Summary: Chapter 16

After breakfast, Holden goes for a walk. He thinks about the selflessness of the nuns and can’t imagine anyone he knows being so generous and giving. He heads down Broadway to buy a record called “Little Shirley Beans” for Phoebe. He likes the record because, although it is for children, it is sung by a black blues singer who makes it sound raunchy, not cute. He thinks about Phoebe, whom he considers to be a wonderful girl because, although she’s only ten, she always understands what Holden means when he talks to her. He sees an oblivious little boy walking in the street, singing, “If a body catch a body coming through the rye.” The innocence of the scene cheers him up, and he decides to call Jane, although he hangs up when her mother answers the phone. In preparation for his date with Sally, he buys theater tickets to a show called “I Know My Love,” which stars the Lunts

Summary: Chapter 17

At two o’clock, Holden goes to meet Sally at the Biltmore Hotel; she is late but looks very attractive, so he immediately forgives her tardiness. They make out in the taxi on the way to the theater. At the play, the actors annoy Holden because, like Ernie the piano player, they are almost too good at what they do and seem full of themselves. During intermission, Sally irritates Holden by flirting with a pretentious boy from Andover, another prep school, but he nonetheless agrees to take her ice-skating at “Radio City” (Radio City Music Hall is part of Rockefeller Center, where there is an ice-skating rink) after the show. While skating, Holden speculates that Sally only wanted to go ice-skating so she could wear a short skirt and show off her “cute ass,” but he admits that he finds it attractive. When they take a break and sit down indoors, Holden begins to unravel. Oscillating between shouting and hushed tones, he rants about all the “phonies” at his prep schools and in New York society, and talks about how alienated he feels. He becomes even more crazy and impetuous, saying that he and Sally should run away together and escape from society, living on their own in a cabin. When she points out that his dreams are ridiculous, he becomes more and more agitated. The quarrel builds until Holden calls Sally a “royal pain in the ass,” and she begins to cry. Holden starts to apologize, but Sally is upset and angry with him, and, finally, he leaves without her.

Summary: Chapter 18

After leaving the skating rink, Holden goes to a drugstore and has a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted milk. Once again, he thinks about calling Jane, but his mind begins to wander. He remembers the time he saw her at a dance with a boy Holden thought was a show-off, but Jane argued that the boy had an inferiority complex. Holden decides that girls always say that as an excuse to date arrogant boys. Finally, he calls Jane, but no one answers. He then calls a boy named Carl Luce, whom he used to know at the Whooton School, and Luce agrees to meet him for drinks later that night.

Summary: Chapter 19

At the Wicker Bar, located in the posh Seton Hotel, Holden thinks about Luce. Luce is three years older than Holden and now a student at Columbia University. At the Whooton School, Luce used to tell the younger boys about sex. Holden says that he finds Luce amusing, even though he is effeminate and a phony. When Luce arrives, he treats Holden coolly, and Holden pesters him with questions about sex. Luce refuses to be drawn into the kind of sex discussion that they had had at Whooton, and he suggests that Holden needs psychoanalysis. Holden remembers that Luce’s father is a psychoanalyst, but Luce is evasive when Holden asks whether Luce’s father ever analyzed his own son. Annoyed by Holden’s juvenile comments and questions, Luce departs.

Summary: Chapter 20

After Luce leaves, Holden stays at the bar and gets very drunk. He stumbles to the phone booth and makes an incoherent late-night call to Sally Hayes, angering both her and her grandmother. He then tries to make a date with the lounge singer, an attractive woman named Valencia. When that fails, he tries, with no more success, to make a date with the hat-check girl.

Summary: Chapter 10

Still feeling restless, Holden changes his shirt and goes downstairs to the Lavender Room, the Edmont’s nightclub. Before he leaves his room, he thinks again about calling his little sister, Phoebe. Referring to her as “old Phoebe,” he gives a description of her character that is remarkably similar to the description he gave of Allie in Chapter 5. Like Allie, she has red hair and is unusually intelligent for her age. He recalls the time he and Phoebe went to see Hitchcock’s The Steps (despite his professed loathing for the cinema, he has clearly seen many movies and has strong opinions about them). He notes Phoebe’s humor and cleverness, and mentions that she writes never-ending fictional stories that feature a character named “Hazle” Weatherfield. According to Holden, Phoebe’s one flaw is that she is perhaps too emotional.

Summary: Chapter 11

As he walks out to the lobby, Holden reminisces about Jane. Their families’ summer homes in Maine were next door to one another, and he met her after his mother confronted her mother about a Doberman pinscher that frequently relieved itself on the Caulfields’ lawn. Holden and Jane became close—Jane was the only person to whom Holden ever showed Allie’s baseball glove. One day, Jane’s alcoholic stepfather came out to the porch where Holden and Jane were playing checkers and asked Jane for cigarettes; Jane refused to answer him, and, when he left, she began to cry. Holden held her, kissing her face and comforting her. Apart from that incident, their physical relationship was mild, but they used to hold hands constantly. When you held Jane’s hand, Holden reminisces, “all you knew was, you were happy. You really were.” Holden then feels suddenly upset, and he returns to his room. He notices that the lights in the “perverts’” rooms are out. He is still wide awake, so he heads downstairs and grabs a taxi.

Summary: Chapter 12

Holden takes a cab to a Greenwich Village nightclub called Ernie’s, a spot he used to frequent with D. B. His cab driver is named Horwitz, and Holden takes a liking to him. But when Holden tries to ask him about the ducks in the Central Park lagoon, Horwitz unexpectedly becomes angry. At Ernie’s, Holden listens to Ernie play the piano but is unimpressed. He takes a table, drinks Scotch and soda, and listens to the conversations around him, which he finds depressing and phony. He encounters an obnoxious girl named Lillian Simmons, whom D. B. used to date, and is forced to leave the nightclub to get away from her.

Summary: Chapter 13

Feeling like a coward for leaving Ernie’s, Holden walks the forty-one blocks from the nightclub back to the hotel. Along the way, he thinks about his gloves, which were stolen at Pencey. He imagines an elaborate confrontation with the unknown thief, but he acknowledges that he is a coward at heart, afraid of violence and confrontation. When he reaches the Edmont, he takes the elevator up to his room. The elevator operator offers to send him a prostitute for five dollars, and Holden, depressed and flustered, accepts. While waiting in his room, he again thinks about his cowardice, because he feels that his lack of aggression has prevented him from ever sleeping with a woman. Women, Holden believes, want a man who asserts power and control. As he broods, the prostitute, Sunny, arrives. She is a cynical young girl with a high voice. Holden becomes flustered, especially so when she removes her dress. She sits on his lap and tries to seduce him, but he is extremely nervous and tells her he is unable to have sex because he is recovering from an operation on his “clavichord.” He finally pays her the five dollars he owes and asks her to leave. She claims that the price is ten, but he refuses to pay her more, and she leaves in a huff

Summary: Chapter 14

Holden sits in his hotel room and smokes for a while. He remembers an incident shortly before Allie’s death when he excluded Allie from a BB-gun game—he still feels guilty for having left Allie out. Eventually, he goes to bed. He feels like praying, but his distaste for organized religion prevents him from following through on his inclination. Suddenly, there is a knock at his door. In his pajamas, Holden opens the door to face the burly elevator operator, Maurice, who has returned with Sunny to collect the extra five dollars Sunny demanded. Holden tries to refuse, but Maurice pins him against a wall while Sunny takes the money from his wallet. Maurice snaps his finger into Holden’s groin, and Holden starts to insult him in response. Maurice slugs Holden in the stomach and leaves him crumpled on the floor. Holden imagines himself as a movie character, taking his revenge on Maurice after having been plugged in the gut with a gangster’s bullet. Finally, he manages to get into bed and go to sleep.

Summary: Chapter 15

The next morning, Holden calls Sally Hayes and makes a date with her for later that afternoon. He checks out of the hotel and leaves his bags in a locker at Grand Central Station. He worries about losing his money and mentions that his father frequently gets angry when Holden loses things. He also describes his mother a bit, noting that she “hasn’t felt too healthy since my brother Allie died.” Holden worries that the news of his expulsion will particularly distress his fragile mother, for whom he seems to care a great deal.

Summary: Chapter 6

Home from his date, Stradlater barges into the room. He reads Holden’s composition and becomes visibly annoyed, asserting that it has nothing to do with the assignment and that it’s no wonder Holden is being expelled. Holden tears the composition up and throws it away angrily. Afterward, he smokes a cigarette in the room just to annoy Stradlater. The tension between the two increases when Holden asks Stradlater about his date with Jane. When Stradlater nonchalantly refuses to tell Holden any of the details, Holden attacks him, but Stradlater pins him to the floor and tries to get him to calm down. Holden relentlessly insults Stradlater, driving him crazy until he punches Holden and bloodies his nose. Stradlater then becomes worried that he has hurt Holden and will get into trouble. Holden insults him some more, and Stradlater finally leaves the room. Holden gets up and goes into Ackley’s room, his face covered in blood.

Summary: Chapter 7

Holden talks for a while with Ackley and then tries to fall asleep in the bed belonging to Ackley’s roommate, who is away for the weekend. But he cannot stop imagining Jane fooling around with Stradlater, and he has trouble falling asleep. He wakes Ackley and talks with him some more, asking whether he could run off and join a monastery without being Catholic. Ackley is annoyed by the conversation, and Holden is annoyed by Ackley’s “phoniness,” so he leaves. Outside, in the dorm’s hallway, he decides that he will leave for New York that night instead of waiting until Wednesday. After passing a few days there in secret, he will wait until his parents have digested the news of his expulsion before he returns to their apartment. He packs his bags, dons his hunting hat, and begins to cry. As he heads into the hallway, he yells “Sleep tight, ya morons!” to the boys on his floor before stepping outside to leave Pencey forever.

Summary: Chapter 8

Holden walks the entire way to the train station and catches a late train to New York. At Trenton, an attractive older woman gets on and sits next to him. She turns out to be the mother of his classmate, Ernest Morrow. He dislikes Ernest immensely but tells extravagant lies about him to his mother, claiming that he is the most popular boy on campus and would have been elected class president if he’d let the other boys nominate him. Holden tells her his own name is Rudolph Schmidt, which is actually the school janitor’s name. When she asks why he is leaving Pencey early, Holden claims to be returning to New York for a brain tumor operation.

Summary: Chapter 9

At Penn Station, Holden wants to call someone but cannot think of anyone to call—his brother, D. B., is in Hollywood; his sister, Phoebe, is young and probably asleep; he doesn’t feel like calling Jane Gallagher; and another girl, Sally Hayes, has a mother who hates him. So, Holden takes a cab to the Edmont Hotel. He tries to make conversation with the driver, asking him where the ducks in the Central Park lagoon go in the winter, but the driver is uninterested. In his room at the Edmont, he looks out across the hotel courtyard into the lighted windows on the other side and discovers a variety of bizarre acts taking place. One man dresses in women’s clothing, and in another room a man and a woman take turns spitting mouthfuls of their drinks into each other’s face. Holden begins to feel aroused, so he calls Faith Cavendish, a promiscuous girl recommended to him by a boy he met at a party, and tries to make a date with her. She refuses, claiming she needs her beauty sleep. She offers to meet him the next day, but he doesn’t want to wait that long, and he hangs up without arranging to meet her.

Life is the sum of experiences that we encounter as we go through life. Day to day struggles and triumphs are experienced by all of the world's creatures. As human beings, when we encounter a challenge, we have freedom to choose how to react. Every decision that we make leads us down a different road. We will never come to exactly the same crossroads. Every decision the we make has significance. The tiniest choice that we make reverberates throughout the entire universe.

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou :

Chapter 5 Notes 

• they always ate steak on saturday nights so when their parents asked what they were eating they would say steak so it seemed like they were eating full healthy meals.

•  many of the kids didn't eat the food the only kids that actually ate the food were the younger

kids who didn't know better or guys like ackley that ate everything

• holden wrote stradlater's composition about old Alli's baseball mitt.

CHAPTER 6

• stradlater got mad at holden becauase he found out holden wrote his composition about a baseball mitt.

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (NOTES)

                               

 

• HOLDEN SEEMS LIKE THE KID TEACHERS USUALLY GIVE UP ON, AND LOOSE ALL HOPE FOR.
• HE DOES CARE AND ACTUALLY HAVE A HEART
• HOLDEN EXPLAINS THAT THE SCHOOL HE GOES TO IS FOR RICH KIDS , HE ALSO EXPLAINS THE KIDS THAT GO THERE ARE THIEVES.
•  HOLDEN HAS AN OLDER BROTHER (DB)
• DB IS A HOLLYWOOD SCREEN WRITER WHO DRIVES A JAGUAR
• HOLDEN IS VERY UNSURE OF HIMSELF AND THE THINGS HE DOES
• HE DOESNT LIKE WEAKNESS OR VULNERABILITY
• HOLDEN FEELS LIKE HE ACTS YOUNGER THAN HIS AGE BUT WHEN HE IS MATURE NO ONE EVER NOTICES HIM OR THE THINGS HE DOES
• HOLDEN GOT KICKED OUT OF HIS HOUSE
• MR.SPENCER IS HIS OLD HISTORY TEACHER
• HOLDEN WENT TO VISIT MR. SPENCER
• HOLDEN THINKS HIS OLDER BROTHER IS A SCAM ARTIST
• HE ALSO THINKS HIS BROTHER IS A HYPOCRYTE
• HE WAS FRIENDS WITH SELMA THURMUR SHE WAS THE HEADMASTERS DAUGHTER SHE WASNT THE "PRETTY" TYPE