The Catcher in the Rye is about a boy named Holden attending a private school named Pencey prep. He soon finds out he is going to be expelled again from another elite school and will not be returning to school after Christmas break is over. Before he leaves he goes to say goodbye to one of his favorite teachers. He then tells Holden that he needs to try and take responsibility for his life. To make matters worse he just learned that his roommate took his love interest, Jane Gallagher, out on a date and gets in a fight with Stradlater the person whom she is going out with. Holden gets so fed up with his life at Pencey that he decides to leave three days before break.
Holden then gets on a train headed for home and meets one of his old classmate’s mothers. He proceeded to lie about himself, saying that he was going home early for surgery and telling her his name was the name of one the school janitors. He then lies about the mother’s son telling her that his behavior is school is excellent even though according to Holden it is not.
When Holden arrives in town he goes to a phone booth and realizes that he can not call his sister because his parents would be suspicious. He thinks about calling other people and then ends up calling no one. He gets a cab and decides to stay the night at a hotel. Holden becomes lonely sitting by himself at the hotel and then calls a woman that was once a stripper and she says she will not meet him. Then Holden goes down to the lounge and meets three women. He dances with all of them but none of them take him seriously due to his age. He leaves the hotel because he thinks it is “too depressing” and no one will serve him drinks. He takes off and goes to a bar but is put off by all the phony people there.
He returns to the hotel walking back in the cold. At the hotel he gets an offer to have a prostate come up to his room, he agrees. When the prostitute comes up to his room he just can not be sexually involved with her. She then leaves after he pays her five dollars the price that the man at the elevator told him. The next morning the prostitute’s manager comes up to his room demands that he pay him the other half of the ten dollars. He then gets beaten and is broken physically and mentally.
Holden is feeling lonely again so the next morning and calls up one of his old girlfriends Sally Haze to make a date, she agrees. He goes to the park and hopes to see her sister but does not. After that, he goes to the museum he becomes sentimental because displays have not changed from the time he was little.
When he takes Sally out on a date they go to ice skating and Holden wants to run away with her she said she wants him to apply himself in life. Then after getting drinks at a bar Holden is missing his sister and wants to go home without his parents knowing. Holden goes to spend the night at an old teacher’s house he tells him to apply himself in life. He then runs aways and sleeps in the park.
He calls his little sister and takes her to ride on the carousel and feels complete in that moment wanting nothing more but he has fallen ill with Tuberculosis. The story ends with Holden in a TB care center writing his story.