Can someone help me here.....?

Question

I read it, and I'm trying to summarize it... can you tell me what 'The Catcher in the Rye' is about. I need a little help on this one.

No I will not copy word for word or anything like that, but I want someone else to explain this to me in a short version.

Thank you if you can help.

Answer 1

It is basically about a teenager coming to terms with his life. He doesn't want to grow up because he feels he is losing his innocence. Holden looks at the world around him and see what happens as people become adults. He is not happy with what he sees and is not ready to deal with it. You are along for ride as he comes to terms that he has to grow up and "grab the ring".
To understand Holden's feelings think back when you were a child and how life was. Now look at the world around you today. Would you still want to grow up? It kind of goes along the lines of ignorance is bliss.

Answer 2

~The Catcher in the Rye is an allegorical tale depicting both the coming of age of sexually maladjusted adolescents and the Manson Family escapades. Salinger wanted to write something a little more obvious and direct, but due to the McCarthy witch hunts, his publisher refused to publish the original manuscript. (It is available at the Salinger Library in Weehawken, NJ, but you must make advance arrangements to see it.) To top it off, the book at its deepest level is clearly a protest of the Vietnam War, almost to the same extent as Kesey's "Sometimes a Great Notion".

Answer 3

The novel covers a few important days in the life of the protagonist Holden Morrissey Caulfield, a tall, lanky, highly critical and depressed sixteen-year-old who academically flunked out of Pencey Prep boarding school. Because he is so critical of others, and points out their faults only to exhibit them himself later, Holden is widely considered to be an unreliable narrator, and the details and events of his story are apt to be distorted by his point of view. Nonetheless, it is his story to tell. Many flashbacks throughout the entire book create a feeling of knowing Holden.

Answer 4

The novel opens with the narrator, Holden Caulfield, a seventeen-year-old boy from New York City, telling the story of three days in his life. The whole narrative is a coming to terms with the past, since Holden tells it from a psychiatric institution. It is the adult world that has driven him insane. He just cannot relate to anyone except for his kid sister Phoebe. Everything and all other people seem "phony" to him. Holden is unable to accept life. Since Holden is becoming an adult himself, he is unhappy with what he will represent. He flunks out of three boarding schools in a row, the latest of them Pencey Prep, which is also where the first part of the story takes place.
One Saturday night, after an unpleasant experience with his history teacher "Old Spencer," his roommate Stradlater and the boy next door, Robert Ackley, Holden decides to leave Pencey four days early for Christmas break. He knows that he cannot return to his parents because they are not aware that he has been expelled again. Holden spends the next three days wandering aimlessly around New York City. He stays at a cheap hotel for one night, goes to two night clubs, dances with older women, often talks and thinks about sex, even has a prostitute come up to his room. The next day, he talks with some nuns about literature and has a date with his former girlfriend Sally Woodruff. They go to the theater and also go ice-skating. When he asks her to run away with him, she gets mad and they part. He is "depressed," at this time Holden thinks and even talks to his deceased brother Allie. To Holden, Allie represented innocence. With nobody else around, Holden turns to the only person he can relate to, his sister Phoebe. He sneaks into his parent's apartment at night to talk to his sister. He tells her about his dream to be a "catcher in the rye," and that he wants to run away.

He then leaves to meet his former teacher, Mr. Antolini. They have a good talk, but Holden leaves in a hurry when he thinks his host makes a sexual advance on him. He spends the night in a train station, then runs around town. Finally, he meets his sister, who tells him she wants to run away with him and that she will never go back to school. Holden sees himself in her, finally changes his mind and decides to go back to his parents. We are able to conclude that Holden then is sent to a mental hospital for treatment.