The Catcher in the Rye

Plot summary

The majority of the novel takes place in December 1949. The story commences with Holden Caulfield describing encounters he has had with students and faculty of Pencey Prep in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. He criticizes them for being superficial, or, as he would say, "phony." After being expelled from the school for his poor academic performance, Holden packs up and leaves the school in the middle of the night after a physical altercation with his roommate. He takes a train to New York but does not want to return to his family and instead checks into the dilapidated Edmont Hotel. There, he spends an evening dancing with three tourist girls and has a clumsy encounter with a young prostitute named Sunny.^[13] His attitude toward the prostitute changes the minute she enters the room. Holden becomes uncomfortable with the situation, and when he tells her that all he wants to do is talk, she becomes annoyed with him and leaves. However, he still pays her for her time. Sunny and Maurice, her pimp, later return to Holden's hotel room and demand more money than was originally agreed upon. Despite the fact that Sunny takes five dollars from Holden's wallet, Maurice punches Holden in the stomach.

Holden calls up his old girlfriend, Sally Hayes, to invite her to see a musical. Sally very excitedly agrees, and they meet for the play. After the play Holden and Sally go skating, and while drinking coffee Holden impulsively invites Sally to run away with him, but she declines. Her response deflates Holden's mood, which prompts a remark: "You give me a royal pain in the ass, if you want to know the truth" , he tells her, regretting it immediately. Sally storms off as Holden follows, pleading with her to accept his apology. Finally, Holden gives up and leaves her there. Holden spends a total of three days in the city, and this time is characterized largely by drunkenness and loneliness. At one point he ends up at a museum, where he contrasts his life with the statues of Eskimos on display. For as long as he can remember, the statues have been unchanging. These concerns may have stemmed largely from the death of his brother, Allie. Eventually, he sneaks into his parents' apartment while they are away, to visit his younger sister, Phoebe, who is nearly the only person with whom he seems to be able to communicate. Phoebe views Holden as a hero, and she is naively unaware that Holden's view of her is virtually identical. Holden shares a fantasy he has been thinking about (based on a mishearing of Robert Burns' Comin' Through the Rye): he pictures himself as the sole guardian of numerous children running and playing in a huge rye field on the edge of a cliff. His job is to catch the children if they wander close to the brink; to be a "catcher in the rye." Although misinterpreted, Holden believes that to be a "catcher in the rye" means to save children from losing their innocence.

After leaving his parents' apartment, Holden then drops by to see a former, and much admired, English teacher, Mr. Antolini, in the middle of the night, and is offered advice on life and a place to sleep. Mr. Antolini tells Holden that it is the mark of the mature man who wants to live humbly for a cause, rather than die nobly for it. This rebukes Holden's ideas of becoming a "catcher in the rye," a heroic figure who symbolically saves children from "falling off a crazy cliff" and being exposed to the evils of adulthood. During the speech on life, Mr. Antolini has a number of "highballs," referring to a cocktail served in a highball glass. Holden is upset when he wakes up in the night to find Mr. Antolini patting his head in a way that he perceives as "flitty." There is much speculation on whether Mr. Antolini was making a sexual advance on Holden, and it is left up to the reader to decide whether this is true. Holden leaves and spends his last afternoon wandering the city. He later wonders if his interpretation of Mr. Antolini's actions was actually correct.

Holden makes the decision that he will head out west, and when he mentions these plans to his little sister, she decides she wants to go with him. Holden declines her offer and refuses to have her accompany him. This upsets Phoebe, so Holden does her a favor and decides not to leave after all. Holden tries to reverse her saddened mood by taking her to the Central Park Zoo. He realizes his mistakes as she rides the carousel that lies within the zoo. While watching Phoebe, Holden realizes that he can’t be the “Catcher in the Rye" and that he is in need of help. At the conclusion of the novel, Holden decides not to mention much about the present day, finding it inconsequential. He alludes to "getting sick" and living in a mental hospital, and mentions that he'll be attending another school in September. Holden says that he has surprisingly found himself missing two of his former classmates, Stradlater and Ackley, and even Maurice the elevator operator/pimp. The last words of the novel are, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

WHAT KATY DID

What Katy Did

What Katy Did is a children's book written by Susan Coolidge, the pen name of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey. It follows the adventures of Katy Carr and her family, who live in the fictional lakeside Ohio town of Burnet in the 1860s. Katy is a tall untidy tomboy, forever getting into scrapes but wishing to be beautiful and beloved. When a terrible accident makes her an invalid, her illness and recovery gradually teach her to be as good and kind as she has always wanted.

Two sequels follow Katy as she grows up - What Katy Did at School and What Katy Did Next. Two further sequels relating the adventures of Katy's younger siblings were also published - Clover and In the High Valley; although these were long out of print, they have now been reprinted and are available online. Coolidge modeled Katy on her own childhood self, and the other 'Little Carrs' on her brothers and sisters.

Plot summary

Twelve-year-old Katy Carr lives with her widowed father and her five brothers and sisters in a small midwestern town called Burnet. Her father, a doctor, is very busy and works long hours. The children are therefore mostly cared for by their Aunt Izzie, who is very particular, and something of a scold. Under these circumstances, Katy, a bright, headstrong, hasty girl, can hardly avoid getting into mischief almost daily; however, she is unfailingly remorseful afterward. She dreams of someday doing something "grand" with her life - painting famous pictures, saving the lives of drowning people, or leading a crusade on a white horse. At the same time, she wants to be "beautiful, of course, and good if I can." When her mother died four years before, Katy promised to be a little mother to her siblings; however, although she leads them into all sorts of exciting adventures, she is sometimes impatient and cross with them.

When her Cousin Helen, an invalid, comes to visit, Katy is so enchanted by her beauty and kindness that on the day of her departure she resolves to model herself on Helen ever afterward. The very next day, however, Katy wakes in an ill humour, quarrels with her aunt, and pushes her little sister so hard that she falls down half a dozen steps. Afterwards, sulky and miserable, Katy decides to try out the new swing in the woodshed, even though Aunt Izzie has, for some reason, forbidden it. The swing is unsafe because one of the staples supporting it is cracked. Had Aunt Izzie explained this, "all would have been right," but she believes that children should obey their elders without question. As it is, Katy swings as high as she can and, as she tries to graze the roof with her toes, the staple gives way. Katy falls hard, bruising her spine.

The lively Katy is now bedridden, suffering terrible pain and bitterness. Her room is dark, dreary, and cluttered with medicine bottles; when her brothers and sisters try to comfort her, she usually drives them away. However, a visit from Cousin Helen shows her that she must either learn to make the best of her situation or else lose the love of her family. Helen tells Katy that she is now a student in the "School of Pain" where she will learn lessons in patience, cheerfulness, hopefulness, neatness, and making the best of things.

With Cousin Helen's help she makes her room tidy and nice to visit, and gradually all the children gravitate round it, always coming in to see Katy whenever they can. She becomes the heart of the house, beloved by her family for her unfailing kindness and good cheer. After two years Aunt Izzie dies, and Katy takes over the running of the household herself. At the end of four years, in a chapter called "At Last", she learns to walk again.

The book includes several poems.

SPEECH FOR PARENTS DAY

Hint-After saying hello and welcoming them mention how pleased the students are to be able to share aspects of their school work and classroom. Also say thank you on behalf of the other students for taking the time to come and also thanks for all the support they give you at home. Then finish with saying you hope they enjoy the day.

 Parents Day is a gesture of honor given children by to their parents to show their love and respect for them. It is a perfect gift of recognizing the educational and proclamation efforts that parents put in the upbringing of their children.

Parents Day is considered very special society as it acknowledges the dedication and unconditional love and support that parents give to their children despite of any problem they face in life to accomplish it.

The support of parents is considered to be very important in the growth and development of the children in both emotional and academic front. The day provides an excellent medium to maintain good communication between two generations and helps in building the emotional and mental bond stronger.
The entire family comes together to celebrate this event with great enthusiasm and gusto.

For parents, the day is the acknowledgment of their successful transformation from man and woman to husband and wife, and thus to a stronger connection of being a parent together. It shows that the efforts they have put in the upbringing of their children are right and are in the right direction.

Thinking & Wisdom
It is difficult to learn. It is even more difficult to apply one’s learning to a given task, and yet that is what our school community aims for: providing students with the knowledge, skills and confidence so that they can indeed make good changes in the world. The teachers at Riverdale Country School have all talked about basic skills and ensuring that students leave with the type of cultural capital that they need to move on to the next steps in their education; however, the teachers here really want to focus on having students develop as critical and creative thinkers. We put a real emphasis on thinking and that is not easy to teach. Good thinking is achieved by working as an apprentice to an experienced mentor, in learning to ask good questions and to propose effective arguments alongside a skilled practitioner. I hope that you will actively support this quest to have your sons and daughters become good thinkers by coaching them through the process. This means supporting them, as mentioned in the article to which I sent you the link on Carol Dweck’s work in my August letter. She asks us all, teachers and parents, to focus on the effort that young people put into a challenging task rather than praising their intelligence or innate abilities. This will help them be better learners. As they develop as critical thinkers at the school, I hope they will also engage in wonderful debate at the communal dinner table with you in the evening. This takes the work of the classroom and makes it tangible for young people by making learning authentic. We must all take the time to engage in informal dialogue with our children about issues that are of importance to them so that they can start to make concrete connections between their lives and the academic disciplines they are studying. This is a point made by research into the brain and cognition, to retain knowledge it has to be actively connected to prior knowledge and experience. I hope to see us use such research into cognition and learning to inform robustly our classroom practices—I believe that this is a professional obligation for educators.
I know that your children will develop as thinkers as they move through the school, but I would like us to push even further. I would like us to think about developing wise children. I know that sounds like an oxymoron to some degree since adolescents are not usually wise and perhaps should not be wise all the time. Nonetheless, I would like to have our students develop as wise learners in the classroom, becoming self-disciplined and being able to evaluate their own learning, but also show such wisdom on the athletic fields as they interact with other teams and in their own lives as they think twice about the life decisions they face. To my mind, wisdom is not something you suddenly achieve in your dotage, but rather has to start being developed from an early age as Robert Sternberg, the noted psychologist has observed. Therefore, let us all think of ways to have our young people become wiser, and thus, more successful leaders, citizens and human beings.

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