1. Things You Should Know About The Book
The Catcher in the Rye
Things You Should Know About The Book

2. Themes Alienation as Protection (aka “Putting Up Walls”)
Holden seems to be excluded and victimized by the world. He feels “trapped on the other side” of life, as he tells Mr. Spencer, and he feels he doesn’t belong.
We find that he does this on purpose. He uses his isolation to say to the world that he’s better than it and the people in it; he doesn’t need to talk to them.
The truth, though, is that the world and people overwhelm and confuse him, and his cynical superiority is a type of self- protection.

3. Themes, continued The Pain of Growing Up
Holden resists growing up. He shows this in his thoughts about the Museum of Natural History – he loves it when things don’t change, when they stay the same. He loves childhood, and wishes it could last forever. (More on that later.)
He wants everything to be easily understandable and forever the same, like the Eskimo and Native American statues in the Museum.
He is scared because he does the same things that he criticizes in others. Like every human, he doesn’t understand everything around him. This scares him.
He doesn’t often admit his fear and lack of knowledge about being an adult, though. He’ll admit it only sometimes, such as when he says in Chapter 9, “Sex is something I just don’t understand. I swear to God I don’t.”

4. Themes, continued The Pain of Growing Up, continued
Instead of acknowledging that growing up can be scary, Holden invents a reality in which every adult is a phony, and every child is perfect. (We know that in real life, neither of those things are true.)
His fantasy of “the catcher in the rye” shows this very well. He imagines that he could be the person saving the kids from jumping off a cliff. He imagines childhood as playing in a field, and adulthood as the fall from the cliff itself.

5. Themes, continued The Phoniness of the Adult World
“Phoniness” is a word Holden uses to describe every bad thing in the world.
He uses it to mean arrogance, being a hypocrite, being a liar, thinking you’re better than someone, etc.
He’s not entirely wrong, of course.
Think of characters like Maurice and Sunny, Carl Luce, Sally Hayes. Do you think Holden has good reason to think they’re fake?
What Holden doesn’t notice, though, is his own faults. He’s a compulsive liar, for example.
Holden wants everything to be Black and White – innocence and goodness on one side of the fence, and phoniness on the other. But life isn’t like that all the time. This is one of the painful things we all learn as we grow up.

6. Motifs
A motif is a recurring structure, contrast, or literary device that can help develop a theme in a novel.

7. Loneliness
Holden’s loneliness is a driving force throughout the novel. He keeps seeking out company, but never finds the right kind.
Holden depends on his isolation, though, as protection, so he never lets anyone in.
He self-sabotages. He needles people until they leave – we see this in his conversations with Carl Luce, Sally Hayes, his telephone conversations, and so on.

8. Relationships and Love
Both physical and emotional relationships might allow Holden to break out of his shell.
They represent what Holden fears most about being an adult: things being complicated, things being unpredictable, and a potential for conflict and change.
Like the Museum, Holden wants things to be frozen and unchanging. Relationships are never like that.
Allie’s death has made Holden hate change, and relationships change life. Holden hates relationships and intimacy.
He messes up every potential relationship, perhaps on purpose, to maintain his armor.
But the sad part is that he keeps seeking them out. He’s human.

9. Lying
Holden reserves the most hate for people who think and act like something they’re not.
Lying is also a sign of cruelty. People often lie to hurt others.
Holden is guilty of both kinds of lying, yet he won’t admit it with any guilt.
Holden is often just as bad as the people he hates! We all do this, though, at some time or another.

10. Symbols
A symbol is an object, a character, a figure, or a color used to represent an idea or a concept

11. The Catcher in the Rye
As the source of the book’s title, this one is pretty important.
It first appears in chapter 16, when Holden admires a kid walking in the street singing a Robert Burns song, “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye.” In chapter 22, Phoebe asks Holden what he wants to do with his life. He says he wants to be a catcher in the rye, imagining little kids playing in a field of rye, and he’d be there to catch them before they fell off a cliff.
The actual lyrics to the song, though, are “if a body meet a body, coming through the rye,” not “if a body catch a body.” Ironically, the song is actually about what people are allowed to do when they meet each other.

12. Holden’s Red Hunting Hat
Holden uses the hat to show his uniqueness and individuality. He wants to be different from everyone around him.
Oddly, though, it also makes him uncomfortable. He always mentions when he’s wearing it, and he doesn’t wear it if he’s around people he knows.
The hat mirrors Holden’s desire for isolation versus his need for companionship.
The hat, too, is red, like Allie’s and Phoebe’s hair.

13. The Museum of Natural History
The Museum appeals to Holden because they are frozen and unchanging.
He also mentions how uncomfortable it makes him to return and to see that anything HAS changed.
The Museum represents the world Holden wants to live in – unchanging, permanent, simple, compartmentalized, and clear.
Holden is terrified by the unpredictability of the world – Allie’s senseless and sudden death, interaction with other people, and growing up.

14. The Duck Pond in Central Park:
(This is a really important symbol in the book!)

15. The Duck Pond
Holden’s curiosity about where the ducks go in the winter reveals his genuine interest, and his child-like nature. (There’s a difference between childlike and childish, keep in mind.)
1. Their mysterious perseverance, their toughness in the cold of winter, resonates with Holden. He feels similarly. Some ducks leave, some ducks stay.
2. The ducks also prove that some disappearances are only temporary. Others are more permanent. Holden is terrified of permanent change, because of Allie’s death, and he is reassured that ducks – if nothing else – do come back.
3. Holden asks where they go in the winter. Winter often symbolizes death in literature. What Holden is really asking, whether he knows it or not, is ‘What happens after death?”
-- The Pond becomes a minor metaphor for Holden’s life, as he calls it “partly frozen and partly not frozen.” Life is like that, especially for Holden, who is right between being a child and being an adult.