The two roommates fight, Stradlater winning easily. A womanizer, Stradlater has just returned from a date with Holden's old friend Jane Gallagher. Later, Holden argues with his roommate, Stradlater, who fails to appreciate a theme that Holden has written for him about Holden's deceased brother Allie's baseball glove. First, a dorm neighbor named Ackley disturbs him. Wearing his new red hunting cap, he begins to read. Spencer is a well-meaning but long-winded old man, and Holden gladly escapes to the quiet of an almost deserted dorm. Holden has been expelled and is not to return after Christmas break, which begins Wednesday.

He is on his way to the home of his history teacher, Mr. Manager of the fencing team, he managed to lose the team's equipment on the subway that morning, resulting in the cancellation of a match in New York. Holden begins at Pencey Prep, an exclusive private school in Pennsylvania, on the Saturday afternoon of the traditional football game with school rival, Saxon Hall. It is a frame story, or long flashback, constructed through Holden's memory. Typically, he first digresses to mention his older brother, D.B., who was once a 'terrific' short-story writer but now has sold out and writes scripts in nearby Hollywood. He wants to tell us about events that took place over a two-day period the previous December.

Holden Caulfield, the seventeen-year-old narrator and protagonist of the novel, addresses the reader directly from a mental hospital or sanitarium in southern California.

The one thing book summary