Chapter 5

Holden and Ackley proceed to the hall for dinner. They eat hard, dry steak patties, a meal Holden derisively labels as the school’s attempt to impress the parents who visit during weekends. Mal Brossard, a friend, asks Holden if he wants to watch a movie. Holden agrees, and also asks Ackley if he’d like to join them. Though he’d prefer to watch the movie without Ackley, Holden feels bad for him and checks with him nonetheless. As he waits for Ackley, Holden makes a snowball and looks around for a potential target. However, he finds everything around him too beautiful to be a target for his snowball. He carries the snowball in his hands as they walk to the bus, where he is asked by the driver to discard it before boarding.

Since Ackley and Mal have already seen the movie, they end up eating hamburgers and playing pinball before returning to Pencey. When Ackley boasts about his sexual encounter with a girl, Holden recognizes that Ackley is lying and chases him off.

At long last, Holden begins work on Stradlater’s assignment. He is supposed to describe a house or a room, but he dismisses the idea as it does not appeal to him. He chooses to write about his deceased brother Allie’s baseball glove instead. Allie would scribble poems on his glove so that he had something worthwhile to look at while playing baseball. Holden, having loved Allie deeply, was so distraught after his death that he broke all the windows in their garage with his bare hands until he injured himself badly.