The Catcher in the Rye Timeline Project By: Sanam Monjazeb, Jenny Boranian, Christian Gao, Brendan Weissberg

3:00 pm Holden watches the end of the football game against Saxon Hall on the top of Thomsen Hill. “It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn’t win” (Salinger 2). - Holden 3:30 pm The sick Mr. Spencer says goodbye to Holden and attempts to lecture him. “I’m pretty sure he yelled ‘Good luck!’ at me. I hope not. I hope to hell not. I’d never yell ‘Good luck!’ at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it” (Salinger 16). -Holden 4:30 pm Holden is back at the dorms with Ackley. “He started cleaning his goddam finger nails with the end of a match. He was always cleaning his fingernails. It was funny, in a way. His teeth were always mossy-looking, and his ears were always dirty as hell, but he was always cleaning his fingernails” (Salinger 22). -Holden

5:00 pm Stradlater returns from the football game and gets ready for his date with Jane. He asks Holden to write his composition for him. “That sonuvabitch Hartzell thinks you’re a hot-shot in English, and he knows you’re my roommate. So I mean don’t stick all the commas and stuff in the right place” (Salinger 28). - Stradlater 7:30 pm Holden, Ackley, and Brossard go to Agerstown for burgers and a movie, but skip the movie. “I yelled over and asked old Ackley if he wanted to go to the movies…[he] asked who was going besides me…I swear, if that guy was shipwrecked, and you rescued him in a goddam boat, he’d want to know who the guy was that was rowing it before he’d even get in” (Salinger 36). - Holden 8:45 pm The three of them return to the dorms, and Ackley lingers for a while. When he finally leaves, Holden writes Stradlater’s composition. “The thing that was descriptive about it, though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he’d have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up to bat. He’s dead now” (Salinger 38). - Holden

10:45 pm Stradlater returned from his date. He and Holden got in a fight fueled by Holden’s rage at the way Stradlater treats women. “I told him he thought he could give the time to anybody he felt like. I told him he didn’t even care if a girl kept all of her kings in the back row or not, and the reason why he didn’t care was because he was a goddam stupid moron…” (Salinger 44). - Holden 11:45 pm Holden leaves Pencey Prep. “I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down the goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don’t know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my voice, ‘Sleep tight, ya morons!’” (Salinger 52). - Holden 1:00 am Holden walks to a train station to go to New York City. At a stop at Trenton, a woman boards the train. She notices Holden’s Pencey Prep sticker, and asks him if he knows Ernie Morrow, her son. “She had a nice voice. A nice telephone voice, mostly. She should’ve carried a goddam telephone around with her” (Salinger 54). - Holden

3:00 am Holden arrives at the Penn Station. He keeps wanting to call someone, but then decides not to. He takes a cab to Edmont Hotel. “Then I thought about calling up this guy that went to the Whooton School when I was there, Carl Luce, but I didn’t like him much” (Salinger 59). - Holden 4:00 am Lavender Room (nightclub at Edmont Hotel): Holden tries to order alcohol. He begins to make small talk and dances with three women from Seattle. “They probably thought I was too young to give anybody the once-over. That annoyed hell out of me – you’d’ve thought I wanted to marry them or something” (Salinger 70). - Holden 5:00 am Holden begins to recollect about Jane Gallagher. Their summer homes in Maine were next door, and they met when his mother went to talk to them about their Doberman defecating on their lawn. “When she was talking she got excited about something, her mouth sort of went in fifty directions, her lips and all. That killed me. And she never really closed it all the way, her mouth” (Salinger 77). - Holden

6:00 am Holden takes a cab to a Greenwich Village nightclub called Ernie’s. He listens to Ernie play piano, drinks scotch and soda, and sees Lillian Simmons, D.B.’s old girlfriend. He leaves to get away from her. “Well, you little so-and-so. All right for you. Tell your brother I hate him, when you see him” (Salinger 87). - Lillian Simmons 7:00 am Edmont Hotel: Holden goes back to his room at the Edmont Hotel and hires a prostitute named Sunny for “a throw.” After Sunny takes her dress off, Holden suddenly gets depressed and changes his mind. Holden pays her $5, which she complains about, then leaves. “I took her 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” (Salinger 96). - Holden 8:00 am Edmont Hotel: Maurice comes barging into the hotel room and tells Holden that he owes them $10 instead of $5. She and Sunny gang up on him and steal the money out of his wallet. “It’s 10 bucks, chief. I tole ya that. Ten bucks for a throw, fifteen bucks til noon. I tole ya that” (Salinger 101). - Maurice

10:00 am Sandwich Bar: While getting breakfast, Holden talks to two nuns about where they’re from and what they’re doing in New York. They end up getting into a conversation about Romeo and Juliet and Holden donates $10 to their charity. “…it was sort of embarrassing, in a way, to be talking about Romeo and Juliet with her. I mean that play gets pretty sexy in some parts, and she was a nun and all…” (Salinger 111). - Holden 12:00 pm Holden goes to a record store on Broadway to try to find a record for his sister Phoebe called “Little Shirley Beans.” He talks about how he always wanted to buy it for her because he knew it would knock her out. “A boy that lived on the next floor had it, and I tried to buy it off him because I knew it would knock old Phoebe out, but he wouldn’t sell it” (Salinger 114). - Holden 2:00 pm Sally and Holden go out on their date; they go to the Lunts’ show. Afterward, they go to Radio City and go ice-skating. After skating, they went into a bar and had a drink and Holden came up with this idea that they would run off together to Vermont and get married and have kids. “…In the first place we’re both practically children. And did you ever stop to think what you’d do if you didn’t get a job….We’d starve to death” (Salinger 132). - Sally Hayes

10:00 pm The Wicker Bar: Holden meets Carl Luce at the Wicker Bar. They talk about his personal life and about some new girl that he’s dating. Holden keeps questioning Luce about his sex life, and Luce gets irritated with Holden’s immaturity. After a while Luce looks at his watch and says he has to leave. “Listen. Let’s get one thing straight. I refuse to answer any typical Caulfield questions tonight. When in hell are you going to grow up?” (Salinger 146). - Carl Luce 11:30 pm Holden sits at the bar after Luce leaves; he is lonesome. He pretends that he has a bullet in his gut and it makes him feel a little better. Holden calls Sally in his drunkenness and tells her that he is going to trim a tree with her. “Trimma goddam tree for ya. Okay?” (Salinger 151). - Holden 1:00 am Holden goes home to visit Phoebe and tricks the elevator monitor to take him to his floor. Holden sneaks past the room and finds Phoebe in his big brother’s room. He looks at her writings. She wakes up and they talk; she finds out he got “the axe.” “Daddy’ll kill you!” (Salinger 165). - Phoebe

1:30 am Holden admits he got expelled to Phoebe. He tries to explain why he did not like the school. Phoebe argues with Holden and tries to convince him that he should have studied harder. Holden calls Mr. Antolini. “If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye” (Salinger 173). - Holden 2:00 am Holden talks about James Castle falling to his death and how Mr. Antolini picked him up first. Holden dances with Phoebe. Holden’s mom comes home and Holden swats the air to get rid of the smoke. Holden’s mom leaves and Phoebe gives Holden some “dough.” “In between numbers she's funny as hell. She stays right in position. She won't even talk or anything. You have to stay in position and wait for the orchestra to start playing again" (Salinger 175). - Holden 1:00 am Holden goes over to Mr. Antolini’s house. They talk over smokes and alcohol. Mr. Antolini talks about life and Holden’s education. Holden goes to sleep, but awakes to find that Mr. Antolini is patting his head. Holden is frightened that he is trying to make a move on him, and leaves. He sleeps at Grand Central Station. “The mark of an immature man, is that he wants to die nobly for a cause” (Salinger 188). - Mr. Antolini

8:00 am Holden wakes up and is crowded with people at the Grand Central. He wants to notify Phoebe that he is leaving. He writes her a note to meet him at the museum. Phoebe comes with her bags packed, hoping to leave with Holden. He says no and she gets mad; later he takes her to the park where she rides the carousel. Holden feels very happy. "I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth. It was just that she looked so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all. God, I wish you could've been there" (Salinger 213). - Holden Back to Holden’s Present Time In rest home, Holden says he will be enrolling in school again in the fall. He misses people he met during his adventures and his roommates. Holden says he gets questioned about his education by a psychoanalyst. “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody" (Salinger 214). - Holden

Bibliography  Salinger, J.D.. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Company,  Google Images. 27 Jan  Sutton, Bettye. "Assignment Guide for J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye (1951)." Catcher in the Rye. May Lone Star College-Kingwood Library. 27 Jan 2009.