The Catcher in the Rye characters

Appears from the start

A sixteen-year-old boy who narrates the story from a rest facility in California some months after the events. As the book opens he is finishing his time at Pencey Prep, a Pennsylvania boarding school from which he has just been expelled for failing most of his classes. Cynical, lonely, and preoccupied with what he sees as the phoniness of the adult world, he is also tender toward children and quietly haunted by the loss of his younger brother. He speaks in a candid, digressive, slang-filled voice.

Appears from the start

Holden's older brother, a gifted short-story writer whom Holden admires. D.B. now lives in California and writes for the movies in Hollywood, which Holden regards as a kind of selling out. He served in the army during the war.

Also known as Ackley

First appears in chapter 3

A student who rooms next to Holden at Pencey Prep. Older-looking, with a pimply face, bad teeth, and poor hygiene, he is socially awkward and intrusive, wandering uninvited into Holden's room. Holden finds him irritating but is also aware of how friendless and unhappy he is.

Also known as Stradlater

First appears in chapter 3

Holden's roommate at Pencey Prep, a handsome, athletic, and self-satisfied senior who is popular with girls. Careless about other people's feelings, he asks Holden to write an English composition for him while he goes out on a date. Holden is unsettled to learn the date is with a girl he knows and cares about.

First appears in chapter 4

A girl Holden grew close to over past summers and remembers with warmth and protectiveness. She does not appear in person, but she stays on Holden's mind, especially once he learns she is the date his roommate Stradlater is taking out. He repeatedly thinks of phoning her but never quite manages to.

First appears in chapter 5

Holden's younger brother, who died of leukemia a few years before the events of the story. Holden remembers him as unusually bright, kind, and red-haired. Allie's left-handed baseball glove, covered with poems he had copied onto it, is the subject of the composition Holden writes, and his death is a wound Holden has never recovered from. On the night Allie died, Holden broke the garage windows with his fist.

First appears in chapter 10

Holden's ten-year-old sister, whom he describes with deep affection as clever, pretty, red-haired, and emotionally perceptive far beyond her years. She loves to write stories and to dance. She is the person Holden most wants to see and talk to, and the one he trusts more than anyone.

First appears in chapter 15

A pretty, socially confident girl Holden has dated before and telephones to arrange an outing while he is in New York. Poised and conventional, she moves easily in the polished social world that Holden is drawn to and scorns at the same time.

First appears in chapter 24

A former English teacher of Holden's, now teaching at a university in New York, whom Holden respects as one of the few adults who seemed to understand him. Holden goes to his apartment late at night seeking a place to stay and some guidance, and Antolini offers him earnest advice about the self-destructive path he seems to be on.