Holden Caulfield's The Catcher In The Rye

The book is narrated by the main character, Holden Caulfield, while he is in a mental hospital or a sanitarium of an unspecified location. The book is set around the 1950's while Holden is sixteen years old. The narration begins on Saturday after classes end in the school, Pencey Prep school, in which Holden attends. Pencey is Agerstown, Pennsylvania and Holden has failed four out of five classes leading to his expulsion. Pencey is the fourth school that Holden has been expelled out of because of him failing classes. Currently watching a sporting event on top of a nearby hill that is overlooking the field of play, Holden decides to visit his history teacher, Spencer, that he is fond of. While he does go there, Holden does not stay long because

. Pencey Prep in Holden eyes was the source of pure corruption and phoniness. Holden was kicked out of school already, his conclusion being that “Pencey was full of crooks” only because “quite a few guys came from these wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has” (Salinger 4). Holden believed that it would feel worse to leave a place for good, but when he thought about leaving Pencey, he thought he “was lucky.

In the beginning of the novel the reader learns that Holden has been kicked out of his school Pency-Prep.

Holden shows his personal accountability by talking to his favorite teacher Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer was Holden’s favorite teacher at Pencey and told Holden to come by and say good-bye to him since

In the beginning of the story, Holden Caulfield is in Pencey Prep on the last Saturday before the end of the school year. Like the three other schools he’s been to before, he has not been invited back the next year, because he failed four out of five of his classes. Holden receives a notice to return home in Manhattan on Wednesday. Holden visits the home of Mr. Spencer, his old history teacher, to bid him farewell. However, when Mr. Spencer starts to lecture him and criticize him for his lack of effort in his studies, Holden lies and leaves the house.

Holden is the victim of the world, but he doesn’t do much to mitigate the damage. School is an example of his hardships since he cannot comply with the phoniness of the school. Despite his own facade, Holden desperately wishes to fit into the crowd. Since Holden does not fit in and does not pass his classes he must leave Pencey Prep. Holden visited the only teacher he liked, Mr. Spencer, and recalls that Mr. Spencer is the kind of person who could “get a big bang out of buying a blanket”(23). He said

Holden's poor relationships with his classmates and teachers, or people in general, was evident before he went to Pencey Prep as well as during his stay at Pencey Prep. When Holden thinks back to his previous school,

Likewise, after the third school, Pencey Preparatory school in Pennsylvania expels Holden, the first thing he misses are the friends he made. In the rural area of California, he recollects about his friends at the end of his autobiography, he says, “About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody… Even old Stradlater and Ackley”(214). At Pencey Preparatory School, Holden always criticizes everyone, even his friends, Stradlater and Ackley. He calls them, “dirty”(19) and “morons”(52). Before leaving Pencey preparatory school, he fights Stradlater and disturbs Ackley’s sleep multiple times.

He tells her that his old boarding school Pencey, “… was one of the worst schools I ever went to. It was full of phonies.” (Salinger 167). Holden’s belief that the school is pretentious has lead him to struggle to make friends. Throughout the novel, he progressively becomes lonely as he does not have anyone to talk to.

The exposition of Catcher in the Rye depicts troubled youth Holden Caulfield on his last day attending Pencey Prep School forever as he was expelled just before winter break due to his low grades in most of his classes. Holden spends his last day at Pencey in hopes of making some fond memories. However, he ends up receiving an interminable speech about applying himself from his history teacher Dr. Spencer. On top of this, Holden also gets into a

All of the scenes occurring at Pencey would be filmed at another prep school resembling the descriptions given by Holden throughout the book. (“...Way the hell up on top of Thomsen Hill, right next to this crazy cannon that was in the Revolutionary War...You could see the whole [football] field from there...”-The Catcher in the Rye, p.2) One of the more grotesque scenes would be the suicide of James Castle. This is a critical scene because Holden tells the reader about

"The Catcher in the Rye" is about the loneliness of a shy, adolescent boy who feels trapped among "phonies" in a prep school. His name is Holden Caulfield. Holden is a seventeen-year-old boy who is telling the story while undergoing mental treatment in a hospital. Holden can also somewhat be a rebellious teenager facing psychological trouble. He was expelled from his school at the age of sixteen and goes on a journey to New York City. During his journey, Holden faces a lot of alcoholism, regular cigarette smoking, and emotional

The Catcher in The Rye is about a seventeen-year-old boy Named Holden who is in a mental hospital. Having a flashback about what happened last December when he was 16 and just got kicked out of Pencey prep in the story he is trying to discover the world. Confused about everything does poorly in school and shows depression in hatred for everyone and everything. Throughout the story he meets people that impact his life like Mr. Spencer and Robert Ackley.

Then he goes on to tell how he is being kick out of Pencey Prep for failing four of his subjects and not applying himself to school. Before leaving the school to head home, he goes blurting out absurd words at his roommate, furious about not knowing what happened between his roommate and the girl he went on a date with. After that he took his stuff and left the school to go spend time at a hotel, instead of heading home right away. While trying not to go home to his parents, Holden get reacquainted with some of his old

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel by J.D. Salinger. It is narrated by Holden Caulfield, a cynical teenager who recently got expelled from his fourth school. Though Holden is the narrator and main character of the story, the focus of Salinger’s tale is not on Caulfield, but of the world in which we live. The Catcher in the Rye is an insatiable account of the realities we face daily seen through the eyes of a bright young man whose visions of the world are painfully truthful, if not a bit jaded. Salinger’s book is a must-read because its relatable symbolism draws on the reader’s emotions and can easily keep the attention of anyone.