The Catcher in the Rye: Chapter 9

The color-coded bars in this section make it easy to track the themes throughout the work. Each color corresponds to one of the themes explained in the Themes section of this LitChart. For instance, indicates that all five themes apply to that part of the summary.

Summary Analysis Themes

In Penn Station in New York, Holden wants to talk to someone, and considers calling D.B., his younger sister Phoebe, Jane, or another friend named Sally Hayes. He calls none of them.

A sign of Holden’s loneliness, self-imposed alienation, and depression: he has friends but doesn’t want to contact them.

Instead, Holden puts on his hunting cap and hails a cab to the Edmont Hotel. On the way, he asks the driver where the ducks in the Central Park lagoon go in the winter, but the driver thinks he’s joking and gets annoyed.

Holden’s hat and his duck question are both childish and inappropriate for someone his age.

From his room in the hotel, Holden can see into other rooms. In one, a man is cross-dressing. In another, a couple spits their drinks in each other faces. Holden gets aroused, and thinks he’s both a “sex maniac” and doesn’t understand sex at all.

The things Holden sees reinforce that Holden isn’t wrong: there is phoniness in the adult world. And Holden actually finds himself aroused by it. That may be part of why he hates it.

Again he thinks of calling Jane, but instead calls Faith Cavendish, a woman whose number he got from a guy who told Holden she was promiscuous. She refuses to meet him that night, but offers to meet him tomorrow. He doesn’t want to wait that long, and hangs up.

Holden obviously would rather see Jane, but he sees her as innocent and perfect and thinks of sex as dirty. To protect his illusions of Jane’s purity, he isolates himself.