Dramatic Structure. The Catcher in the Rye. Ch. 1

Transcription

1 Dramatic Structure Ch. 1 "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 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. 1

2 Ch. 2 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. Ch. 3 "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. 2

3 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 fantastic body. Meanwhile, his date is waiting in the annex. Ch. 4 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). 3

4 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). Ch. 5 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. 4

5 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." Ch. 6 It'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'stooth 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 "as-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. Ch. 7 Holden gets to Ackley's room and is all, "How about playing Canasta?" and Ackley is all, "Stop bleeding all over my room." 5

6 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. Ch. 8 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. (Are you paying attention to this hat? We certainly are.) 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. 6

7 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. Ch. 9 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). 7

8 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. Ch. 10 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. 8

9 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. Ch. 11 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. Ch. 12 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. 9

10 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. Ch. 13 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. 10

11 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. Ch. 14 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. 11

12 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. Ch. 15 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 nunappropriate. But he indulges in a discussion of it anyway. 12

13 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. Ch. 16 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. 13

14 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. Ch. 17 Holden arrives early to meet Sally, so he sits around in the lobby and watches some girls while he waits. It's a little depressing to wonder what's going to happen to all these girls in the future, especially since most of them will probably marry dopey guys, or boring guys, whom Holden doesn't understand. He knew a boring guy, actually, at one of his prep schools, whose only redeeming quality was his being the greatest whistler ever. Sally shows up. She looks so cute that Holden, who admits he doesn't even really like her, feels like marrying her that very minute. But then she greets him in a loud, attention-seeking voice. She's all excited about the show they're going to see (as expected). The two get in a cab and fool around on the way to the show, with Holden being "seductive as hell." Then he tells her he loves her, and she replies that she does too. Of course, she does want him to grow his hair longer because his current hairstyle is out-dated. Anyway, they get around to actually watching this show. Holden says it's not the worst thing he's ever seen, but it still isn't great. He feels like the actors are doing more showing off than real acting, much like Ernie playing the piano in Greenwich. At the end of the first act, Holden and Sally go out for smokes with all the "phonies" and "jerks" who stand around and talk about the play. Sally, of course, knows one of the jerks. He's an Ivy League-type named George who went to Andover. He's the kind of guy that, when Sally asks him about the play, he has to step back and give himself room to answer. George and Sally proceed to engage in phoniness and general name/location dropping. By the time the show is over and they're back in the cab, Holden is fed up with her. Still, when she asks to go roller skating at Radio City, he agrees (begrudgingly). Mostly, Sally just wants to rent one of those little skating skirts that just barely covers her butt. A cute butt, Holden concedes, but still. They're both horrible skaters, so the activity lasts only as long as Sally's ankles can take it. Then they go for a drink. Non-alcoholic, of course. Sally still wants to know if Holden is intending on coming over to help her trim the Christmas tree. He changes the subject; he wants to know if she ever gets fed up with life. This is interesting: Sally keeps telling Holden not to shout, and Holden keeps insisting (to us) that he's not shouting. Hmm. He's angry about people that discuss how many miles per gallon their car gets, about the phonies at his boarding schools and their social cliques. 14

15 Finally, he asks Sally to run away with him. He wants to drive up to Massachusetts and Vermont and live in a log cabin together. Sally insists that you can't do something like that, again tells Holden to stop screaming at her, and says they'll be plenty of time for such escapades after college. Holden counters that that isn't true: after college, you have to follow all the rules and play along with all the games. Then he says "you give me a royal pain in the ass." After this, she "hit the ceiling" and wouldn't accept anything from him, even his profuse apologies. She's even crying, which makes him feel awful. When she refuses to let him take her home, Holden finds the whole situation to be funny. He laughs, which we can assure you is never a good move in front of a girl you just made cry. Holden wonders (to himself) why he asked her to go with him to live in a log cabin, since she's not exactly his ideal girl. But he admits that he meant it when he asked her, which in his eyes makes him a little bit of a madman. Ch. 18 To the Shmooper: READ THIS CHAPTER. It's only seven paragraphs, and it's pretty amazing. Just read it. Holden leaves the skating rink, has lunch, and thinks some more about giving Jane a call. He thinks about taking her dancing. He saw her once, dancing with another "moron" named Al Pike who used to used to wear tight bathing suits and jump off the high dive to show off his muscles. Later, once they were friends, he asked her about why she would ever hang around with a guy like that. Jane said it's because he had an inferiority complex and she felt sorry for him. In Holden's opinion, that doesn't stop him from being a jerk. He says if a girl likes a guy, she'll say he has an inferiority complex, no matter how much of a jerk he is, and if she doesn't like him, she'll say he's conceited, no matter how nice a person he is. Ponderings aside, he gives Jane a call and hangs up when no one answers. He does need some company for the evening, though, so he looks through his address book. Unfortunately, there are only three numbers in it: Jane, a former teacher named Mr. Antolini, and his father's office. So he ends up giving Carl Luce a call, a guy he used to go to school with at Whooton before he got kicked out. Carl, who goes to Columbia University, agrees (over the phone) to meet Holden for a drink, even though, Holden informs us, he (Holden) once called the guy a "fat-assed phony." With nothing else to do until he needs to meet Carl at ten, Holden goes to the movies at Radio City. This, of course, is dissatisfying. He can't enjoy the roller-skating comedian, because all he does is envision the guy practicing. He can't see anything religious or pretty in the angels singing carols, since all the actors playing the angels are really just thinking about going to smoke a cigarette afterward. He remembers the previous year, when Sally said they were beautiful, and Holden said Jesus probably would've puked to see it. According to Holden, if Jesus were going to like anyone, it would be the guy playing the kettle drums. Holden and Allie used to watch him all the time when they were little. After the show, the movie comes on. It's all about an English guy that loses his memory after the war, and falls in love even though he was already engaged. Holden concludes, "don't see it if you don't want to puke all over yourself." 15

16 The worst part is that he is sitting next to a woman who cries at all the phony bits, which makes her look like a kind person, except she has a little boy with her who is super bored and has to go to the bathroom, but she just ignores him. After the movie, Holden heads out to the Wicker Bar where he's supposed to meet Carl. Then he starts thinking about war, since that's sort of what got the movie story rolling. Holden is not up for being in a war anytime soon himself. It wouldn't be so bad if they just shot you, he says, but having to stay in the Army so long really kills him. His brother D.B. was in the war landed on D-Day and all and he hated the Army, not the war. When D.B. used to come home on leave, he would just lie on his bed the whole time. He said if you ever really had to shoot someone, you wouldn't know which direction to point your gun, that the Army is full of "bastards" just like the Nazis. D.B. made the point to Allie that you don't need to be in the war to be a good war writer. Holden thinks the part he wouldn't be able to stand was having to look at the guy's neck in front of you (which reminds us of how he can't sock someone in the jaw, because he doesn't like looking at their face). Holden didn't like A Farewell to Arms, which D.B. loved and made him read. Or The Great Gatsby, which D.B. said he was just too young to appreciate. Either way, Holden's glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. This way he can just sit right on top of it. Ch. 19 The Wicker Bar is located in the swanky Seton Hotel. Holden doesn't go there as much anymore because it's got "phonies [ ] coming in the window." Not to mention the two French girls that do an entertaining act there. So Holden gets there early, has a few scotch and sodas, and listens to the guy next to him trying to work his date by telling her she's got "aristocratic hands." Carl shows up, and Holden gives us the back-story: Luce was supposed to be his student advisor at Whooton, but all he did was give all the boys talks about sex and who was a "flit" (i.e., who was gay). According to Luce, nearly everyone was. This led Holden to believe that, perhaps, Luce himself was gay. Luce sits down at the bar, says he can only stay a few minutes, and orders a dry martini. Holden is surprisingly energetic in his attempts at conversation. He asks right away about Carl's sex life, college major, etc. Luce doesn't want to play that game, nor is he interested in giving Holden any advice. He just wants to have a quiet drink. They end up talking about a "sculptress" in "the Village" that Luce is dating, who is apparently in her late thirties. Holden responds: "No kidding, they [meaning older women] are better for sex and all?" Carl is obviously trying incredibly hard to come off as mature and sophisticated, so he refuses to answer any of these "typical Caulfield questions." Luce reveals that the woman is Chinese, and after some more badgering by Holden, that he prefers the Eastern point-of-view that sex is both a spiritual and physical experience. Holden feels the same way he thinks. He gets excited at the prospect, and Luce berates him for being too loud. Holden admits (to us) that he does sometimes get too loud when he's excited (which reminds us of his conversation with Sally, when she kept telling him not to yell). He's confused about how sex should be that way, but how he can't make it feel that way with every girl. As Holden continues to press the issue, Luce refuses to talk about it further. Holden hates how Luce is the kind of the guy that wants everybody to listen to him talk about other people's personal lives, but refuses to answer questions about himself. And he always has to be the big shot. 16

17 Luce tells Holden he's immature. Holden agrees. He says the problem is that he can't get really sexy with a girl that he likes a lot. He asks what Carl's father (who is a psychoanalyst) would think about that. Carl says his father would help Holden recognize the patterns in his mind. His father did as much for Carl himself. Luce pays his check and says he's got to go, even though Holden asks him to stay for another drink. After he's gone, Holden says he's "strictly a pain in the ass." Ch. 20 Holden sits around and keeps drinking and waits for the two French women to come out and sing. Instead, this new woman named Valencia comes out. Holden, getting "drunk as hell," gives her the eye, which she ignores; after she's gone he asks the bartender to give her a message, but knows the guy probably won't. By 1am, Holden is really drunk. So he starts pretending (again) that he's got a bullet in his guts and is doing an amazing of job concealing that fact from the rest of the world. Blind drunk, he ends up in a phone booth and gives Sally Hayes a call. Unfortunately, her grandmother picks up. Somehow or another, Sally does end up the phone. Holden tells her he'll come over and trim her Christmas tree, rambles on about how the mob got him, and hangs up. Or rather, gets hung up on. He wished he had never phoned her. Holden ends up in the men's room. He fills the sink with cold water and dunks his head into it. Then he just sits shivering by the window. The guy that played the piano to accompany Valencia comes into the bathroom. Holden tries to get him to deliver a message to her, but once again gets a "What are you, twelve?" sort of response. The piano player is one of those annoying, handsome guys like Stradlater, who combs his hair a bunch in the mirror and then just leaves you alone in the bathroom. Crying and depressed, Holden heads for the hat-check room to get his coat and Little Shirley Beans record. He chats with the hat-check girl and tries to make a date with her even though she's old enough to be his mother. He shows her his red hunting hat, and she makes him wear it outside (since he's dripping cold water and it's December). Back outside, he decides to go check out the lagoon and see if the ducks are there. And then he drops the Little Shirley Beans record. It breaks into "about fifty pieces." He picks them up and puts them back into his pocket, almost crying. In the pitch black dark of the late night/early morning, Holden finds his way through the park to the lagoon. He looks everywhere, but no ducks. So he sits down on a bench and shivers. Maybe he'll get pneumonia and die, he thinks. (He's still incredibly drunk, by the way.) Holden imagines his funeral and how all his aunts would come, like they did for Allie's funeral. He wasn't allowed to go, since he was still in the hospital for his hand, but D.B. told him one aunt kept saying how peaceful Allie looked. Mostly, he'd feel sorry for his mother, who isn't even over Allie's death yet. If he does die, he hopes they just chuck him in a river. Who wants flowers on their grave when they're dead? Holden doesn't like visiting Allie's grave; he doesn't think his brother should be there surrounded by all those dead guys. The worst, he says, was when he was visiting the grave and it started to rain. They could all run for their cars or umbrellas, but Allie couldn't. To get his mind off the subject, Holden counts his money, which is a little more than three bucks. He skips the change across the water where it isn't frozen. 17

18 Holden figures, if he did get pneumonia and die, Phoebe would miss him a lot. So he had better go visit her, even if it is the middle of the night. Ch. 21 Luckily for Holden, Pete the elevator boy isn't on duty when he gets to his actual home. Instead, it's some new guy that won't recognize him. He takes off his hunting hat before he goes in, so as "not to look suspicious." Informing the elevator boy that he's the Dicksteins' nephew, he's taken up to one of the neighboring apartments. This somehow includes a made-up story that he's got an injured leg. Holden sneaks into Phoebe's room, but she's not there. He remembers she likes to sleep in D.B.'s room, as it's the biggest and she can "spread out," which is funny for a little kid who has nothing to spread out. Before he wakes her up, he looks at her for a minute. Kids, he thinks, are cute when they sleep, even if they drool all over the pillow. Adults, on the other hand, always look "lousy." Holden looks around at her clothes, which are neatly arranged. His mother, he knows, has great taste in clothes Phoebe always looks great. He checks out the stuff she's got lying on her desk; in one of her math books, she wrote "Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield," even though her middle name is "Josephine." She's just always trying to change it, he says. Among several workbooks is Phoebe's own notebook, with little scribbles of her own and notes to/from her friends. Holden reads the whole thing. It's really quite adorable. You should check it out. Finally, he lights a cigarette and wakes Phoebe up. She's all excited to see him and throws her arms around his neck. He tries to get her to keep her voice down, but she says their parents are out anyway at a party. She tells him all about a Christmas Pageant in which she's Benedict Arnold. Phoebe rattles on and tells Holden all about this movie she saw, The Doctor, about a man who suffocates a crippled child. The question is whether mercy killing is wrong or not. Holden interrupts her, asking if she knows when their parents are going to get back. Hearing that they're not going to be home any time soon, he stops to smell the roses, and by "smell the roses": we mean "look at the red elephants on the collar of Phoebe's pajamas." He tells her about the broken record, and her response is: "Gimme the pieces. I'm saving them." Holden asks whether D.B. is coming home for Christmas, but Phoebe says he might need to stay in Hollywood to write a movie about Annapolis, which of course some very famous actor is going to be in. After asking about a bandage on her arm, Holden finds out she got pushed down the stairs by a boy. She thinks he hates her. Holden says he's probably got a crush on her. Finally, Phoebe stops being a chatty cat and realizes that, if Holden is home early, he must have gotten kicked out of school again. "Daddy'll kill you!" she says. Holden assures her everything's going to be fine he'll just run away to a ranch on Colorado. Or something. Phoebe's only response is to collapse on her bed and put a pillow over her head. She won't take it off, either. Holden leaves for the living room to get some cigarettes; he's all out. Ch

19 Once Holden comes back to Phoebe's room, she tries to ignore him. He assures her he's going to be fine on his ranch in Colorado, and harasses her about a stupid haircut somebody gave her. She asks him why he got the ax. A million reasons, Holden replies mostly, everyone there was mean and phony. He can tell Phoebe is listening, even though she refuses to turn around and face him. Even the teachers were phony, he continues, like the way Mr. Spencer would kill himself making jokes when the headmaster was sitting in on his class, or the alumni that would come back on Veteran's Day to see if the initials they carved into the bathroom wall were still there. He just didn't like it. Phoebe counters that Holden never likes anything, which makes him feel (perhaps rightfully so) depressed. She makes him name just one thing he likes a lot. Holden finds that he can't concentrate on this question. All he can think about are the two nuns and their collecting baskets. Or a boy he knew at Elkton Hills named James Castle, a "skinny little weak-looking guy" who called someone else (Phil) conceited. Phil and his entourage did something "repulsive" to try to make James take it back; instead of apologizing, James jumped out the window and killed himself. Holden remembers that James was wearing his (Holden's) turtleneck sweater at the time. And the guys that were harassing James didn't even have to go to jail. Since Phoebe's still waiting for an answer about what he really likes, Holden says "Allie." Phoebe counters that Allie's dead, and that shouldn't count, but Holden says you don't stop liking somebody just because they die. Besides, he also likes sitting there with her. Phoebe doesn't think that should count, either. She wants to know what he wants to be, like a lawyer or a scientist or something. Holden says he'd be fine with lawyers if they saved innocent guys' lives all the time, but really all they do is drink martinis and play golf. Finally, he asks Phoebe if she knows the song he heard the little boy singing earlier, "If a body catch a body comin' through the rye." Phoebe corrects him. It's not a song, she says, it's a poem by Robert Burns, and it goes, "If a body meet a body," not "catch a body." (We don't know why a little kid would know about Robert Burns.) There's no way we can say this better than the author in a summary, so here it is, Holden's response to Phoebe: "Anyway, 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." Phoebe thinks for a bit, but all she can say is that their father is really going to kill him. Holden decides to phone Mr. Antolini (one of the three numbers in his address book), who used to be an instructor at Elkton Hills but now teaches English at N.Y.U. Before he leaves, Phoebe sits up (looking so pretty, Holden tells us) and demonstrates the fruits of her recent labor in belching class. It's not much, but Holden tells her it's good. Ch. 23 Holden calls up Mr. Antolini, who tells him he's welcome to come on over. He then digresses, telling us Mr. Antolini is the greatest teacher he's ever had. He's a young guy (not much older than D.B.) and the kind of teacher you can kid around with a bunch. 19

20 When that James Castle jumped out of the window, Holden tell us, Mr. Antolini was the only one to actually do anything about it (check his pulse and carry the body over the infirmary), even though it meant his coat got all bloody in the process. When Holden gets back to Phoebe's room, she's turned on the radio. The two of them dance for a bit. Phoebe, of course, is an awesome dancer. She's busy demonstrating how she can make her forehead feel feverish when they hear the front door opening. Holden tries to fan the smoke away before jumping into the closet. Their mother comes into the room, asking why Phoebe's awake at this hour and if she was smoking a cigarette. Phoebe says she just took one puff and then threw it out the window. Her mother doesn't approve, but there's no crazed screaming since smoking wasn't that big of a deal back then. There's some chit-chat over aspirins and lamb chops, and finally Mrs. Caulfield leaves for bed. Holden comes out of the closet and asks Phoebe if she's got any money (he's broke, and leaving again). All she's got is her Christmas money, for shopping, which Holden doesn't want to take from her. She insists that he take the eight dollars and eighty-five cents. Then she clarifies it's only eight dollars and sixty-five cents, since she spent some already. This pretty much does it for Holden; he cries and cries. Phoebe just puts her arm around his neck and won't let go until stops. He gives her his red hunting hat before he goes. Holden doesn't see the elevator boy on his way out. The guy probably thinks he's still up at the Dicksteins'. Ch. 24 Holden heads for Mr. Antolini's house. He used to see the guy quite frequently after he left Elkton Hills. Once Mr. Antolini got married, the three of them used to play tennis together. Mrs. Antolini is "about sixty years older than Mr. Antolini" (which we take with a grain of salt, as Holden is prone to exaggeration) and apparently has a lot of money. A cab ride later, Mr. Antolini opens the door, dressed in a bathrobe, wearing slippers, and holding a highball in his hand. Mrs. Antolini is out in the kitchen; Holden notes that they're never both in the same room at the same time. (Hmm.) Holden has a cigarette with Mr. Antolini, noting (to us) that he still feels rather dizzy (the reasoning behind his taking a cab instead of walking). Mr. Antolini wants to know all about Holden's classes. He says he passed English, but flunked Oral Expression because you were supposed to avoid digressions and Holden, if you hadn't noticed by now, is quite the fan of a good digression. He feels like that's when people tell you the really good stuff by accident. Holden doesn't really feel like explaining himself any further, not to mention his burgeoning headache. But Mr. Antolini counters with the point that there is a time and a place for everything. If someone starts telling you about one topic, they should stick to that, and tell you whatever the digression is later. Holden replies that you never know what's most interesting, what it really is that you need to talk about, until you get going. Mrs. Antolini finally comes in from the kitchen with coffee for everyone, looking old and quite unattractive (curlers in her hair and all). She heads off to bed; Mr. Antolini gives her a kiss, which Holden says they do quite frequently in public. (Hmm again.) 20