The Catcher In The Rye

The Catcher in the Rye: Study Guide Questions
Chapter 1-2
1. The narrator is Holden Caulfield a student of Pencey Prep in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. Holden narrates the story in first person.
2. The school doesn’t mold their boys into men.
They advertise the school in a lot of magazines.
The school doesn’t do the activities they promote.
3. Holden is lazy when it comes to his school work. “How many subjects did you carry this term?” “Five, sir.” “Five. And how many are you failing in?” “Four.” (Salinger,10)
4. He left the fencing equipment on the train.
5. The setting is the middle on winter at a prep school for boys in Agerstown, Pennsylvania.
6. The author is J.D. Salinger.
7. He is hostile to them because he doesn’t want to age.
8. Mr. Spencer is Holden’s history teacher.
9. He reads his history essay on the Egyptians.
10. Where do the ducks go when the lagoon freezes over?
11. This reveals that Holden ignores the situations that occur in his life.
12. He uses a lot of vulgar words in his language throughout the two chapters, which can lead to him becoming aggressive as the novel progresses.
Chapter 3-5
1. Honest, Lazy, Casual, Judgmental, Sarcastic
2. These events take place after Holden lost the fencing equipment.
3. He is failing four out of five classes that he is taking at Pencey. Also, before the came to the school, he was bounced around from school to school because of his grades.
4. Ward Stradlater is a student at Pencey and Holden’s dorm mate. He is a senior; he is also playful with a good body build. Ackley is Holden next door mate, they share showers between rooms. Ackley is a senior that often barges in on Holden. He is about 6’4 with lousy teeth, due to poor oral hygiene.
5. Holden has a crush on Jane Gallagher. She was Holden’s neighbor at one point in time.
6. The clues provided show that Holden is a nervous but stable boy. “
7. He refers to them as phony because of the way they act with certain people around them.
8. I like how Holden openly expresses himself to others, even though he can’t speak to Jane.
9. I have learned that his brother Allie is deceased.
10. I believe that Holden will reveal his troubles through one fit of rage, or become extremely depressed throughout the rest of the novel.
Chapters 6-10
1. The significance of Holden’s hat is it makes him feel confident in public.
2. Holden believes that he is going through a phase when pushing away his responsibilities as a young adult. He avoids his responsibility of finishing school with good grades and
3. He is just very intrigued with the concept of where the ducks depart to during the winter.
4. Holden acts like a phony by ignoring that he has a mental issue and not taking responsibility in problems he creates. He behaves like this because he has come to the conclusion that he is a perfect and infallible.
5. In my opinion I believe Holden’s perception of his surroundings is realistic.
6. Holden’s becomes most uncomfortable when he starts to talk about how good Stradlater’s body and image looks to him.
7. “I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddamn windows with my fist, just for the hell of it.” (Salinger,39) In this quote Holden senselessly destroyed the windows in his house’s garage the night his brother died.
8. During Holden’s conversation with Mrs. Morrow she finds out that he goes to Pencey by the stickers on his bag. She later asks if he knows her son Ernest, Holden lies and says that he does and that Ernest is the most popular boys at school. I believe he lies to her and behaves like this to avoid any type of conversation or confrontation with his mother.