman in a bar; the two cabdrivers; the case with Ernie (a pianist in a bar); him meeting a prostitute; Mr.Antolini's flirty pass at him; his mention of people he cares about (for e.g., his siste

Presumably because of his sister, who also wanted to run away with him, he decided that it was probably best to stay with his family.

Whenever Holden talks to an adult however, it is different because of language shifting. He talks to an adult, using extensive vocabulary with the kind of regard people use in interviews or to talk with teachers. This goes to show how absurd it can be to show someone how well you fit in the standards of "well-brought up teenage boys".

We can relate this to how teenagers talk, because for example, I would say, "I'm going crazy" instead of "I'm a madman", just to redeem myself from something stupid I did. This kind of figure of speech helps to generalize feelings that would be too inconsistent to describe in normal words. Another example would be when Holden says "it killed me", we can interpret this simply as something that made a huge impact on him, although we have to decide whether he meant it in a positive or negative way, and how big the impact was.

At the beginning, he sounded very casual in his manner of speech. Take for example the introduction, where he gives us the message that his story is not at all important, that this kind of stuff bores him, and that it is not worthy enough to be heard. The readers can get the impression that they were already supposed to be curious about hearing his story in the beginning. This emphasizes that his story was not intended to hold the readers in contempt or to show that it was unimportant to our cause, or the cause of the people at the hospital. Most teenage boys are like this sometimes. Take me for example, I normally talk similarly like him usually around other people my age, as to "blend" in more, and to sound "tough" as well. A lot of times, when teenage boys talk among themselves, we keep a certain level of "toughness" in our speech, as to separate us from seeming too "sensitive", a feature we do not find appealing.

I found that the book has many themes. Of those themes, I personally find that "phoniness" comes into play the most. To describe this "phoniness", school can be served as an example. The advertisement for example, would be something "phony", especially the part about "molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking men". The ad is "phony" to him, because he only considers a few people in that school to be "clear-thinking".

Even though for practically everyone he sees or encounters, he criticizes them, whether or not he needs their companionship. When he heard Ernie play the piano, he hated the playing because in spite that it sounded "good", it was "corny". However, he then asked the waiter to ask Ernie if he would lik

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Approximate Word count = 1778
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous