"Sophie Heitzeneder" <[e-mail]>

B

OOKREPORT BY SOPHIE HEITZENEDER

, D

ECEMBER

99

“The catcher in
the Rye”
written by J.D.
Salinger

"Sophie Heitzeneder" <[e-mail]>

C

ONTENTS

:

1. S

UMMARY

2. M

AIN

C

HARACTER

3.

PERSONAL OPINION

"Sophie Heitzeneder" <[e-mail]>

B

OOK

R

EPORT

: “T

HE CATCHER IN THE

R

YE

“

WRITTEN

BY

J.D. S

ALINGER

Summary

The story is about the youth life of Holden Caulfield, a
17 year old student at Pencey. But in this book there are
only told two or three days after leaving Pencey.
He was already kicked out of 2 schools before and this
year he is again flunking 4 subjects. He is about leaving
also this school and so he visits his old history teacher
for telling him good-bye. Back at the dorm he talks to his
room-mate Stradlater, who wants him to do a composition
for English for him because he has a date with Jane
Hallagher, an old friend of Holden. Holden finds the time
to write the essay. He was told to write a description of
something and so he described Allie’s baseball mitt.
Allie was his 2 years younger brother, who died on
leukaemia some years ago. Holden was 13 when he died. It
was a great shock for him; he broke the windows in the
garage and he hurt his hand.
Anyway, when Stradlater comes back home, he wasn’t
satisfied with the composition. They talk about the date
and Holden asks him if they had sex, but Stradlater just
says that it’s a ”professional secret”. Holden gets mad
and they have a fight until he is defeated and gets
unconscious. When he wakes up, he makes the decision to
leave Pencey immediately.
He goes to New York by train and there he meets the mother
of a schoolmate Ernest Morrow. Holden poses as Rudolf
Schmidt and only tells lies to Ernest’s mother – but good
lies about her son: so he reports about the friendliness
and sensitiveness

of her son and that he is the most

popular boy at school although Holden

thinks that Ernest

is the biggest bastard at school but he likes this woman.
Nevertheless he tells her that he has an operation because
of a little tumor on his brain, therefore his Christmas
vacations “start” some days earlier.
Arriving in New York he rents a room in a hotel. At the
bar he meets 3 women he talks to for wasting time. He
jumps into a cab and goes to a bar where he meets an old
girlfriend of D.B., his older brother, a writer in

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Hollywood. Unfortunately she has no time and so he comes
back to the hotel where he ordered a prostitute for 5$.
They have no sex, but he gets in a row with the owner who
wants 10$.
The next morning he calls Sally, a friend, for having a
date. They go to the movies and afterwards ice skating.
They talk about wedding but get into an argument and so he
leaves her. He tries to meet another friend, who had no
time as well. He gets drunk and walks to Central Park. He
is freezing like hell and so he decides to go home to meet
Phoebe, his younger sister without telling their parents.
She is surprised meeting him but she soon becomes
disappointed because she knows that he left school again.
When their parents come home he leaves the house to visit
his old English teacher. He talks to him but becomes tired
and so he goes to sleep. When he wakes up he feels his old
teacher petting his head. Holden gets scared and so he
leaves and stays at a waiting room. He decides to leave
and to go west but he wants to meet Phoebe first and so he
leaves a message for her at school. He meets her at the
museum, carrying a suitcase, because she wants to come
with him. They go to a carrousel where he finally decides
to stay at home.
During his time spending in New York, he remembers very
often his sister Phoebe – her smartness and her innocence.
He often dreams to be as Phoebe because then he wouldn’t
have realised the death of Allie.

In the end we recognise that Holden tells us the story
when he stays in a psychiatry after getting sick at home.

Main Characters

Holden Caulfield

The author gave a good description of Holden Caulfield as
an always lonesome and depressed youngster who didn’t get
over his younger brother’s death.
Holden loves to provoke people and telling them lies about
his terrible fate.
Only to earn some sympathy he makes up lots of stories
about his childhood and his experiences he made.
The most important person in his life is his little sister
Phoebe who is innocent and smart. Her life is perfect:
good marks, lots of friends, a public school and the love

"Sophie Heitzeneder" <[e-mail]>

of her parents which Holden often didn’t feel at boarding
schools. Therefore he misses the love he didn’t get and
makes up stories to get some compassion.

Holden’s dream is to become a catcher in the rye which
means that he wants to stand at an abyss in a rye and to
save all people who want to jump into the abyss.
So he could help all despaired people who want to commit
suicide.

.

Personal opinion

That’s a very good book and I enjoyed reading it because
of the many thoughts Holden had which he told in a funny,
youth speech. But it also made me think about Holden’s
situation and problems.
It isn’t difficult to understand and therefore I can only
recommend it to my classmates.