Plot Overview
The story starts with seventeen year old, Holden Caufield, who is in a rest home. He starts talking about his life when he was sixteen. The story starts on the end of the school year in Pencey (school in Pennsylvania). This is Holden's fourth school because he has been expelled from the other three. He now is notified that he is failing more than half of his classes and that he is being kicked out of school. The thing is, he is scheduled to return home (Manhattan) till Wednesday, so he decides to go visit Mr. Spencer, his history teacher. He goes with the purpose of saying good-bye but instead gets lectured about this grades, so he gives a fake excuse and leaves. He goes back to his dorm room and easily gets mad because of Ackley (neighbor) and Stradlater (his roommate). Stradlater goes on a date with Jane, a girl Holden likes. When Stradlater gets back,Holden will not stop asking about the date to see if they had sex. Stradlater starts bugging Holden and this makes him mad and jump at him. Holden starts calling Stradlater a moron, so Stradlater punches him in the face. So he decides to go back to Manhattan early, but stay in a hotel instead of home. He will stay in a hotel because he does not want to face his parents about the expulsion. He takes a train where he meets the mother of a kid who goes to Pencey, so he starts telling her wonderful things about him even though he thinks he is a bastard. Once ha arrives, he gets in a photo booth and considers calling different people, but ends up leaving without using the phone. He takes a cab to Edmont Hotel, where he will stay. From his room, he can see some of the other rooms. He watches a series of bizarre events going on in the other rooms. He remembers a guy from Princeton gave him the number of a girl who used to be a stripper and he calls her to try and have sex with her. She was annoyed because he called very late, but anyway told him to meet up another day; he just hangs up. Holden decides to go to the hotels bar and is not served alcohol because he is a minor. Anyway, he flirts/dances with three older women, who are not really interested in him rather in celebrities, so they leave. Afterward, he goes to the lobby and starts thinking about Jane. He then tells the story about how they met and the closest they got to "necking". He decides to take a cab and go to Ernie's (a club). When he arrives, he sits down and suddenly sees his brother's ex-girlfriend. She comes over and invites him to sit with her and her new boy friend, he comes up with an excuse and leaves. While on the elevator, its operator (Maurice), offers Holden a prostitute for five dollars. Holden agrees, so a while later a prostitute named Sunny knocks on his door. He leads her in and tries to talk to her and invents her that he had an operation and can't have sex but that he will pay her anyway and then he leads her to the door. She then asks Holden for five more dollars, but when he refuses, Maurice punches him and Sunny takes five dollars from Holden's wallet. He goes to sleep and the next day wakes up early and calls Sally (a pretty girl that he once dated). They decide to go to a Broadway show. Before meeting with Jane he does several things, like: eat breakfast and speak to two nuns, try to call Jane but her mother answers so he hangs up, he goes look for Phoebe but instead of finding her ends up helping one of her friends with her skates and goes to the museum but ends up leaving before entering. He leaves to pick up Sally at Biltmore Hotel and takes her to the show. Afterward, they go ice skating and sit to talk. While having the conversation, Holden starts opening up and just saying anything that comes to his mind, like telling her to run away with him. When she refuses to do it, he jumps out on her and insults her, she feels offended and leaves crying. He tries to call Jane again but she does not answer, so instead he calls an old student advisor of his, Carl Luce. They go to a bar and Luce becomes annoyed by Holden's way of expressing about his girlfriend and homosexuals, so he comes up with an excuse and leaves. Holden stays, and once he was drunk, called Sally. He goes to the lagoon and looks for the ducks he watched as a child and finds them. Afterward, he goes into his apartment, wakes Phoebe and tells her about the expulsion. She gets mad and he starts trying to explain to her why he does not like school and that he wants to be the catcher in the rye and all. She responds by telling him he does not like anything and that he got the words wrong from the poem, that in reality the catcher in the rye does not actually "catch" the children. Holden calls Mr. Antolini, his English teacher, who invited him over to his apartment. He arrives and Mr. Antolini starts advising Holden about the future. Holden is very sleepy so Mr. Antolini puts him to sleep on the couch. When he wakes up, Mr. Antolini is patting him, he finds this very creepy and invents he has to leave. He sleeps on a bench for a few hours and then goes to Phoebe's school and sends her a note (the note said he was leaving town and that she should meet him in the museum at lunch). When she arrives, she is holding a suitcase and tells Holden she is going with him. He angrily refuses and that makes her really mad at him. He starts walking towards the zoo, knowing she will follow. He buys a ticket for Phoebe to ride the carousel, and watches her while the rain soaks him. Finally, he tells us he goes home and that he will return to school on fall.