The Catcher in the Rye

J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, published in 1951, is an American classic widely heralded as one of the best novels of the 20th century. This coming-of-age novel captures the alienation that teenagers experienced in the years following World War II, and its popularity as an assigned text in US schools has led to its enduring relevance in American literature (and notoriety, as it frequently faced challenges or censorship from concerned parents).

Content Warning: This text discusses suicide and anti-gay prejudice, and it uses stigmatizing terms about mental illness, which are reproduced only in quotations.

Plot Summary

The novel is narrated from the subjective first-person perspective of Holden Caulfield, a teenager who recounts the novel’s events from an unspecified institution. Holden’s family has sent him there, though he soon goes to live with his brother, D. B., in Hollywood. Holden says he wants to tell the story of how he arrived in his present situation, which he does in a discursive, inward manner that focuses on his internal struggles with depression, particularly after the death of his brother Allie.

Holden’s story begins as he is expelled from his school, Pencey Preparatory Academy, after failing most of his classes; he has also caused the fencing team to forfeit their match after leaving the equipment on the subway in New York.