How long was holden at pencey prep

He seems best at the rites of passage smoking and drinking that are themselves artificial if not self-destructive. Despite his limited experience, his attitude toward women is actually admirable and mature.

He stops making sexual advances when a girl says "No. In his confusion, he sees this behavior as a weakness that may even call for psychotherapy. His interactions with the prostitute Sunny are comic as well as touching, partly because they are both adolescents trying to be adults. Although Sunny is the more frightening of the two, neither belongs there.

Holden is literally about to crash. Near the beginning as well as the end of the novel, he feels that he will disappear or fall into an abyss when he steps off a curb to cross a street. Sometimes when this happens, he calls on his dead brother, Allie , for help. Part of Holden's collapse is due to his inability to come to terms with death. After smoking a couple of cigarettes, he calls Faith Cavendish, a woman he has never met but whose number he got from an acquaintance at Princeton.

Holden thinks he remembers hearing that she used to be a stripper, and he believes he can persuade her to have sex with him. He calls her, and though she is at first annoyed to be called at such a late hour by a complete stranger, she eventually suggests that they meet the next day. After making some wisecracks about his age, they leave, letting him pay their entire tab.

As Holden goes out to the lobby, he starts to think about Jane Gallagher and, in a flashback, recounts how he got to know her. They met while spending a summer vacation in Maine, played golf and checkers, and held hands at the movies. One afternoon, during a game of checkers, her stepfather came onto the porch where they were playing, and when he left Jane began to cry. Again, he asks the cab driver where the ducks in Central Park go in the winter, and this cabbie is even more irritable than the first one.

Holden says he has to meet someone, leaves, and walks back to the Edmont. She sits on his lap and talks dirty to him, but he insists on paying her five dollars and showing her the door. Sunny returns with Maurice, who demands another five dollars from Holden. When Holden refuses to pay, Maurice punches him in the stomach and leaves him on the floor, while Sunny takes five dollars from his wallet.

Holden goes to bed. They arrange to meet for a matinee showing of a Broadway play. He eats breakfast at a sandwich bar, where he converses with two nuns about Romeo and Juliet. He gives the nuns ten dollars. He tries to telephone Jane Gallagher, but her mother answers the phone, and he hangs up.

Holden and Sally go to the play, and Holden is annoyed that Sally talks with a boy she knows from Andover afterward. They both skate poorly and decide to get a table instead. Holden tries to get a drink and get lucky, and fails. Eventually, Holden settles down to think again about Jane Gallagher. Turns out, she may have been sexually abused by her stepfather.

He ends up at Ernie's, a nightclub in Greenwich Village where apparently you can drink at sixteen and runs into an ex-girlfriend of his older brother, D. She annoys him. Of course. Back at the hotel, Maurice the elevator man offers to procure Holden a prostitute. He agrees—got to get in some practice in case he ever gets married, you know. But when Sunny shows up in his room, Holden realizes he's not so much in the mood and he'd rather just talk.

Holden refuses. Whaddya know : a little while later after some depressing rumination about Allie , Maurice and Sunny show up looking for the extra five dollars. Maurice shoves Holden and, at being called a moron by a crying Holden, punches him in the stomach as well.

Once they leave, Holden imagines that Maurice has shot him in the gut. The next day, Holden makes a movie date with Sally Hayes, then donates ten dollars to two nuns and discusses Romeo and Juliet with one of them. Holden decides to buy the Little Shirley Beans record for Phoebe; on the way to the store, he overhears and perhaps mishears the little boy singing "If a body catch a body coming through the rye.

Holden has been expelled for academic failure and is not to return after Christmas break, which begins the following Wednesday. Even though he failed history with an abysmal performance, Holden does not blame the instructor.

He likes old Spencer. Perhaps readers appreciate Holden more because he is not a perfect "hero. Salinger himself was once enrolled in McBurney School in Manhattan, the intended site of the novel's canceled fencing meet. Although similarities to Salinger's life occasionally occur throughout The Catcher in the Rye , as readers we should be careful about biographical interpretations. Writers often use personal experience as background.

Holden may be a part of Salinger, but the first-person narrator should not be confused with the author. Holden has been expelled from Pencey Prep because he has flunked four subjects passing only English , including Mr.

Spencer's history class. On his way to Spencer's home to say good-bye, Holden feels terribly cold. There is no sun, and he feels as though he might disappear as he crosses Route to go to Spencer's house. This is the first of several instances when Holden feels he is losing himself or falling into an abyss.