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Holden checks into the Edmont Hotel and spends an evening dancing with three tourists at the hotel lounge.
#Themes in the catcher in the rye driver
In a taxicab, Holden asks the driver whether the ducks in the Central Park lagoon migrate during winter, a subject he brings up often, but the man barely responds. Aboard the train, Holden meets the mother of a wealthy, obnoxious Pencey student, Ernest Morrow, and makes up nice but false stories about her son. Holden intends to stay away from his home until Wednesday when his parents would have received notification of his expulsion. Fed up with the "phonies" at Pencey Prep, Holden decides to leave Pencey early and catches a train to New York. He goes to the room of Ackley, who is already asleep, and doesn't give him any attention.
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When Holden continues insulting him, Stradlater leaves him lying on the floor with a bloody nose. Enraged, Holden punches him, and Stradlater easily wins the fight. When Stradlater returns hours later, he fails to appreciate the deeply personal composition Holden wrote for him about the baseball glove of Holden's late brother Allie who died from leukemia a few years prior and refuses to say whether he slept with Jane. Since Ackley and Mal had already seen the film, they end up just playing pinball and returning to Pencey. That night, Holden decides to go to a Cary Grant comedy with Mal Brossard and Ackley. He is distressed to learn that Stradlater's date is Jane Gallagher, with whom Holden was infatuated and feels the need to protect. Holden and Stradlater normally hang out well together, and Holden admires Stradlater's physique. Later, Holden agrees to write an English composition for his roommate, Ward Stradlater, who is leaving for a date. Holden, who feels sorry for Ackley, tolerates his presence. Spencer offers him advice and simultaneously embarrasses Holden by criticizing his history exam.īack at his dorm, Holden's dorm neighbor, Robert Ackley, who is unpopular among his peers, disturbs Holden with his impolite questioning and mannerisms. Spencer, who is a well-meaning but long-winded old man.
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After forfeiting a fencing match in New York by forgetting the equipment on the subway, he says goodbye to his history teacher, Mr. Holden has just learned that he won't be allowed back at Pencey after the Christmas break because he had failed all classes except English. Holden recalls the events of a single night during the previous Christmas, beginning at Pencey Preparatory Academy, a boarding school in Pennsylvania. After his discharge within a month, he intends to go live with his brother D.B., an author and war veteran with whom Holden is angry for becoming a Hollywood screenwriter. His attitude seems to shift near the end of the novel when he realizes that Phoebe and other children must be allowed to "grab for the gold ring," to choose their own risks and take them, even though their attempts may be dangerous.Holden Caulfield, a depressed 17-year-old, lives in an unspecified institution in California after the end of World War II. If they should come too close to the edge of the cliff, however, Holden is there to catch them. Children play in the field with joy and abandon. " In this metaphor, he envisions a field of rye standing by a dangerous cliff. Holden's secret goal is to be "the catcher in the rye. Holden comforted Jane when she was distressed, and it bothers him that Jane may have been subjected to sexual advances from her drunken stepfather or from her date, Holden's roommate, Stradlater. Quite sweetly, they usually just held hands. He goes out of his way to tell us that he and Jane had no sexual relationship. He thinks of Jane Gallagher, for example, not as a maturing young woman but as the girl with whom he used to play checkers. The people he admires all represent or protect innocence. Holden's enemy is the adult world and the cruelty and artificiality that it entails. It is very closely related to his struggle against growing up. For most of the book, Holden sees this as a primary virtue. As its title indicates, the dominating theme of The Catcher in the Rye is the protection of innocence, especially of children. Some of these themes are outlined in the following sections. In The Catcher in the Rye, the major themes reflect the values and motivations of the characters. Innocence Themes in literary works are recurring, unifying subjects or ideas, motifs that allow us to understand more deeply the characters and their world.