CPT:
20 Important Quotations from The Catcher
in the Rye
1. "If you really want to hear about
it, the first things you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what
my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before
they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like
going into it, if you want to know the truth. On the first place, that stuff
bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages
apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them" (Salinger 1).
2. "[Mr. Spencer] wrote me this note
saying he wanted to see me before I went home. He knew I wasn't coming back to
Pencey. I forgot to tell you about that. They kicked me out" (Salinger
3-4).
3. "Game, my ass. Some game. If you
get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right—I'll
admit that. But if you get on the other
side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing.
No game" (Salinger 8).
4. "[Ackley] took
another look at my hat while he was cleaning them. 'Up home we wear a hat like
that to shoot deer in, for Chrissake,'
he said. 'That’s a deer shooting hat.' 'Like hell it is.' I took it off and
looked at it. I sort of closed one eye, like I was taking aim at it. 'This is a
people shooting hat,' I said. 'I shoot people in this hat'" (Salinger 22).
5. "The bus driver opened the doors
and made me throw [a snowball] out. I told
him I wasn't going to chuck it at anybody, but he wouldn't believe me. People
never believe you" (Salinger 36-37).
6. "All I did was, I got up and went
over and looked out the window. I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost
wished I was dead . . . Boy, did I feel rotten. I felt so damn lonesome"
(Salinger 48).
7. "All of a sudden, I decided what
I'd really do, I'd get the hell out of Pencey—right that same night and all . .
. I just didn’t want to hang around any more. It made me too sad and lonesome.
So what I decided to do, I decided I’d take a room in a hotel in New York—some
very inexpensive hotel and all—and just take it easy till Wednesday"
(Salinger 51).
8. "'May I ask your name, dear?'
'Rudolf Schmidt,' I told her. I didn't feel like giving her my whole life
history. Rudolf Schmidt was the name of the janitor of out dorm" (Salinger
54-55).
9. "'Listen,' [Horwitz] said. 'If you
was a fish, Mother Nature'd take care of you,
wouldn't she? Right? You don't think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya?'" (Salinger 83)
10. "I took [Sunny's] dress over to the
closet and hung it up for her. It was funny. It made me feel sort of sad when I
hung it up. I thought of her going in a store and buying it, and nobody in the
store knowing she was a prostitute and all. The salesman probably just thought
she was a regular girl when she bought it. It made me feel sad as hell—I don't
know why exactly" (Salinger 95-96).
11. "It took me quite a while to get to
sleep—I wasn't even tired—but finally I did. What I really felt like, though,
was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would've
done it, too, if I'd been sure somebody'd cover me up as soon as I landed. I
didn't want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory"
(Salinger 104).
12. "I got up close so I could hear
what he was singing. He was singing that song, 'If a body catch a body coming
through the rye.' He had a pretty little voice, too. He was just singing for
the hell of it, you could tell. The cars zoomed by, brakes screeched all over
the place, his parents paid no attention to him, and he kept on walking next to
the curb and singing 'If a body catch a body coming through the rye.' It made
me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed any more" (Salinger 115).
13. "The best thing, though, in that
museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move . .
. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you" (Salinger 121).
14.
"You
ought to go to a boys' school sometime. Try it sometime," I said.
"It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn
enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you
have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all
you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks
together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the
basketball team stick together, the Catholics stick together, the goddam
intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together Even the
guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month
Club stick together" (Salinger 131).
15.
"[Luce]
was leaving his tip and all and he was starting to go. 'Have just one more
drink,' I told him. 'Please. I'm lonesome as hell. No kidding." He said he
couldn't do it, though. He said he was late now, and then he left"
(Salinger 149).
16.
"Anyway,
I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of
rye
and
all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around—nobody big, I mean—except
me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have
to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they're running
and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day.
I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all" (Salinger 173).
17.
"Here's
what [Wilhelm Stekel] said: 'The mark of the immature man is that he wants to
die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to
live humbly for one'" (Salinger 188).
18.
"I
went down by a different staircase, and I saw another 'Fuck you' on the wall. I
tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife of something. It wouldn’t come off. It's
hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out
even half the 'Fuck you' signs in the
world. It's impossible" (Salinger 202).
19.
"'Did
you mean it what you said? You really aren't going away anywhere? Are you
really going home afterwards?' [Phoebe] asked me. 'Yeah,' I said. I meant it,
too. I wasn't lying to her. I really did go home afterwards" (Salinger
212).
20.
"D.B.
asked me what I thought about all this stuff I just finished telling you about.
I didn't know what the hell to say. If you want to know the truth, I don't know what I think about it. I'm sorry I
told so many people about it. About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. Even old
Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice.
It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing
everybody" (Salinger 213-214).
CPT: 3 Quotes for Literary Analysis from
The Catcher in the Rye
1. "All of a sudden, I decided what
I'd really do, I'd get the hell out of Pencey—right that same night and all . .
. I just didn’t want to hang around any more. It made me too sad and lonesome.
So what I decided to do, I decided I’d take a room in a hotel in New York—some
very inexpensive hotel and all—and just take it easy till Wednesday"
(Salinger 51).
This brief passage occurs in Chapter 7, after Holden has
been expelled from Pencey, and he reveals his plan. Holden was a student who
failed 4 courses out of 5 and was yelled at by the principal because he left
all of the school’s fencing equipment on the subway on the day of the match. He
had argued with his dorm mates, Ackley and Stradlater, whom he considers snobs.
Holden leaves the school at the age of 16, and instead of leaving the dormitory
on Wednesday, Holden decides to leave there earlier and hangs around New York.
This quotation reveals a major aspect of Holden's personality: that he has low
self-esteem. The reader sees how Holden feels 'sad and lonesome' and thinks
that the world is against him. This fear makes him avoid the ordeals that he
faces instead of overcoming them. This passage also makes the reader feel
sympathy for Holden as he has just left Pencey a few days earlier due to the
argument with his friends. Shortly after when he actually leaves the dormitory,
the situation creates more sympathy for him when he said that he was 'sort of
crying' after all. This, passage in which Holden reveals his plan advances the
plot. Now Holden must move on and has no need to talk about his feelings about
phonies and liars in Pencey, especially since he is going to New York and no
longer in school. The reason why Holden decides to leave Pencey earlier is not
only that he argued with his dorm mates, but he was lonely and felt hatred
about phonies and liars in Pencey as well. This quotation creates irony because
towards the end of Chapter 7, we see how Holden has cried when he leaves his
dorm. This passage reveals the theme of growing up. Holden's decision to go to
New York a few days earlier shows that he makes his first independent decision
getting out of his barriers, which indicates that he is on the way to find his
own identity. On the other hand, this fact leads Holden to feel loneliness more
because nobody in New York understands him and they are also full of phonies
and liars, like his friends in Pencey. Even though he moves one step forward to
grow up, his loneliness is increasing.
2.
"It
took me quite a while to get to sleep—I wasn't even tired—but finally I did.
What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping
out the window. I probably would've done it, too, if I'd been sure somebody'd
cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn't want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking
at me when I was all gory" (Salinger 104).
Holden
shows his state of mind shortly after Maurice assaulted him in Chapter 14.
After he leaves school, Holden meets several people. First off, he meets the
mother of his snobby classmate on the train to New York. He satisfies her
fantasy about her son in school by lying to her. After he arrives New York, he
dances and pays for three tourists in the club, meets his brother D.B.’s
ex-girlfriend. But Holden never has a real relationship with any of them. When
he arrives at a cheap hotel, he calls on a prostitute named Sunny due to the
recommendation of the elevator boy Maurice. However, he changes his mind and
just talks with her, then tries to send her away with 5 dollars like Maurice
advised. But she asks for 10 dollars and Holden refuses to give it to her.
Shortly after, she comes back with Maurice and they take 5 dollars from his
wallet after they assault him, and this is when he reveals his state of mind.
This passage reveals the personality of Holden: that he is a weak-minded boy.
He easily thinks about committing suicide to get out of his hardships instead
of thinking about how he can overcome them, like Holden thinks that he would
rather kill himself than sleep. Not only does this passage show Holden’s
personality, but it also creates sympathy for Holden when he was assaulted by
Maurice and is considering to commit suicide. Since he says he felt like committing
suicide but he is afraid to act it out, we feel more sorrow for him. It offers
comic relief by saying he did not want to show his corpse to 'a bunch of stupid
rubbernecks,' when he explains the reason why he does not want to commit
suicide. This passage introduces 'suicide' as a symbol of Holden's weak
personality, as he tries to avoid his ordeals. This passage also reveals the
theme of growing up. Holden leads a life of a wanderer to find his identity
which indicates the reason why he is always lonely, and that fact leads him to
feel hatred because, in his view, the world of adults is full of phonies and
liars. Eventually, the painfulness of growing up makes him consider committing
suicide.
3.
"D.B.
asked me what I thought about all this stuff I just finished telling you about.
I didn't know what the hell to say. If you want to know the truth, I don't know
what I think about it. I'm sorry I told so many people about it. About all I
know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. Even old Stradlater and Ackley,
for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice. It's funny. Don't ever
tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody" (Salinger
213-214).
This
brief passage occurs in Chapter 26. Holden reveals that he was receiving
psychotherapy which is now done, and announces that his story ends. Holden
wants to be the catcher in the rye who protects children's purity from the
adult world full of phonies and liars. He plans to go West and collects the
money by pretending to be mute and deaf. Then he wants to live in a cabin until
he dies. That means he wants to say goodbye to the world that is full of
phonies and liars to keep his purity. But Phoebe wants to follow him after she
sees his message that he is going to go west. Holden gives up his plan and
promises Phoebe that he will stay in New York with his family. This fact
indicates that Holden moves one step forward to the adult world passing through
adolescence. This is the time that this passage happened. Holden said that his
story has finished and now he misses his friends, who were full of phonies and
liars in Pencey, that he once despised. This passage reveals how Holden’s
personality has changed after psychotherapy. We see how Holden now misses his
friends Stradlater and Ackley, even 'that goddam Maurice' unlike before, when
he despised them all. This quote provides denouement and makes the reader feel
sympathy for Holden as he has received psychotherapy. This quote indicates that
even though Holden feels resistance about the adult world that is full of
phonies and liars, he acclimates himself there. The fact that Holden is done
his psychotherapy and states that he just has finished telling the story of his
life advances the plot. It is ironic that right after he finished telling his
story, he advises the reader not to tell their story to anybody because they
will miss them like he has. This part also makes the reader imagine that
situation as well. This passage reveals the theme of growing up. Holden had a
hard time during his adolescence. He has a dream to be the catcher in the rye,
however, he acclimates himself to the adult world which is full of phonies and
liars due to the painfulness of growing up. Holden is an afflicted teenager who
puts himself both in an ideal world, and in reality, which means he was an
ideal rebellious teenager, on the one hand, and a social misfit, on the other.
A part of growing up has been satisfied; Holden has taken on the role of a
mature person.
Work Cited
Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Little, Brown and Company, 1991.
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