Holden Caulfield is a 16 years old ‘student‘, who has been expelled from yet another school for his poor achievement. The story is told in the first person, Holden, who does not know what he wants in life, or why people want what they want of him, or why he does lots of the things he does, or why they do lots of what they do. He has just flunked out of Pencey Prep., just like all his other schools, and he can't figure out what he is going to do. He leaves school a few days earlier to the end of term, and goes to New York to 'take a vacation' before returning home. He wanders about the city and meets a lot of people. He drinks a lot. He gets sick. He loves his brothers (one live- D.B, one dead- Allie) and his sister- Phoebe. The book describes Holden's thoughts and activities over these few days, during which he spends in New York. He knows whom he likes and whom he doesn't. Mostly he doesn't. There are lots of ‘phonies‘ around him and that's what he likes least. He tries not to be phony himself, and mostly he succeeds. He'd like to find answers to his questions, but by the end of the book he still hasn't found them. That's phony. They didn't even get the question, let alone the answer. He still wonders what the point is really.
Characters:
Holden Caulfield
- a 17 years old student
- tall, skinny; seems to be older than he is
Behaviour:
- sometimes rude and cheeky but mostly polite nad well-behaved
- smokes and drinks a lot (quite addicted)
- talkative nature
- spontaneous
- he doesn’t show his feelings
- he asks needless questions and gives childish arguments (f.e. he asks the taxi driver where the dugs go when the lake freezes over)
- he is rebellious but he still obeys some some rules of good behaviour (f.e. while talking with nuns)
- he uses slang expressions and vulgarisms (sonuvabitch, goddam, bastard, ass)
- Holden is very immature, but believes that he is mature
- his feelings are different from his acting
Feelings:
- confused, mixed-up
- he doesn’t show his feelings, because he dousn’t want to be hurt
- dissapointed, disgusted, lonely, downhearted
- likes children and want to protect them
- he hates the hipocrisy of the world
- he doesn’t like anyone, especially phonies
Emotions:
- hates almost everybody except Phoebe and his dead brother Allie (at the end he realizes that he actually doesn’t hate the people)
- he likes children and want to protect them
- he is afraid of opening his feelings
Attitude to school:
- hate school as a system
- he hates the students, teachers and headmasters
Attitude to parents:
- considers them also phony
- on one hand he’s afraid of his father, on the other hand, he feels sorry for them as he has been expelled from another school
Attitude to children:
- he likes their innocence and purity
- wants to protect them
Abilities:
- smart, intelligent, capable, good at writing compositions
- he starts the conversation very easily
- talkative; he knots the contacts very easily (three women in the bar, nuns,...)
Personality:
* positives
- talkative, sensitive, likes books, bright, smart
*negatives
- vulgar, layer, irresponsible, lazy, no ambitions to life
- he complains about the world and people around him a lot
- he’s unable to adapt, calculating
- moody, very complicated
- often immature
Phoebe:
- Holden’s 10 years old sister who he loves very much because she represents all that is not phony in the world;
- she represents all what is pure and innocent
- she is very nice and smart; she loves his brother and is ready to go with him anywhere
- she is able to articulate Holden’s beliefs better than he can himself
Allie:
- Holden’s beloved brother who died of leukemia before the story began - he also represents all that is genuine and not phony
- Holden sees him as the role model of the perfect human because he was nice to everyone he ever met
D.B.:
- Holden’s older brother who has sold out to Hollywood as a prostitute - he’s also a phony
- Holden admires him in a way but not nearly as much as he admires Allie
Parents:
- Holden’s mother and father represent what he considers phony
- he never has a conversation with them throughout the book and tries to avoid them as much as possible
Mr. Spencer:
- Holden’s history teacher who he admires and then feels sorry for after he visits him at his home; Holden realizes that Mr. Spencer is just a pathetic old man who he can no longer relate to
Mr. Antolini:
- Holden’s English teacher who respects and believes he can always turn to for help
- he discovers that he is homosexual; this serves to further confuse Holden
Ackley:
- friend from Pencey Prep.
- described as a pimply guy who never goes out and has few friends
- he has pimples and ugly personality
- Holden feels sorry for him and is nice to him though he really doesn’t like him much
Stradlater:
- Holden’s Prencey Prep. roommate
- when Holden questions Stradlater about having sex with Jane Gallagher, he punches Holden
- he is very handsome and well-built
- he is phony and conceited
Sally Hayes:
- a good-looking unintelligent girl who Holden goes to a play with
- she repesents middle class values about success and happiness
Jane Galangher:
- Holden’s childhood friend who always kept here kings in the back row in checkers
Author’s style:
- informal
- author uses spoken language with huge amount of slang expressions
- language of teenagers
- the story is told in I-narration
- the novel is divided into 26 numbered chapters connected by the main characters
Theme:
- the struggle between two generations (teenagers and adults)
- the loss of illusions of young people
- the contrast between innocence and hypocricy
Subject matter:
- the main problem is whether young people should chose their own future according to their wishes and experience all the obstacles that would be brought by this decision, or just blindly follow the rules given by the older generation.
- view of a world of a teenage boy Holden Caulfield who thinks that the world is a place where the most valuable human qualities such as love, kindness (emotions) have been replaced by the success based on ambitions, power and money
- the problem whether young people should choose their own life according to their wishes
- Holden constantly feels betrayed, and that is a possible cause of his problems:
* Mr. Spencer betrays him- he was one of the few teachers at Pency that Holden liked; Spencer broke the news of Holden's expulsion, and Holden felt betrayed
* Stradlater betrays Holden by dating his best friend, Jane, whom Holden also had a crush on
* when Holden returns home to see Phoebe, she is disappointed in him that he failed out of Pency; he thinks that she should accept him unconditionally, so he feels betrayed
- Holden is alienated from society; he feels that no one understands him and that everyone is a "phony"; he thinks that no one is honest, and everybody wants to be something else; he feels that the only person who understands him is Phoebe; he does not have relationships with girls, or anyone because he feels that he is the only genuine person in the world
