The Catcher in the Rye

Holden doesn’t know where to go, so he heads to Grand Central Station, where he sleeps until nine. When he wakes up, he thinks about what happened with Mr. Antolini, and he wonders what it means that Mr. Antolini was so kind in so many ways but still made what Holden interpreted as a pass at him. He can’t come to any conclusion, and it makes him more depressed to think about it.

Holden reads a magazine for a while, then heads over to get some breakfast, which he feels too sick to eat. He starts walking down Fifth Avenue and sees how Christmassy everything is, which makes him think of Phoebe. Before long, he starts panicking, first thinking that he will start sinking when he crosses the street, then thinking he will vanish; he starts imagining asking Allie not to let him disappear. This goes on for a long time, and Holden feels like he can’t stop walking until he’s walked far past the zoo.

When he finally calms down, he sits on a bench and decides that he’s going to start hitchhiking West until he finds a place to get a job at a gas station. He thinks he will pretend to be a deaf-mute, then marry someone who is a deaf-mute and start a family; notably, he says that if he had children, he would hide them from the world.

He decides that he will leave Phoebe a note so he can say goodbye and return her money, so he gets some stationery and walks to her school. He sits on the steps of the school and writes the note. Before he can leave, he feels ill again, and then he sees that someone has written “fuck you” on the wall (260). This makes him very upset, and he rubs it off.

He gives the note to a woman in the principal’s office and it is handed off to be delivered to Phoebe. On his way out of the school, he sees another “fuck you” written on the wall, scratched in this time. He thinks that cleaning up all the “fuck yous” in the world is hopeless and heads to the museum.

At the museum, he meets two young brothers who want to see the mummies. He kids around with them for a moment, then shows them the way, but they get scared and run off. Alone in the mummy’s tomb, Holden sees another “Fuck you” on the wall. Afterward, he goes to the bathroom and nearly passes out before going to meet Phoebe.

He finds Phoebe wearing his red hunting hat and carrying a suitcase—if he’s running away, she’s going with him. Holden becomes upset with her, yelling at her about the play she’s supposed to be in, and she starts to cry. He tries to get her to check her bag at the museum, but she stands firm and throws his hat at him, saying she’s not going back to school and refusing to budge.

Finally, Holden says she can skip school and go on a walk with him if she promises to go back tomorrow. She runs across the street, and he starts walking in the other direction, knowing that she’ll follow. They walk to the zoo on opposite sides of the block, then begin to get closer to each other as they enter the zoo and look at the animals. They arrive at the carousel, and Holden buys Phoebe a ticket. He watches her ride the carousel, trying to grab the gold ring and afterward buys her more tickets. She takes his hunting hat out of his pocket and puts it back on his head, and he watches her ride as it starts to pour on him, thinking “God, I wish you could’ve been there” (275).

The novel concludes with a brief chapter set in the present, with Holden saying that he doesn’t feel like telling the rest of how he ended up in an institution. He also doesn’t know if he’s going to apply himself when he goes to a new school in the fall; he won’t know until he’s there. When D. B. visits, he asks what Holden thinks about everything that happened, and Holden admits he doesn’t know. All he knows is that he’s started to miss all the people he’s talked about, even the ones who he said he didn’t like.