Summary: Chapter 7
Holden talks for a while with Ackley and then
tries to fall asleep in the bed belonging to Ackley’s roommate,
who is away for the weekend. But he cannot stop imagining Jane fooling
around with Stradlater, and he has trouble falling asleep. He wakes
Ackley and talks with him some more, asking whether he could run
off and join a monastery without being Catholic. Ackley is annoyed by
the conversation, and Holden is annoyed by Ackley’s “phoniness,”
so he leaves. Outside, in the dorm’s hallway, he decides that he
will leave for New York that night instead of waiting until Wednesday.
After passing a few days there in secret, he will wait until his
parents have digested the news of his expulsion before he returns
to their apartment. He packs his bags, dons his hunting hat, and
begins to cry. As he heads into the hallway, he yells “Sleep tight,
ya morons!” to the boys on his floor before stepping outside to
leave Pencey forever.
Summary: Chapter 8
Holden walks the entire way to the train station
and catches a late train to New York. At Trenton, an attractive
older woman gets on and sits next to him. She turns out to be the
mother of his classmate, Ernest Morrow. He dislikes Ernest immensely
but tells extravagant lies about him to his mother, claiming that
he is the most popular boy on campus and would have been elected
class president if he’d let the other boys nominate him. Holden
tells her his own name is Rudolph Schmidt, which is actually the school
janitor’s name. When she asks why he is leaving Pencey early, Holden
claims to be returning to New York for a brain tumor operation.
Summary: Chapter 9
At Penn Station, Holden wants to call someone
but cannot think of anyone to call—his brother, D. B., is in Hollywood;
his sister, Phoebe, is young and probably asleep; he doesn’t feel
like calling Jane Gallagher; and another girl, Sally Hayes, has
a mother who hates him. So, Holden takes a cab to the Edmont Hotel.
He tries to make conversation with the driver, asking him where
the ducks in the Central Park lagoon go in the winter, but the driver is
uninterested. In his room at the Edmont, he looks out across the
hotel courtyard into the lighted windows on the other side and discovers
a variety of bizarre acts taking place. One man dresses in women’s
clothing, and in another room a man and a woman take turns spitting
mouthfuls of their drinks into each other’s face. Holden begins
to feel aroused, so he calls Faith Cavendish, a promiscuous girl
recommended to him by a boy he met at a party, and tries to make
a date with her. She refuses, claiming she needs her beauty sleep.
She offers to meet him the next day, but he doesn’t want to wait that
long, and he hangs up without arranging to meet her.
Analysis: Chapters 7–9
The Catcher in the Rye is
a chronicle of Holden Caulfield’s emotional breakdown, but Holden
never comments on it directly. At no point in the story does he
say that he is undergoing an emotional strain; he simply describes
his increasingly desperate behavior without much explanation. Salinger
cleverly manipulates Holden’s narrative to signal to the reader
that there is more to the story than what Holden admits or describes.
In the previous sections, Holden exhibited a number of behaviors
that might indicate a troubled mind: running through the snow to
Spencer’s house, writing Stradlater’s English composition about
Allie’s baseball glove, attacking Stradlater for joking about Jane,
leaving his dorm forever in the middle of the night, and yelling
an insult down the hallway on his way out. In this section, Holden’s frantic
loneliness and constant lying further the implication that he is
not well mentally or emotionally.
As soon as he gets off the train in New York
in Chapter 9, Holden wants to call someone and seems especially to
want to call Jane, but he is apparently too nervous (he suspiciously
claims not to “feel like it” and runs through a long list of people
he could contact instead). This seems particularly strange given
Holden’s cynicism and evident dislike for most people; in Chapter 8, for instance, he describes enjoying the solitude of late-night
train rides. His desire for human contact becomes even more intense
as the section progresses: he begins to feel sexually aroused and
tries to make a date with a stranger whose number he was given at
a party, then goes to a nightclub to flirt with older women. Holden’s
constant lying, in this section and throughout the novel, is a mark
of immaturity and imbalance. As soon as he meets Mrs. Morrow on
the train, Holden begins telling ridiculous lies, claiming to be
named Rudolph Schmidt and to be going to New York for a brain tumor
operation. He feels guilty for lying, but the only way he can stop
is to stop talking altogether. There is no particular rhyme or reason
for the lies he tells Mrs. Morrow—his intentions toward her may be
kind, or cruel, or simply careless. What does seem clear is that
he lies to deflect attention from himself and what he is doing.
In his reactions to the other guests in the
hotel, whom he refers to as “perverts,” Holden reveals a great deal
about his attitudes toward sex and toward what makes him uncomfortable
about sexuality. He admits that he is aroused by the idea of spitting
in someone’s face and that the couple across the courtyard seems
to be having fun. But he thinks that people should only have sex
if they care deeply for one another, and “crumby” behavior such
as this seems disrespectful. What bothers him is his perception
that sexual attraction can be separate from respect and intimacy,
and that sex can be casual or kinky. He knows this from his own
experience with a former girlfriend, from observing Stradlater’s
mating habits, and from watching his new neighbors. As he tells
his story, Holden never seems particularly concerned about his own behavior
or that of those around him. He often seems angry, but he rarely
discusses his feelings. By combining what we know about Holden from
his narration with his actions in the story, we can piece together
the desperation, the pressure, and the trauma he endures during
this difficult time in his life.
