Characters.

Holden 

Whether Holden Caulfield is self conscious depends on the situation. Holden is searching for independence. As a symbol of independence, he wears a red hunting hat, which he grows fond of during the events of the novel because it displays uniqueness and individuality. Holden uses the red hunting hat to prove he is better than everybody around him, therefore not needing to interact with them. He wishes not "to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anyone", which not only supports that Holden is a phony himself, as he strikes up conversations with various people he meets, but also alienates himself from society. His loneliness and alienation causes him much pain as he seeks for human contact and love. However, when talking about his family, Holden says, "My brother D.B.'s a writer and all, and my brother Allie, the one that died, that I told you about, was a wizard. I'm the only really dumb one". This statement shows Holden's lack of self confidence and feeling that he is a failure to his family.

Phoebe Caulfield

Holden talks his sister up to no end. She's the smartest kid ever, he assures us, as well as a great dancer, emotional, and funny. She always knows what you're talking about. She can tell the difference between a good movie and a bad one. She listens.

Then we meet Phoebe. And basically, she's everything Holden said she would be. She's a pretty amazing character because she somehow manages to be all over the above, but still very much ten years old. (Check out her notebook scribblings – they're a ten-year-old's in every way.) We do feel the hand of authorial manipulation when Phoebe corrects Holden about Robert Burns, but hey, it was the forties, so maybe kids just knew that stuff back then.

Still, it's this mingling of child-like enthusiasm and adult-like incisiveness that makes Phoebe so compelling. Her notebook entry has exclamation points (child), but she points out to Holden that, really, he doesn't like anything (adult). She's smart enough to figure out that Holden's gotten the ax again (adult), but responds by putting a pillow over her head and repeating, "Daddy'll kill you" (child). Now what about her wanting to run away with Holden? Child, or adult? Child, sure, because she packs a suitcase thinking stubbornly that she'll go out West somewhere and not come back. No, wait, that's Holden. Phoebe isn't gung-ho to run away, she's gung-go to be with Holden, and it's rather likely that she's doing so because she feels – probably not consciously – that he needs someone to care for him.

When Holden refuses to let her come, she takes care of him in her own way, in that touching carousel scene when she puts his red hunting hat back on his head. Phoebe gives back to Holden, unlike every other character ever (see Holden's character analysis for details).

So, in Holden's eyes, Phoebe is exactly the sort of child he wants to protect by being the catcher in the rye. It's no surprise that she's the one he chooses to tell about his dream. Her reaction ("Daddy's going to kill you") doesn't convey it, but we have a feeling Phoebe knows exactly what Holden's talking about – just as he promised us she would.

Allie Caulfield

Holden's digression into Allie's baseball mitt is a fantastic example of how narration works in The Catcher in the Rye. It all starts when Holden agrees to write an English composition for his roommate, and before you know it, we have all this crucial information about Allie Caulfield: he died of leukemia on July 18, 1946. He was eleven and Holden was thirteen. The night of his death, Holden broke all the windows in the garage and had to be hospitalized. Allie was red-haired and left-handed. He wrote poems on his glove in green ink.

The information Holden gives us may seem overly-factual or even sparse, but it's incredibly telling. Allie was left-handed – he was a unique individual. He had red hair – he really stood out from everyone else. He wrote poems on his glove – he was sensitive and emotional, and he did so in green ink – again, he was a unique individual.

Holden's rendering of this information also tells us a lot of about the way he thinks about Allie: he idealizes him. We don't doubt that Allie was a great kid, but according to Holden, he's the most intelligent, nicest, sweetest, most endearing kid with the best sense of humor you'll ever meet. In Holden's love for his brother and in his pain over Allie's death, Holden has glorified Allie into something of a saint.

This makes sense when we think about Holden's mindset. Allie died when he was eleven years old – while he was still a child, and still "innocent." Having never been corrupted by the world of sex and adults, Allie is possibly the only person Holden could catch in a field of rye, the only person who never has to "go over the edge" of the great cliff. This is why, when Phoebe asks Holden to name one thing he likes, he responds with "Allie."

Of course, being a saintly and perpetually-young deceased person makes Allie a great go-to security blanket for Holden in times of distress which, we have to say, are none too infrequent. For having passed away years ago, Allie certainly makes a lot of appearances in the novel. Seriously – check out his timeline. Those are all the instances Holden stopped to think about or talk to his dead brother. See anything in common? It looks like Holden turns to his brother when times are worst. Allie ends up being a red flag for us, the reader, to know when things are bad for Holden. Just think about the disappearing-while-crossing-the-street incident.

Allie also plays into the way Holden thinks about his own mortality. We even get to see the two explicitly connected in the drunk-and-stumbling, searching-for-ducks scene in the park. Mostly, and this is incredibly telling about Holden's compassion, he worries about how others – his mom and his kid sister in particular – will feel if he dies. He remembers the pain of Allie's death and wouldn't want his family to have to go through that again.

Of course, if Allie is so important, why doesn't Holden just start talking about him right away? Why do we have to accidentally stumble into the topic via Stradlater's English composition, or a reminiscence about Bobby Fallon, or pneumonia? To answer that, we direct you to Holden's conversation with Mr. Antolini, when he declares that "you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most." (Check out "Tone" and "Writing Style" for more on this.)

Jane Gallagher

Sex is complicated. But for Holden, and specifically for Holden's relationship with Jane, it's really complicated. We talk in Holden's "Character Analysis" about how he can't imagine getting too sexy with a girl he has genuine emotion for, and Jane is a prime example. They hold hands, they sit close to each other, Jane puts her hand on the back of his neck…cute, but not exactly the most exciting Friday night with your significant other. Again, this was the 1940s, but as we see from the other boys at Pencey, young relationships aren't devoid of fooling around. We can't blame Holden's lack of advances on old-fashioned values – we have to look further.

The most telling scene is one we get in a flashback. The checker-playing scene is to Jane's character what the baseball mitt is to Allie's. We lead into it sort of accidentally (Holden just sits down in a "vomity-looking" chair in the hotel lobby and ruminates), and he delivers the crucial information we've been looking for.

Well, he sort of delivers it. Much like the Mr. Antolini incident, Holden leaves it up in the air as to whether or not Jane has been the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather. Holden's not sure, so we're not sure (although we can take a pretty good guess). Even if Jane's step-father hasn't raped, we know there's at least something wrong; Jane refuses to look the man in the face and cries after he leaves the room. Either way, it's not a good relationship, and Holden's suspicions that sexuality have something to do with it don't seem far off the mark (especially considering his earlier statement, back in Chapter Four, that her "booze-hound" stepfather used to run around the house naked).

So this, combined with Holden's history of possible sexual abuse, is a pretty good reason for their stunted sexual relationship. What's great is that it doesn't inhibit their emotional relationship at all – look at how Holden describes Jane to Stradlater. She keeps her kings in the back row, she used to be a dancer, she was a terrible golfer. Holden remembers personal, revealing details. He doesn't focus on the physical, as someone like Stradlater might, and he obviously cares about Jane as a person.

Of course, Holden's inability to reach out to Jane despite his feelings is a big reminder of his passivity and indecision. When he finds out she's downstairs waiting for Stradlater, he says over and over that he'll go down to say hello, but never does. He repeatedly contemplates calling her once he's in New York, but can't bring himself to go through with it. When he finally does pick up the phone already, she's not there.

Mr. Antolini

Let's just cut right to the chase. Does Mr. Antolini come on to Holden? The answer is…it's not clear. But you can argue either way.

There are definitely some hints that something is up here. We know that Mr. Antolini's wife is much older than he is, unattractive, and has a lot of money. While the two kiss a lot in public, they're never in the same room together, which makes us wonder if they're making a public show of what privately may be a marriage of convenience. If this is true, we could buy that, although married to a woman, Mr. Antolini is in fact gay.

Mr. Antolini calls Holden "handsome" before heading off to bed, and then sits next to him in the dark (while Holden's sleeping), and pets his head. When asked about it, he pretends things are casual, but lets slip a "I'm simply sitting here, admiring." Admiring? Sure sounds like he's attracted to Holden. When he's caught and accused, Mr. Antolini tries to shift the focus to Holden, accusing him of being a "very, very strange boy."

On the other hand, Holden and Mr. Antolini have been friends a long time, and the two are obviously close. They used to play tennis together, Mr. Antolini hangs with Holden's parents, and we can tell from his lengthy discoursing that he cares a lot about his former student. You could see calling Holden "handsome" as simply a friendly "good night." And Mr. Antolini may have been too distraught at this young man's plight to get any sleep. He might simply be ruminating about the boy's future when Holden wakes up, has a cow, and leaves in a nervous huff.

As it turns out, we have to choose not only how to interpret this scene, but also how to interpret Holden's subsequent comment that "When something perverty like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard. That kind of stuff's happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid." Twenty times? Holden is prone to exaggeration, but still – twenty times.

Now we also have to wonder what exactly falls into Holden's category of "perverty" behavior. If the preceding fiasco was sexual in nature, and if that sort of thing has happened frequently to Holden, we can understand why he always sees sex as degrading – might been the victim of sexual molestation on several occasions. On the other hand, if the Antolini business wasn't sexual, and if Holden just thinks that normal behavior is "perverty," the problem is with him, not his environment or circumstance.

Now let's look at Mr. Antolini's big lecture on education. He makes some rather compelling points in his argument that Holden needs to take school seriously. 1) Teaching and learning is a beautiful and symbiotic relationship, 2) Native talent can go to waste without the proper cultivation, and 3) Holden's much less likely to die a bitter, angry death if he gets an education.

Now, if he's coming-on to Holden, one and two could be potentially self-serving. But, giving Mr. Antolini the benefit of the doubt, these are all rather reasonable arguments. We'd go ahead and argue that it sounds like the tone here is genuine; that is, it doesn't seem like the author is poking fun at this set of beliefs in any way. It sounds a lot more like this is the real deal. And interestingly, Holden doesn't make sarcastic comments in response. He's tired, and he doesn't exactly applaud the speech, but he doesn't berate it as being phony either, which is sort of a first.

What does it mean, then, if the one person (besides Phoebe) who offers Holden real emotional help ends up trying to take advantage of him sexually? Or, what does it mean for Holden to imagine that this one person is trying to molest him? Does it negate the value of Mr. Antolini's advice? Taint it in some way? We'll let you take it from here.

Stradlater

Believe it or not, Holden devotes significant text time to telling us about Stradlater. He's an athlete, he's handsome, girls really go for him, he's got a nice body, he's always walking around in a towel to show off that body, and he's a "moron."

On the other hand, sex is definitely Stradlater's forte. His technique is coercion. As far as sex goes, Stradlater is the opposite of Holden. We get to see this contrast play out over Jane; look at how each of them think and talk about her. Holden focuses on the emotional, on their friendship, on Jane's unique qualities as a person. Stradlater doesn't even know her name. All he's concerned about is the fact that she only signed out until 9:30pm. If we were Holden, we'd be worried about this date, too.

Even worse (in Holden's mind, of course) is that Stradlater is one of the phoniest phonies he's ever met. Sure, he's good-looking on the outside, but Holden deems him a "secret slob" because his razor blade is always full of hairs and junk. He's obsessed with appearances (he spends a ton of time standing in front of the mirror), but there's not too much under the surface. Sounds a lot like what Holden doesn't want to be when he grows up.

Of course, we have to ask the ever-popular question, can we trust Holden's descriptions? Is this guy really so bad? We might be able to get Stradlater off the hook (as we did for Sally) for simply being an average guy. But he's still not a guy you'd want in the backseat of a car with a girl you care about.

Ackley

Ackley is dirty, pimply, and all-around unhygienic. Holden really doesn't like this guy. He's annoying. He'll come into your room and pick up your personal stuff and put it back in the wrong place. He'll cut his toenails all over your floor. And he thinks being two years older than Holden makes him superior.

Despite all this, Holden seems to spend an awful lot of time with Ackley. On the one hand, you could argue that's because, despite his cynicism and judgment, Holden is actually a compassionate guy. He invites Ackley to come along with him and Mal Brossard to the movies because no one else would hang out with Ackley for the night. Or, you could say that Holden is so lonely he hangs out with Ackley, even though he can't stand the guy. After Stradlater punches Holden in the nose, he goes into Ackley's room looking for company and conversation for the night. Most likely, it's a combination of both.


http://www.shmoop.com/catcher-in-the-rye/